“Is that all?” he asked, unaffected, it seemed.
I glanced lower at his covered stomach, his thighs, everything in between. “You look different everywhere.”
He said nothing, which was just like him.
I poked the side of his arm with my finger. “DoIlook different?”
“I suppose you do.”
“Do I look womanly?”
I knew I did, but I wanted him to say it. I wasn’t sure why. I just wanted him to raise his eyes now and gaze at me like a man tempted.
But when he lifted his head, there was no desire, no admiration in him, only a sharp, almost vindictive coldness. “Where is your husband, Thea?”
The air thinned as soon as he said it.
I had to swallow several times before I was able to speak, and even then my voice left me low and strained. “You mean Jasper.”
Hector gritted his teeth, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Is that his name? I don’t recall. To me he’s just the nobody your parents chose for you.”
The resentment in his eyes was a double-edged blade. Either way, it cut me. “I had a say in the matter, you know. They didn’tchoosehim for me and certainly not for the reasons you think.”
“Really?” he prodded venomously. “So they didn’t favor him for his relation to the royal family? Was it his inability to appreciate sarcasm, his disinterest in anything that doesn’t involve boats, or his receding hairline that won over their hearts, then?”
You don’t recall, huh?I almost taunted. Instead, I pleaded, “Hector.”
“No, please, enlighten me. What exactly makes a man who pursues a woman for her beauty alone with no regard for her feelings, dreams, and aspirations such a fine and irreplaceable suitor?”
I knew he was angry at me, but gods, did he have to make it sound as though my parents were monsters and I some mindless puppet?
Of course, they had asked for my permission. In fact, we discussed my union with Lord Jasper several times before they allowed him to officially propose to me. At the end of the day, they just wanted me to have a life of greater opportunity and for the family to gain a title. And there was nothing wrong with that. Marrying Lord Jasper, who was second cousin to the King of Thaloria, would have brought nothing but honor and prosperity to the Valentia household.
Sure, Jasper was a little… ungainly, and, yes, I didn’tpersonallycare about status, but it had been my family’s greatest wish to see me in the Dreaming Palace, working for the Queen.“Foresight and diplomacy—these are your gods-given gifts, Thea,”Mother would always admonish me.“Do you really want to waste them in dusty old Steria?”
Steria was not the problem, though. With its quaint market and picturesque houses, Steria was considered one of the mostbeautiful northern villages and even attracted tourists during harvest season. Steria wasn’t the reason I yearned for something greater than I was given, but the Castle. Within its walls I’d seen and experienced things beyond the wildest human imagination. Nothing in my life back home could compare to the grandness and sheer impossibility of this place. After a childhood of such wonder, only a city like Thaloria, where magic was taught like religion and breathed like the air, could appease my miracle-hungry heart. I understood now that Mother had recognized this about me all along. She just hadn’t believed me capable of surviving on my own out there, untitled and unmarried.
And at any rate, there were worse fates than marrying a complete stranger. I couldn’t promptly think of one, but I’m certain there were.
“Well, we didn’t get married anyway. So this conversation is pointless,” I muttered.
Hector’s face darkened like the sky before a storm. “Don’t tell me the wanker backed down.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, more pleased with this reaction than I had the right to be. “What if he did? Will you march into Thaloria and defend my honor?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I do notmarch. I will merely find and castrate him.”
“How chivalrous.”
He glared at me. “What happened?”
My stupid heart. That was what happened.
At eighteen, my life had been nothing more than an orderly checklist. After all, not all of us had castles in the sky that held the wisdom of the universe and enough magic to transform your perception of the impossible forever. Some of us had no choice but to live on land under the practical, unromantic light of reality. But in the end, my desire for impractical, romantic things grew larger than my desire to make my parents proud. Itwas selfish of me, I knew, but of all the sins, to put myself first did not seem so wretched.
I spent my whole life lost in pages of books that told stories of the bravery and passion of characters whose only duty lay with their hearts. And I wanted to live like that too. I wanted the chance to find out who I was when I didn’t let the expectations of others reform me. I wanted to make a hundred heartbreaking mistakes and have the courage to pay for all of them. I wanted a love I was terrified to lose, agony and rapture inseparable from each other. And I didn’t want a happy ending. Only the beginning of something worth fighting for.
“I was too selfish to go through with it,” I admitted, releasing a sigh from the cage of my chest.