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“I think we ought to have something in place, and that she’s a fine option.”
”A fine option,“ he repeated, running his hands through his curls. “She isn’t a meal, or a business proposition. She’s a person. A person that I could be bound to—”
“It need not be forever. Faerie marriages seldom are.”
He groaned. Faerie marriages could come with all sorts of stipulations and recompenses should the couple ever decide to break their vows. He could not imagine her mothers agreeing to the match without some sacrifice on his part, some promise of decades. It ought not to feel like a long time when he’d have close to forever, but he was seventeen and decades felt like centuries to him.
Juliana wouldn’t be around for that long, although he knew that shouldn’t factor into anything.
“Sheisnice,“ he admitted, with some reluctance. “I’m just not sure she’s my type.”
“You have a type?” Juliana turned around, leaning against the balustrade a little too casually. “Other than ‘attractive’ and ‘there’?”
“I am not particularly fussy with who I bring to my bedchamber, it’s true… but for a partner, aqueen…“ He shook his head, unable to speak it.
Juliana stared at the floor. “You’ve never had any long-term lovers, have you?”
“I have not.”
“Never found anyone who can stomach you for that long?”
“Partly. But I am starting to understand that I do, in fact, have a certain type that it would be somewhat hard for most to measure up to.”
“Are you going to share?”
“I am not,” he said shortly, aware of what or who his list of desirable traits would sound like. “What of you? You’ve never taken on a lover for any length of time, as far as I’m aware.”
“Your Highness keeps me far too busy.”
“You have time enough for a dalliance, I’m sure.”
“Maybe,” she said, playing with her necklace of berries, “if I really wanted it.”
“You do not?”
“There’s other things I want more than companionship.”
“Knighthood? Freedom? Adventure?”
“All of those things,” she whispered, her gaze turning once more to the sea. “And more.”
“And if you had them? What sort of person would accompany you? Some broad-shouldered knight, loyal, brave and true?”
“Not qualities to be sniffed at,” she added, pursing her lips, “but, well, I’d rather like someone intelligent. Someone… someone I could speak to. Someone who can make me laugh.”
“Is your mouth even capable of such an action?”
She glared at him. “Youknowit is.”
“I know it’s hard to earn.”
He remembered the sound of her laughter like one remembered a fine drink they’d had one summer and never quite forgotten the taste or found its like again.
Juliana’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t often find much worth laughing at.”
“Even with me?”
“Oh, you I laugh at all the time.”
