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“I hope it’s not a dream,” I say. “You can’t get away from me in this world, but I suppose waking from a dream would be a hard escape to stop.”
She laughs. “Who says I can’t escape?”
“Well, maybe it’s not a matter of can’t, but won’t. You don’t want to leave here because you know I’m still not done with you.”
“Oh?” she asks. “So confident now, aren’t we? What makes you think I want to just be used until you’re ‘done’ with me and then tossed aside?”
“See, that’s the thing,” I say, turning her head up so I can look into her face. “I have a lot of ideas about what I want to do with you, and to you. My best guess is it’d take at least a hundred years or so to do them all.”
She gives me a skeptical smile. “This sounds like something a man would say to lure an innocent, naive girl into his trap. Tell me, Prince Roark, are you trying to trap me?”
“No,” I say, lowering my voice and leaning down so my lips are near her ear. “I’m trying to fuck you. And we’ll see where it goes from there.”
She pulls back and covers her mouth as she laughs, drawing looks from the couples dancing around us. “You’re direct. I’ll give you that.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“So, Mr. Direct,” she says, threading her fingers behind my neck, sending chills down my back at her touch. “What happens if Prince Titus doesn’t get the bride he was promised?”
I watch her face as the speckled white lights play across her face and we twirl in the mass of moving bodies to a slow, steady song that’s in no rush to finish. She’s magnificent, from the tip of her pert little nose to the splash of freckles that span across the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks. There’s a lack of self-consciousness to her expression that I love. Everyone in the Shrouded Kingdom learns to guard their emotions from a young age and only show their feelings in extreme cases, but Elizabeth wears hers plainly for the world to see.
Her lips are parted now, eyes hopeful and searching as she waits. She’s trying to figure out if we can really be together or if I’m proposing some sort of extended affair. She has a right to know the truth, though.
“That depends,” I say. “If his intended bride were to call off the wedding, she would likely be thrown in the dungeons until she changed her mind. If she were to call off the wedding to be with his brother… That would be unprecedented, so I can’t say what would happen.”
“Give me an educated guess,” she says.
“Titus and my mother would call in every favor they could, rally forces, and try to have me killed. They might come after you, too, or they could spin the whole thing in a way that made it looked like I was forcing you to be with me all along and you were just an innocent victim.”
“So calling off the marriage for you would be a really bad idea,” she says.
“You’re saying you won’t?” I ask.
“I didn’t say that,” she says.11ElizabethMarcella sits on the edge of my bed while she works on my toe nails. Kadene and Niera are busy around the room straightening things and watering the plants sitting near the windows.
“Are you happy?” I ask Marcella. “Doing the work you do, I mean.”
She gives me a strange look. “Happiness is not for everyone, Princess,” says Marcella. “You’ve told me of your childhood. You know this.”
“I wasn’t happy living with my parents,” I say. “But I wouldn’t have been able to suffer through it if I didn’t think I’d find happiness someday. Do you have that?”
Marcella looks up thoughtfully, chewing her lip. I notice Kadene and Niera have lifted their heads from their work and are listening in.
“I am a servant here, Princess. I mean no offense, but no, I would not say I’m happy. I will serve until I am too old to do so, and then if I’m lucky, I’ll be allowed to live out my final days as an old woman, when I’m too feeble to do any of the things I’ve longed to do.”
“Marcella,” I say softly, leaning forward to put a hand on hers. “Couldn’t you escape to the outside? You may not get a great job, but at least you’d have your freedom.”
“My cousin escaped when she was fourteen,” says Kadene, who steps forward, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her mousy face pulls into an angry scowl. “They found her two days later and slaughtered her like a pig. They didn’t even bring her body back so we could mourn her properly.”
“Who?” I ask. “Who would kill a little girl?”
The three servants lower their heads at the same time, none willing to look at me.
