Page 29 of Heir to His Court

He's not going to answer the question I've asked a dozen times.

He says in a light voice, “Tonight I will allow you Avallonne. Only for the night. Because today you are thirteen.”

I stare at his shadowy form. “Why is thirteen a magic number?”

He is silent for so long I think he might change his mind. “My thirteenth birthday was not happy. I would like yours to be different.”

“What happened?”

Instead of answering, the gray mist that shrouds us dissipates. For the first time in a year I'm staring at Raniel. He is the same, of course he is. The way I look at him is not quite the same.

Tall, elegantly lean with the strength of a warrior. Waist length blue-black hair spilling over broad shoulders like a taunt, and I'm old enough now to understand that itisa taunt, of a particular kind.

I'm old enough now to understand the visceral pleasure of running my fingers through a boy’s hair. Numair's hair is shorter, slightly wavy, but just as silky. I've run my hands through his hair, searching for a seed of the feeling I have around Raniel, but it never works.

I glare at him, compressing my lips and carefully smoothing my expression. Damn him anyway. He knows he’s hot, and he knows I know he’s hot. Knowing him, he plans on torturing me with it for the next decade, until I’moldenough, air quotes.

Two can play that game. I’ve been watching my mother and my older cousins with their lovers. Realms, I’ve been watching Terreille seduce dizzying circles around Édouard. Cousin doesn’t know which way is up or down most days.

Raniel holds out his hand, his electric blue eyes hooking mine, and I almost decide to refuse him. This is arbitrary and unfair.

“If you can decide to break your own rule for a day, on a whim, what’s the point of it?”

“You are not the only one enduring discomfort, little one,” he says softly. “It will be many more years before you fully understand the consequences of what you feel.”

“And you understand?” I amnota child. Don’t tell me I don’t understand my own damned feelings. “Why don't you mansplain it to me.”

He grimaces, but still doesn’t lower his hand. “You are only barely no longer a child. Come. Walk the sands with me.”

I accept his hand, seething with resentment. The misty place fully dissipates, cool sands under my feet—it's evening— and it's difficult to remain angry. Laughing, I pull away from him and run, diving into the ocean.

Eventually Raniel joins me, though he has shed his sheer outer kaftan. I see the slope of his shoulders, arms and chest and blush, glad I'm at my brownest during the summer so none of the pink shows in my cheeks. He probably knows anyway.

Raniel looks at me as we tread water, and he turns away as I catch a glimmer in his eyes. A glimmer of something I'm beginning to recognize in the males my age I hang out with, and some of the older ones. Enough glimmers this year that Maman took Juliette and I aside and began our sex education in earnest.

“You girls are still young, especially you, Juliette,” she’d said. “You do not have my halfling's human blood to speed your development. If you decide to play games with another young person, I only ask that you inform me first.”

Her expression hardened, voice low, soothing, the harmony of seashells pressed to one’s ear on a warm spring day. When it turns to storms in seashells, we all brush off our very best manners. Raniel said her mother was once Lady of the Lake. Once, a very long time ago, before they were forced to abandon our ancestral home.

“Regardless of what you might think you want, at this age you are prohibited from any penetrative play,” she’d said. “If I catch you in such a situation, after I have given you an explicit order, I will assume that your partner overrode your will and I will treat them accordingly. Do you understand? You need more time to mature.”

Juliette and I had nodded, understanding very well. You didn't disobey your Lord, especially not when your Lord is your mother. If we did, she would treat our partner like an enemy combatant.

“But how is that fair, Maman?” I had protested. “If they are innocent?”

“There are always consequences for your actions, Aerinne. But consequences are not always visited upon your own shoulders.” Her eyes glinted, the sky blue turning stormy. “You are the daughter of a High Lord. No one who approaches you will be innocent.No one.They will always have an ulterior motive, more than one. Eventually you will fall to one, and then you will learn from the mistake. But I would not have that happen to you while you are this young.”

I want to kiss Raniel. From the look that crossed his face before he turned away from me, I think. . .I think he wants to kiss me too.

“Understanding consequences,” he says, still floating out of arm’s reach, turned away from me. He stares up at the night sky, brilliant with stars, “is the first step to maturity. So is control.”

Treading water, I curl my fists at my side, and don’t swim toward him when he drifts away several more feet. I want to call him a coward for avoiding my gaze, but cowardice is no where in Raniel’s bones. Since his back is to me, I fill my gaze with him. With his soaked dark hair, with his broad shoulders and strong back. With just his presence.

“How old is old enough?” I ask.

“Do not ask me that question.”

“I don’t get to know how long my exile is?”

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