A corner of my lips quirks up against my will. “Is that so?”
He nods. “Meeting you has made me enjoy my life for the first time. You’ve made me feel like Ideserveto enjoy it. With you. I’m not going to give that up just to sulk in the doom and gloom of reality.”
“I think Nyxia would say that’s all very sunny and idealistic of you.”
He grins. “And yet it doesn’t lack execution.”
My lips mirror his. “So, what do you propose?”
“Let’s pretend it never comes.”
“Pretend? I never thought you’d be one to play pretend.”
“Then you must know very little about your own kind. The fae excel at playing pretend. Isn’t that all a glamour is?”
His oddly light mood has mine lifting as well, even though I know it won’t last. I suppose the least I can do is humor him. “What are we pretending, then?”
He sits up straighter, and I return to my place across from him in the tub. “Let’s pretend this is a year from now,” Aspen says.
“A year from now?”
“Yes. All that nonsense with the bomb—an entire year has passed since then. Agreed?”
I shrug. “Fine. I’ll play. Where are we a year from now?”
“Well, first of all, remember when that idiot Mr. Duveau took the Parvanovae to the mainland and accidentally blew it up in the king’s face? Remember how the blast destroyed Bretton, but we had our wall up in time to protect against it? Then Estel found some crazy solution that protected the isle better than our original plans? Remember that?”
My heart sinks. “If that were true, everyone on the mainland would be dead. That’s only slightly less depressing.”
“All right, let’s not talk about the bomb at all,” he says. “That was almost a year ago, besides. Let’s talk about now.”
“And what are we doingnow?” I roll my eyes on the last word, my tone full of mockery.
“Right now, we are living in our new palace.”
“Oh, we have a new palace?”
“We do,” Aspen says. “We built it on the border between Fire and Autumn. There the weather is warm, but only perfectly so. The red leaves of Autumn mingle with the warm breeze of fire. And we have a lake for swimming. An ample bathtub even larger than this one. Oh, and an enormous table that rivals Nyxia’s.”
I bark a laugh. “What do we use this immense table for?”
“Certainly not meetings,” Aspen says. “Only sex. Same goes for every viable surface in our palace. Our household staff knows exactly when to make themselves scarce and which rooms they should vacate at once.”
“How do they know?”
His eyes unfocus as he thinks for a moment, a devious smirk tugging his lips. “We have a bell.”
“A sex bell?”
“Yes. It warns all those within our vicinity that no surface is safe from us and all eyes must be averted at once.”
“I’m guessing we pay our staff very well.”
“They have a handsome salary indeed,” he agrees.
“All right, so we spend our days fornicating all over the furniture. What else do we do?”
He waves a dismissive hand. “Tedious royal business of course. Signing papers. Holding court. Making appointments and ironing out conflicts. But no matter how taxing the day was—”
