“I love you, Trei,” she repeated. “Despite my best efforts not to fall in love with you, I have. I don’t think there’s any point in denying it to myself anymore, and the gods know how much I’ve tortured you by never saying it.” Her voice broke. “However, I don’t want to be queen. I’m scared by all that I’ll lose should I take that role.”
His throat was dry. “What of all you’ll gain?”
She threw up her hands. “I’m not suited to be queen, Trei! You know my past. Sacred hell, I’m an orphan…”
He dragged his thumb over her cheekbone. “You’re also the youngest head falconer the kingdom has ever seen.”
“I’m a thief…”
He dropped his thumb to the corner of her lips. “I don’t think they throw people in the dungeon for stealing raspberries.”
“I’m not a virgin.”
“Ha,” he barked. “And aren’t I glad for that.”
“Stop it, Trei. You know it will never work between us. I want you and only you—not what comes with you. The crown. The kingdom.”
Saraj rarely cried—she rarely showed any emotion at all. So the tears wetting her eyes made Trei spring into protective mode. He pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her back.
He whispered, “You don’t have to be queen for us to be together.”
She sniffled as she leaned her head against his broad chest. “So you’ll take me as your whore while you marry someone else?” There was no barb in her words, only an honest question. “My mother, god rest her, would have wanted more for her daughter than to follow in her footsteps.”
What little they knew of Saraj’s mother had hinted at a disreputable lifestyle, but Trei had never actually heard Saraj admit that her mother was anything more than a vagabond.
“Of course not.” He gripped her face in his palm, forcing her to read the sincerity in her eyes. “If I’m with you, there will be no one else.”
She scoffed, “The crown heir of the Baersladen will never marry, then?”
“That’s right,” he said gravely. “If it isn’t with you, then I’ll remain unmarried.”
She stared at him, too shocked to wipe away her tears. She sputtered, “Youhaveto marry.”
He smoothed a hand over her silky hair, letting his gaze fall to those berry-red lips. “I told you, Saraj, this isn’t like the Mirien. The same archaic rules don’t bind Baer royals. I can marry a commoner; I can also choose never to marry if I wish. Frankly, I can do whatever the hell I want once I’m king.”
Her eyes were drying. She shifted in his lap, tugging the blanket up further around the both of them. Trei silenced a groan—her sweet little ass was impossible to ignore against his hips.
“So we dine together and travel together and fuck together and never marry?”
He tilted his head up. “That hardly sounds like torture.”
She blinked slowly. “And…children?”
He adjusted her on his lap, finding the more she shifted her hips, the harder it was to focus. “Children are only bastards if their father never acknowledges them. If you bore me an heir, married or not, I would proudly proclaim that child as mine to every ruler in the Eyrie.”
She bit her lip, and he fought the urge to capture her berry-stained mouth and ravish her right there in the great hall alcove—they’d hardly be the first couple to make love under the cover of a blanket.
Cupping her jaw instead, he said sincerely, “I shall lay my heart bare: I want to marry you, Saraj. I want you to rule the Baersladen by my side as queen, and I do not doubt you’d make as strong a ruler as you do a head falconer. But if that is not your wish, then I’ll take whatever life I can get with you.”
The lingering tears in her eyes made her pupils look even bigger, and Trei found it harder and harder not to grab her around the waist and kiss her.
“Do you mean it?” she whispered.
“By the gods, what more do I have to say?”
She gave a small chuckle that made her cheeks turn pink. Under the wool blanket, her hand found his shirt collar, toying with the laces.
“Then you be the thief now, Trei Barendur, and steal a kiss.”
