Chapter 2

A smile did creep in then as she thought about the Exploration. Kit couldn’t help herself, and she imagined her blue eyes were sparkling, though she couldn’t see them reflected in the deep pools of green that looked back at her. So far, her mother must not have considered that during the Exploration she was free to be with whatever man she chose. If Rona had, then Eli would’ve likely been sent away long ago, along with several other more fetching members of Kit’s guard, the ones her mother often chastised her about. “Try not to stare,” she’d say in her harsh voice. None of the others mattered as much as this one, though, and Kit was fairly certain her mother had deduced that fact.

“Do you think…?” Kit stopped herself, still too unsure to even prompt the question. How could she ask him, her friend since childhood, if he thought it would ruin their friendship if she sought him out during her Exploration?

“What I think is… you should get through your Proem, and then you should look at the world around you in a new light.”

She was certain he understood exactly what she was about to ask, and his answer was not one that left her with a beam of hope. By law, he would not be able to refuse her if she was to proposition him during her Exploration. She was a noblewoman, a member of the court, and outranked all other females in the realm save her mother. Yet, she would never pressure him. In the back of her mind, she’d been holding on to the slim chance that he might somehow be the one, that her Choosing ceremony might be manipulated, or that fate might intervene somehow on their behalf, but she knew the likelihood of that happening, of the noblewomen in a province selecting a former stable boy who had spent little time amongst his people and happened to be the son of a disgraced noblewoman, was almost as impossible as the chances she would somehow escape the spindly fingers of Physician Mikali.

Look at the world in a new light, he’d said. “You’re right, of course.” Her smile was forced, and the one she got in return was sympathetic. It riled her up a bit on the inside to know that he was pitying her, though she wasn’t certain if it was the ceremony that had caused such an expression to slip into place on his handsome face or if it was the fact that he was aware of her feelings for him--and they were unrequited.

“Kit,” Eli said, tipping his head to the side, causing her cheeks to pink as she imagined he would say something to further disconcert her. “Just remember, the ceremony is to prevent someone from being your first. It’s not as if Mikali’s actions will have any sort of bearing on anything else that happens to you. The ceremony doesn’t define you. It only prevents you from giving undue affection to someone who has not earned it. It’s completely medical in nature and nothing more.”

It wasn’t what she had been expecting to hear, so it took her a moment to formulate a response. She brushed her hair back again, even though it hadn’t moved since the last time. “Do you honestly think it isn’t something I should be so concerned about?”

“Not at all,” he said, and even though she could hear that tone in his voice, the one she knew presented itself whenever he was trying to make light of a situation despite his true feelings, in this instance, she decided perhaps it would behoove her to buy into it. “It’s nothing really. It will be over in a few moments. And even though the court will be there, the sheets will prevent anyone from actually seeing anything.”

She knew all of this. Her older cousins, Avinia and Isla, had both been through the ceremony before. Now, since they served as her ladies-in-waiting, they had given her every detail of what to expect, which might be part of the reason why she was dreading it so. Avinia, who was eight years her senior, had already been through her Choosing. Her ceremony had not been nearly as elaborate as Kit’s would be, seeing as though Avinia was only a duchess and not a princess, Kit was still grateful to have someone so close to her already transitioned and married. Isla, who would turn twenty-one in the spring, had just ended her Exploration, and was in the weeks of Respite necessary before her own Choosing would commence during the summertime. Kit vowed to pay better attention this time so that she could learn firsthand what the process was like. Isla would choose only from ten men selected by the royal court, not a Representative from all forty-two provinces as Kit would, but it would still be similar to Kit’s own Choosing. It all seemed so overwhelming to her now. She stood on a precipice with her future spread out before her in all the vibrant shades of a rolling landscape with hills and valleys and dark chasms below, and nothing was clearly in focus--but one wrong move would result in a long fall.

Eli’s comments reminded her that Avinia had said her Proem had hurt quite a bit, that the stretching and ripping had caused some bleeding at the time and discomfort for days. That made Kit’s stomach tighten again, despite his hopefulness. Isla, on the other hand, had said it hadn’t hurt at all, that she’d hardly noticed anything, and that it hadn’t been until her Exploration, when she’d taken to the son of a visiting nobleman, just a few days past her Clearing, the week that followed the Proem, that the true pain had struck. Avinia opined that perhaps this was because Mikali was growing old and was no longer able to fulfill the requirements of the procedure as he had been for everyone else he’d serviced, dating back to when her grandmother was a girl of eighteen, but Kit feared it would be her luck that the physician would find some sort of second wind and that she’d be struck with the same pain and agitation as her oldest cousin, Avinia. Despite the fact that she was reminded time and again the Proem was more of a medical procedure than any sort of pleasuring, the entire ceremony was a weight on her worried mind.

Another question lingered on the tip of her tongue, one she had longed to ask Eli even before the approaching Exploration came into focus a few months ago, but she stopped herself, not sure if it was her business to ask. She readjusted, smoothing her gown down over her legs again. It wasn’t that she didn’t know if it was appropriate or not. She was quite certain it wasn’t, and yet, when she turned back to look at him, the question was there nonetheless. “You’ve… that is to say… a gentleman of your stature and good looks, I’m sure you’ve been called upon to pleasure a woman from time to time, haven’t you?”

The heat rose in her cheeks and was matched by the crimson she noted slowly climbing his neck. Perhaps she had overstepped, but then, he of all people would be used to that from her. “Kit,” he said, shaking his head slightly and running a hand through his hair. “Are you certain you want to ask that question?”