1776

Genevieve

I remember when I decided I could not marry Johannes Reutern of Dulcemia.

We were in Aborrine, where our two families often met whenever we were together. It was Johannes' (and what would have also been Rosella's) thirteenth birthday, and I had just turned twelve a few weeks before.

I remember sitting beside him in our play clothes, still wet from when we'd jumped in the creek (or rather, I'd dared him to jump in the creek, and then he pulled me in after) and then I'd pretended to be a shark to scare him. It didn't work, shark fins aren't often the same color as human flesh, and they don't have fingers.

"Did you hear we're getting married?" he asked casually, as though it wasn't everything I had dreamed of since I was four years old.

I remember looking at him, I remember searching his face for any sign of hope, or excitement that we would be spending the rest of our lives together. And when I found none, I said with forced nonchalance,

"My mother mentioned it, yes. Why, are you against it? They won't force us if we don't want to."

He shrugged. "Honestly, would a marriage alliance even make our kingdoms closer? Even if he wasn't my brother-in-law, I'd go to war for Derek in a heartbeat."

What about me? I remember thinking. Would you ever go to war for me?

And I remember hating myself for that stupid little thought. I hated how much control he had over me. I had spent my entire childhood hopelessly in love with Johannes, and I could not, I refused to spend my entire adulthood in the same manner, especially not when he viewed me the same way he did Derek.

I nodded dumbly. "Perhaps, then, we should focus on marriage into other royal families. Ones who we need to make alliances with."

"Oh alliances, how romantic!" he scoffed as he shook his head, "I don't know how anyone can be raised by parents like ours and not believe in true love. Don't you want to marry for love like your mother did?"

"There's no one I want to marry, so I don't care." Liar.

"Not true! I saw you holding hands with a man when you arrived!" he teased wickedly, wiggling his eyebrows.

I glared at him. "You mean the footman? When he helped me out of the carriage?"

"He didn't want you to fall! That sounds like looooveee to me!"

He made an obnoxious kissing noise, making me shove him with a roll of my eyes.

"Stop it! You're going to make me sick!"

Johannes held his hands up in surrender, and I turned away from him, satisfied. But then, he leaned close to my ear, making my breath catch. And he made the same noise again, but even louder.

"Johannes!"

He collapsed in laughter, and I couldn't help laughing too. But then he turned to me, looking at me with serious eyes that seemed to see right through me.

"It could happen to you, you know. Falling in love. Don't you want to wait for it, just in case?"

I looked at my bare feet, avoiding his penetrating gaze.

When you've been in love (I use the term love loosely, I don't think love was a concept I understood at the age of twelve) with one person your entire life, and there is no possibility that they might return your affections, a love match is not a priority. I could not imagine myself ever looking at Johannes and not feeling some form of longing. I could not imagine someone else making my heart skip a beat every time I saw them the way he did.

And if I did marry him, the way our parents were discussing, it wouldn't be horrible, but if he ever took a mistress and expected me to be fine with it because we were "practically siblings", it might kill me.

The best I could hope for was a husband who would respect me, but not expect love, and to occasionally visit Dulcemia, and be a great stately queen who doesn't follow the king around like a clingy puppy the way she did in childhood.

"I think I'm going to marry the Prince of Apollonia," I said, reveling in the look of shock on Johannes' face.

"Gen? Johannes?"

I smiled at the sight of Derek walking toward us, Brigitta a few steps behind him, her skirts bundled up in her left arm.

"You abandoned us!" she called out, running a little to catch up to Derek. Her words were accusatory, but her tone was riddled with laughter. She was the only person who knew about my crush on Johannes (besides a confession to Monsieur Gagne that I regretted every day after I told him), and had practically shoved us together that day, claiming she had something "crucial" to show Derek in the library.

I rolled my eyes. "The other way around, I should think. The two of you were gone nearly ten minutes before we came down here."

"I couldn't find the book I was looking for," she said defensively, giving me a 'you should be thanking me' look, as Derek smiled gleefully at me and said,

"It's an anthology of Wilhelmian love poems."

"Oh, lucky!" I said, squinting up at Derek in the bright sunlight, "which of his poems was it you liked again?"

"They're not his, Gen, they were just written when he was king," he sighed, "and most of them are about 'love being more important than money', 'love is a jewel beyond compare', that sort of thing."

Johannes nudged me.

"See? Even the poets agree. You should marry for love."

"Palladia has been relying on the alliances made by my great aunts for too long. I have to help maintain the peace they've brought about. So that people can write poetry," I said, looking at Derek, "instead of fighting in wars."

It was time to grow up. It was time to grow away from this fantasy that Johannes might someday love me because he never would. Not in the way I wanted him to.