Red Flags Books

“I think I understand now what you meant when you said I have to give up my mortal qualms. And I am willing to do that. But I want you to marry me.'

'Ah.' He sat down on the couch, looking stunned with lack of sleep. 'And so you came here in the middle of the night?'

'I hope that you love me,' I tried to sound the way Oriana did when she forbade us to do things- stern, but not unkind. 'And I will try to live as the Folk do. But you ought to marry me even if neither of those things were true, because otherwise I might ruin your fun.'

'My fun?' he echoed. Then he sounded worried. Then he sounded awake.

'Whatever game you are playing with Nicasia and Cardan,' I said. 'And with me. Tell Madoc we're to be wed and tell Jude about your real intentions or I will start shaping stories of my own.'
...
I realised that Locke might teach me lessons, but he wasn't going to like what I did once I learned them.

'You promised-' he began, but I cut him off.

'Not a marriage of a year and a day, either,' I said. 'I want you to love me until you die.'

He blinked. 'Don't you mean until you did? Because you're sure to.'

I shook my head. 'You're going to live forever. If you love me, I will become a part of your story. I will live on in that.'

He looked at me in a way he'd never done before, as though evaluating me all over again. Then he nodded. 'We will marry,' he said, holding up his hand. 'On three conditions. The first is that you will tell no one about us until the coronation of Prince Dain.'

That seemed like a small thing, the waiting.

'And during that time, you must not renounce me, no matter what I say or do.'

I know the nature of faerie bargains. I should have heard this as the warning that it was. Instead, I was only glad that two of his conditions seemed simple enough to fulfill.

'What else?'

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart's blood should run cold.

'Only this,' Locke said. 'Remember we don't love the way that you do.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters