“Quentis has never sent a Sparrow to Turah. Not in three hundred years. It’s been the other way around, but in the past nine marriages, never this way.” The arrangements depended on the heirs each generation produced. Their ages. Their genders. Their kingdoms. Our parents didn’t care much about love or preference. If a prince was in love with another, he’d still be forced to marry a princess and produce an heir. If a princess was ten years older than the prince, they’d marry as long as she could still bear a child.
