Chapter 9
In the morning, Rose and Sebastien had a fight. Not just an argument, nor a quarrel where they bickered amiably about some triviality. This was an actual fight, their first, and a painful one.
Sebastien came in from taking Nina and Nonna outside, returning with snowflakes in his golden locks and the scent of cold air wafting around him.
Rose had just finished dressing for the day and was doing her hair.
She squealed when he pressed his cold nose against the nape of her neck.
“Good morning, my queen,” he murmured, spanning her waist with his big hands.
Not at all in the mood to be touched, Rose squirmed, keeping it playful. “You’re freezing! Get off me, you big lunk.”
He kissed her once more, laughing, then went to sprawl in a chair, Nina and Nonna immediately taking up flanking positions to rest their chins on either knee.
Setting his hands on their heads, he gazed affectionately at Rose.
“Just think. This could be us always. When we get married and live at Castle Vega. You’ll be a legendary sorceress and I’ll keep the castle vermin-free by talking to the cats.
We’ll have a dozen children, even more grandchildren and great-grandchildren, then grow old together. ”
With effort, Rose leashed her rising irritation.
Sebastien didn’t realize what he was asking, not thinking about her reality.
He hadn’t seen that list of magical chores she’d have to tend just to keep her debt from snowballing.
Still, when did he think she’d have time for pregnancy and childbirth?
She couldn’t afford to be near to term or ill with morning sickness when called into a pitched battle.
If she learned to physically walk the Dream, one of the most lavishly rewarded tasks on every list, she wouldn’t be able to do that pregnant, would she?
“I want half a dozen little girls with long black hair and fierce dark eyes,” Sebastien mused, “and another half dozen blond with green eyes. No boys. They only get into trouble.”
“Sebastien…” All the words and worries in her mind wrestled for priority, getting tangled up so that she couldn’t find words to finish. But the image arrested her. Children with Sebastien’s sunny nature, golden curls, and green eyes. If she had children, she wouldn’t be alone.
“Don’t you want children? I know we use enchantments to block our fertility now,” Sebastien continued, frowning, “but I thought that was temporary, while we’re students.”
“I thought that we were going to talk about this later.”
“That was last night,” he pointed out amiably. “This is later.”
“Do you have reason to think your father will bring you back to his court once you graduate?” she asked him.
He blinked at her, clearly taken aback by the question.
Then he laughed, though it had a bitter edge.
“Where else would I go? Yes, I’ll be a few years behind you, due to my egregiously late start.
” He grimaced self-deprecatingly. “But Father won’t have me go be a sorcerer for anyone else.
Zoopathy might not be glamorous, but I’ll make myself useful. Besides, I’m family.”
At a loss for words, Rose groped for the hopefulness, the sunny glow she usually gleaned from Sebastien, however borrowed it might be. She came up empty.
“You’ll be family, too,” Sebastien told her, as if reassuring her, dipping his chin toward the still-open jewelry box sitting on the table, the gorgeous opal gleaming accusingly in the morning light.
“A literal princess!” His happy smile faded again.
“Unless Soren didn’t make the offer yet?
You never said last night. If not, he assuredly will. I know that much. Father wants you.”
She’d braided her hair too tightly in her tense frustration. “I’m not allowed to discuss the offers,” she answered. “They’re confidential until I sign.”
“Not even with me?”
She could hear the surprise in his voice, maybe a hint of hurt, and she was glad she’d chosen not to look into his face, instead staring at her own reflection.
How could she accept King Soren’s hope-ending offer?
She would perhaps have Sebastien, but if she signed that terrible contract, she would never be free.
What is freedom? a voice whispered in her mind.
You don’t know that you’ll ever earn your way free anyway.
You don’t know what you might miss, marrying a man who doesn’t truly love you.
You don’t know that you’ll ever find anyone else whose touch you enjoy.
Chains strangle more than happiness.
The various voices argued with each other, a damning chorus.
“Not even with you,” she whispered. “Not yet. I made a vow.”
“I understand if you can’t tell me details, but at least assure me you received the offer.”
She met his earnest gaze in the mirror and, finally, nodded. His joyful grin burned so that she had to avert her gaze again.
“Our future is so bright!” He rubbed the dogs’ heads so their tails thumped with mirroring happiness.
“Isn’t that right, girls? I’ll work hard and it won’t be long before we join your mom at Castle Vega.
Then we’ll have a grand wedding and begin our lives together.
I will always, always take care of you, Rose. We all will. You know that, right?”
“I know.” That part wasn’t the problem. She fastened rose-bedecked ribbons to the ends of her long braids.
“I’m going to pay a visit home,” he said, suddenly resolute, “and talk to my father. I understand you can’t say anything about the contract details but I can make sure of things for you.”
“You can’t leave the academy. You’re in the middle of classes.”
“I am a prince of the realm,” he pointed out with rare arrogance for him. “Madame Hendricks answers to my father, not the other way around. Besides…” His green eyes sparkled with mischief. “It’s not as if they’re going to expel me.”
As he knew it would, their private joke made her laugh, but the humor felt hollow, worry gnawing away at the once-certain core of how she felt about him.
The words crept up to the tip of her tongue, to ask him to have the king change some of the provisions of the contract.
But then she would have to explain her reasoning, to break her promise and risk Sarah’s life.
“No, you don’t need to go. Let’s see how things play out. ”
He cocked his head, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What do you mean, play out?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t know much of anything right now. What if I end up somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else?” he echoed incredulously. “Why would you even consider anywhere else?”
“I don’t know.” She threw up her hands, helpless to control the direction of this conversation. “If I get a better offer from some other … place.”
“Aren’t Soren’s terms good enough? Because that is something that can be fixed. That’s why I want to go visit my father. Just tell me what’s in the contract you’re not happy with.”
“I cannot say,” she answered through clenched teeth.
“Why not?” Flinging himself up from the chair, he paced away, then braced his hands on the sill of one of her windows in the round tower room.
“I made a vow,” she said quietly, not for the first time. “It’s a matter of honor.”
“Is it?” he asked coolly, turning to lean his exceptional ass on the window ledge, crossing his arms and his feet at the ankle, so that his thigh muscles bulged. “You’ve never been overly concerned with matters of honor before this, dark one.”
Ouch. “That’s not fair.” Though it was kind of true.
He unbent slightly. “It’s just that, in the future, your honor won’t be your own.
You know that. Mine won’t be either. Once we accepted the blood geas, decisions about what you and I will or won’t do stopped belonging to us.
Whoever holds our contract will decide for us.
In a way, if you think about it, it’s kind of freeing. ”
She wrestled with herself, not wanting to prolong the argument, but also offended by his use of the word “accept.” She’d been a child, not capable of agreeing to anything, when she was bound to that geas.
Sebastien didn’t remember his binding, but she remembered hers.
The sorcerer had literally strapped her down and forced it upon her.
Besides, even if she had agreed, she objected to the concept that she’d sold her autonomy, every personal, ethical choice along with it.
Sure, Rose had never been one to think overmuch about ethics and honor.
She didn’t care to observe rules that made no sense.
If a rule seemed logical and had a purpose she agreed with, then fine, but arbitrary-seeming rules drove her crazy.
Clotaire always said she got that from him.
Regardless, the whole “eventually you won’t get to decide so you might as well capitulate now” argument was one of those things that made no sense to her.
She sometimes envied Sebastien’s sunny, happily-dancing-along nature—but it just wasn’t in her.
Her darker, cynical side always questioned what he blithely accepted.
Even with Sebastien standing there, pleading with her to believe in their happy ever after, she just … couldn’t. “Nevertheless,” she said, wrapping her arms around her waist, “I cannot break this vow. I’m sorry.”
He gazed at her another long moment, smiling uncertainly, those lovely green eyes catching the light like jewels, his expression taking on new shadows.
“You won’t confide in me. You don’t like the idea of us getting married, of having a future together.
Have I done something wrong? Because I can fix it. ”