Marek pauses. He’s missing something. “What’s wrong?”
“We have a date. We have a venue.” Sei takes a deep breath, then another, before he can calm down. “If you’re going to break the betrothal, do it quickly, Your Highness. Don’t humiliate me in front of the wedding delegation.”
“I’m not breaking the betrothal,” Marek says.
Sei stares. “What?”
“You’re right,” Marek says simply. “I’m out of time. So, we’ll get married. It’s not much different than being betrothed, right? We’ll just stay friends and bide our time until it’s easier to divorce.”
Marek expects Sei to be angry again. It would be fair—Marek has botched every step of this forced betrothal. Whoever’s fault it is, Sei is the one stuck in a foreign country.
“That’s very sensible,” Sei says instead, with a tiny smile. “I was wondering one more thing. Where have you been sleeping?”
“Sometimes in the lounge.” Marek shrugs. “Sometimes on the roof.”
“The roof.”
“When the weather’s nice,” Marek clarifies.
“The weather here is never nice.” Sei pushes his newly dyed hair behind his ear, then fiddles with the bleached ends. “You could sleep in here. I could take the sofa. Surely there’s an extra cot somewhere in this giant castle.”
In the firelight, Sei’s exposed throat gleams with an amber luster. His eyes are deep enough to get lost in. The invitation echoes, and if Marek accepts, neither of them will be sleeping on the sofa.
Marek almost agrees. He wants to agree. But Sei is trapped in this betrothal too. Marek can’t trust whether Sei truly wants this—or if Sei is just doing what he thinks he’s supposed to do.
“The roof is fine,” Marek says, and tears himself away before this sham betrothal becomes far too real.
?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sei
“Are you going to the birthday party later?” Clem asks as Sei pours a mountain of sugar into his morning tea.
Sei pauses in the middle of stirring. He must have misheard. “What birthday party?”
“Didn’t someone tell you?” Clem sets a plate of meat scraps on the table for Osric. “We’re holding it early, since everything will be so busy with the wedding. The party will be downstairs in the riders’ lounge. Starts at five. You should rest up—I certainly will. Dragonrider parties never end at a sensible hour.”
Oh. The birthday party is forMarek.
Sei falls silent as Clem leaves the room, and Osric floats a piece of meat from the table to the floor. All the sugar in Ostomar can’t sweeten Sei’s next sip of tea.
Today is the second of Marsen, and Sei is now twenty-two years old.
Sei is fine with the date passing unremarked. Nobody here has any reason to know his birthday, much less plan a party for him. Even Osric wouldn’t remember, because he doesn’t pay attention to things like birthdays. There was no fanfare over birthdays in the guild either, just a few small gifts.
Sei just didn’t expect to celebrate someone else’s birthday today instead.
Marek’s birthday is the fourteenth of Marsen. Easy to remember. Maybe Marek was named after the month. Sei had planned to ask Clem about typical Draskoran birthday gifts.
Too late to arrange anything now.
After breakfast, Sei stops at a gold-framed mirror and fiddles with his hair. The dye felt like a symbol of change. Of his new future. Now Sei just feels like he’s playing dress-up.
He’s been in Ostomar nearly two months, and it’s not as terrifying as he expected. He’s made friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. He likes Loska. He likes Clem, Kamil, Delline, Radovan, and others too.
Sure, his claimant still prefers sleeping on the roof to sharing a bed with Sei. Along with refusing to even discuss sharing power.
