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Avice was a collector of tales. Highwaymen, pirates, explorers, noble princes battling to save damsels in distress. She had shelves and shelves of adventure stories back at home. As a child, sneaking through the woods, she’d pretended to be Robin Hood or Ser Francis Drake.
Ladies weren’t meant to read Robin Hood—too boisterous, too masculine.
“Lady Avice Ferrers,” he said, voice low and private again, “being here, away from family means I haven’t yet asked your father, but if you consent, I’ll go and beg him if I have to. First, though, I beg you”—he went to one knee, hands engulfing hers—“do me the honour of becoming my wife.”
Obedient. Dutiful daughter. Meek and mild as milk.
She looked like a piece of jewellery. A bauble—pretty, expensive, but ultimately useless. Exactly as she’d always feared.
“You didn’t just come along, a sudden stroke of luck, a chance lightning bolt. Your Mama bargained with the fae.”
“The child will always carry a wild fae taint,” Mama went on, “which will lead it away from your genteel world of manners and noble marriages.”
“Please. Don’t submit. Don’t end up like me.”
“It wouldn’t be an adventure without a little danger,”
“And, when life and love are not so sweet, may we remember this moment and our vows and work together to make it so.”
“Though you are now unbound by this rope, you walk forward in life bound by your choice to be together.” He pulled the cord away and coiled it up before placing it in Avice’s hand. “You are husband, you are wife, you are one.”
She was trapped but—but if she was trapped beneath him… well, she trusted him. It was fine.
The way Evered shook his head at her, blowing out through his nose, made her grit her teeth. Disapproval. Just like Papa.
The sea. It was… beauty. Freedom. It was the promise she’d been searching for her whole life. The way it moved, it was alive. But it was also death—she’d heard of storms that struck the coasts and wrecked ships, taking them down to the bottom, never to be seen again. It was dangerous and magnificent and… Everything.
It isn’t that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better. A lot better.
I see you, I know you, and I love you, my wilful, wayward girl. No matter what your father says, there’s nothing wrong with who you are. You aren’t too wild. You aren’t too bold. You aren’t too loud. You’re just right. It’s his world that’s wrong—it isn’t ready for you. I pray to the gods and the fae Lords and Ladies that you’ll find a place where they are. Mama
Curling around the warm little cat, she lay against the rope and watched the stars come out, bright against the darkening sky. She wasn’t too wild, too bold, too loud. She was just right.
“How long do you think you can live like this?” Frowning, she glanced up at the edge of the forest canopy, the impossibly blue sky. She could live like this forever, but his intense look suggested he didn’t mean that. “Like what?” “Being yourself with everyone but your husband.”
“As soon as you go in there, it’s like you disappear from the world, leaving just a quiet echo.”
Gods. Lords. Ladies. Wild Hunt. She’d made a terrible mistake.
Some men want one thing in a woman they’re chasing and another in a wife they’ve caught.
