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“How is it different?” I demand. “Why can’t I go to a… a women’s brothel and have naked men serve me drinks and dance for me?”
He almost chokes laughing. “Are you serious? Our parents would murder you. No man would want to come near you, if you did something like that, let alone marry you.”
“And how is that fair?” I ask. “Tell me.”
“We are men,” he says again as if that explains everything. As if that explains anything.
But be that as it may, if men have privileges women don’t have, and I’m aware of my reality, thank you very much—not all men have to be that way.
I didn’t expect Iason to be that way.
“You’re corrupting him,” I accuse my cousin, not sure how to feel anymore. I’m so upset, but I bet any woman I ask will tell me I’m being absurd. After all, we’re not even engaged.
“He was the one who suggested it,” my cousin says, “so relax. I’m not corrupting him. And it’s no big deal.”
Iason suggested it.Good Gods.
Not a big deal at all.
At night, I take off the pendant and the ring he gave me and put them inside a box. I put the box in a drawer, and tell myself to let it go. What if Iason isn’t my soul mate? What if he’s a typical prince and I want an atypical one? What if I expected from him devotion and exclusivity from the start, when I kissed the merman not once but twice?
What if I wanted more from the man I am about to marry?
And why do I keep thinking of the merman, the way he’d roared my name as I had run away, the way he’d whispered,“I thought you cared”?
As I stand in the parlor the following day, saying my goodbyes to prince Iason and his family, he doesn’t even seem to notice that I’m not wearing the jewelry he’s given me.
I wonder if he’ll notice me at all when I become his wife.
7
SELINA
“Let me see it again!” Lily takes the ring out of the box and turns it into the light. “It’s beautiful, Selina! Sure, it’s not an engagement ring, but it’s another token.”
“It is.”
“Why aren’t you wearing it?”
“It doesn’t match my clothes today.” I turn away from her, toward the window. It’s windy outside, and cold. Is Adar cold? Do mermen feel the cold? Is he okay? Has the wound in his tail healed?
“You are upset with him,” Lily says, and my first thought is, how does she know? How does she know I’m upset with the Fae King? “Upset that he went to the brothels. Willam told me.”
Right. We’re talking about Iason, not Adar. Nobody knows about Adar and it had best remain that way.
I glance at her. “Why were you and Willam discussing my suitor?”
“Willam said you were so angry and that I should talk to you before you go and tell Prince Iason something awful next time he’s here. It would be a terrible mistake, and we both know how you’re not careful when you speak—”
“I’m not careful?”
“You’re very… free with your words, Selina. Maybe because you’re an only child.”
“You’re an only child, too,” I point out.
“That doesn’t matter,” she says airily. “What matters is that you’re acting like you’re above the customs of our land and our society. You need to rein yourself in and accept—”
“—my lot in life?”
