“I…” I pouted.
“Tell me. It doesn’t have to mean anything. I just want to know. I think I deserve that.”
“I…” My mind was racing. “I don’t want you to find her attractive. I would feel mad about it.”
“Mad? I see,” he said.
“Because…” I tried so hard to muster the courage, but all I felt was fear.
“I do have feelings, you know? We joke but I’m not impenetrable,” he said. “I have feelings and…I have them for you.”
“I need time,” I said, shutting my eyes.
“Of course, I’m sorry,” he returned. “You don’t have to answer at all.” He swallowed, then glanced at the sky. “…May I speak frankly, Your Highness?”
“Y-Yes.”
“I am a man who rarely speaks in favor of fairy tales or things that magically fall into place.”
“What?”
“You… I just, I do not believe, for even a second, that you will not have love,” he said. “Yeah? You deserve it. You’re a nice sort of girl. Nice girls should be loved. I’m certain it will come for you. But love is more hard work than anything, I’m told.”
“Love isn’t possible for me,” I said. “Not if he loves Agatha.”
“That isn’t fact,” he said. “Folk fall out of love every day.”
“Not if it’s true love. I’ve seen the way he looks at her.”
“As have I.” He sighed. “Listen, men don’t think that way. Do you understand? We aren’t— Once you and Sam are married, once you are… together in his bed, a connection will fester whether you intend for it to or not. That’s just how it works.”
“If that were how it worked, then why would prostitutes exist?” I asked.
He blinked a few times. “Come again?”
“By your logic, my father would be ten, maybe twelve times married by now. Maybe more. I haven’tcountedthe whores but by your word, he should have loved them all. Yes? I promise you, he did not. He barely remembered their names while they were there. And why aren’tyouwed then? You’veknownwomen. Maybe whores.”
“I’m not sure I follow?”
“You said sex forged an interdependence, but if that were true, then our empires would have settled the score with just that. Sameer would buckle at his knees and declare himself to me, and the world would be brimming with offspring everywhere. Everyone would be smiling; there wouldn’t be war at all!”
He glanced at the discarded bottle. “How much of that did you have?”
“And the books I’ve read would not be books! The truth is, sex is sex, and come my wedding night, I’d find a deeper connection rubbing myself against a bedpost than on the Prince.”
His eyes widened at that. “Fuck me dead. Did you just describe your method of pleasuring yourself to me?”
“Ugh! It’s not like I’vetriedit!” I said. “I’ve just heardotherpeople speaking of it! Maids and their friends, and… Okay, maybe I attempted once but I did not see the fanfare.”
He stared.
“I didn’t know where to start!” I cried.
“I, uh, I’m not sure what to say to that,” he stammered.
“E-Elías would say…” I shifted my voice as his. “Duty first, duty last… And…”
“Whoa, hey.” Cyrus held my arm. “Steady on.”
