I wonder if Liv is thinking about the same things. She never had a mother—does that make her want to avoid marriage? Does she even want to be a wife? We’re both nineteen—old enough—but we’ve never once talked about getting married. I realize I’ve been thinking the words marriage and wife so much that they’re starting to sound strange in my head.

On the game trail up ahead of me, Perry slows. It’s drizzling—just like he told me it would last night. I watch as he sets up and takes aim at a deer, drawing the bowstring back to his jaw and holding it. He looses it, and the arrow sails wide. The deer startles and springs away.

“That was terrible,” I say. I can count the number of times I’ve seen him miss a shot like that on one finger. It just proves that nothing feels normal anymore. “You missed by almost a foot.”

Perry turns to me. “Whose fault do you think that is?”

If the tone of his voice wasn’t enough of a clue, the grim set of his mouth is. “Mine?”

He shakes his head. “Your nerves are getting on my nerves,” he says, before he leaves to retrieve his arrow.

I mutter an apology as I watch him go. I know just how to calm myself down. As we pick up the deer’s scent trail again, I go back to daydreaming about drawing my blade across Vale’s throat.

Chapter 6

 6 

That night, Vale has a lamb slaughtered for supper. Because it’s Vale, I question this decision, wondering if he intended it to carry deeper significance.

While he has kindly granted me permission to escort the girl I love to her forced marriage, Vale makes sure I’m excluded from the high table in the cookhouse. I take my meal to a table by the door while Liv and her family feast together at the opposite end of the hall.

Liv sits with Talon and Mila, smiling as she talks to them. I can tell she’s keeping up a cheerful front for their sake. Around me as well, people pretend to be cheerful, chattering about Liv’s marriage. It’ll be great for the Tides, they say. An alliance to one of the most powerful Blood Lords alive and more food to get us through the winter. Everyone is happy. Everyone is cheerful, cheerful, cheerful.

“You know what’s unfair?” Brooke says beside me.

I push my plate away and stare at the mug next to it. Even Luster has no appeal tonight. “Life?”

Though there are hundreds of people between us, I feel Vale’s attention on me and look up. He’s enjoying my misery. Nearby Perry rips into a haunch with his teeth while Wylan, the fool, talks his ear off. It’s unwise to come between Perry and food.