There was once a time when she lost herself in these balls, sipping spiced wine, laughing with Mary and Greer and Lola and even Aylee, when she was still alive. Yes, up until recently, she looked forward to these events, to the music and the dancing and the pastries and the handsome, charming, and wealthy men.
She loved it all. But he ruined it for her.
She watched him now, his bald head glistening in the overhead light in the center of the ballroom, providing him with a natural circlet made out of a thin layer of sweat where his actual jewel-encrusted crown lay absent. He had a lustful look about him. There was a time where that look would have made her squeeze her thighs together and squirm impatiently beneath her skirts, but now the only part of her that squeezed when she looked at the King was her throat when it threatened to unleash a disgustingly pungent stream of bile from the depths of her belly.
She forced her dark eyes away from Henry, and somehow, maybe by coincidence, or maybe by a dull act of will playing in the back of her mind, they landed on Sebastian.
He was King Henry's bastard. Mary's former lover. Diane de Poitiers' son. The Dauphin's older brother.
And, now, her husband.
He's standing alone at one of the serving tables that are heaping with extravagant-looking food, his eyes scanning the bowls and platters and his fingers plucking anything that his stomach desired. She watched as he picked up a puff pastry that looked like it could have been the size of a toddler's fist, stuff it in his mouth, and swallow it whole.
A few weeks ago, when they had first married, she would have frowned and mentally ranted on about how she didn't choose this unhygienic, title-less bastard as a husband; that he was forced on to her at sword point by his own maniacal father, and that he didn't want her just as much as she didn't want him.
But now...now, something had changed. Maybe it was the kiss that they had shared within their quarters only nights ago? Or maybe it was just time well spent. Whatever the case, instead of frowning or scowling at her husband's ungentlemanly-like behavior, she laughed. It was a soft and sweet, but at the same time rebellious laugh that a teenage girl ought to have plenty of.
She could have sworn by the way that everyone around her continued on with their dancing and chattering that her giggle was only loud enough for her to hear, but Sebastian, who was pretty much standing on the other side of the room, took a curious turn as if someone had called out his name and found her in the crowd with as much difficulty a mountain lion would have faced tracking an elk bleeding out in the woods.
For a brief moment he appeared confused as to why she would be staring at him so intently, but then he managed to supply a soft smile of his own—a little awkward, but still soft nonetheless. Surprisingly, it made her cheeks feel warm and she didn't need a mirror to know that they were not the normal golden color of her skin, but rather as pink as a newborn baby's bottom. She would have bashfully looked away were it not for the large capacity of stubbornness that she manifested within her dainty body, and instead she smiled again, choosing to ignore the fire burning within her cheekbones.
She could have stayed like this forever, standing on opposite sides of an enormous room, surrounded by an ocean of people but just smiling at her husband, feeling as if only they were stopped in time but the rest of the world was still going on without them. It felt good. It felt natural. It felt normal.
And at that moment, she couldn't help but think, is this what love feels like?
She certainly didn't feel this way with Henry, back when she thought she loved him. No, with Henry, it was more of the thought of love that she felt, rather than the actual feeling. The world didn't feel as if it slowed down when she looked at Henry—no, it felt as if it sped up. It didn't feel natural or normal. Yes, it felt good, but only physically, not internally, and at the time, she didn't realize that. With Henry, it felt hot, heated, and lustful, and she was too naive to realize what she realized now—that lust and love were to very, very different things.
Now, however, as she held Bash's gaze, as a young woman's rambunctious laughter dared to creep up into her ears, as a man suggestively touched her arm but soon left, insulted, once he realized that she was paying him no mind, and as she felt as if all the heat from the center of the world was harvesting itself in the core of her cheeks, Kenna de Poitiers thought she was beginning to know what actual love felt like.