When Sage turned her head toward Leelo, for a moment she felt like she was looking at her aunt instead of her cousin. “Of course I don’t have a say. Maybe, if you were the one getting married, I could have put it off for a while. But your mother would never expect you to marry someone like Hollis. She’s as impractical as you are, only thinking about feelings.” She swallowed thickly. “I was never hoping for love. But respect, admiration. Even attraction. I had hoped...” She broke off, and for the first time Leelo could remember, Sage began to openly weep. Full, hiccuping sobs that wracked her entire body. The sight of her cousin coming undone was unbearable.

Leelo curled up next to Sage, holding her tight, trying to keep her from falling apart, as if Sage might actually crumble from sorrow. And a part of Leelo wished that it was her getting married instead, that she could spare Sage from this fate somehow. That there really was some Endlan boy she had fallen for instead of an outsider.

Instead of the one boy she could never have.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Jaren waited the entire day after the festival—the evening that Leelo had kissed him, as he would always think of it, touching his fingers to his lips and wishing they were hers—for Leelo to come to him. She had mentioned having that day off from Watcher duty and, considering how clear she’d made her feelings for him, he had no reason to think she wouldn’t visit.

The hours in the cottage always passed slowly, but that day they dragged on interminably. No matter how hard he tried not to think of Leelo, tried not to think of her berry-sweet mouth and the feel of her body against his, he couldn’t seem to help himself. He’d hardly slept that night after she left, his mind spinning in a thousand directions, every nerve in his body aware and humming in a way he’d never experienced.

It wasn’t that he’d never been attracted to someone before. He was a young man; sometimes it felt like he was attracted to everything and everyone, whether he wanted to be or not. And yes, he had imagined what it would be like to someday be married to someone he loved, like his mother and father. But it had all been theoretical before.

Now it was thrillingly, dangerously real. And he didn’t know how he would make it another minute, another hour, another day without her.