just fall | ✓

9.

Aquia just about started screaming when I told her that night what Alexander and I had discussed in the garden. Aquia and Clara had snuck to my room after dinner to discuss Aquia's date with Mason (they made strawberry tarts in the kitchen and then went horseback riding), and then Clara had asked me what Alexander and I had been talking about in the gardens. They both looked happy rather than scandalized.

"I didn't realize he'd taken you there," Clara said. "That's his place."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She grinned. "My brothers and I each have our own little houses hidden around the grounds. Since they haven't taken us out of the palace since we were young, they had houses constructed for us whenever we wanted to get away for a little while. Mason and I have used ours often, but I don't think that Alexander has used his since he was fifteen or sixteen. He's hasn't been away long enough to go there."

Aquia was grinning. "He's so into you!"

I rolled my eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."

"She isn't," Clara said, "Alexander has never taken even Mason and I there. No one but he knows where it is. My parents forgot the location years ago. Even I'm surprised that he took you there."

Well. That certainly settled things.

I couldn't even argue; if Clara was saying that she had never been, then perhaps Aquia was right. "I'm surprised that you two aren't going on about what's proper and all of that," I said.

"Eh," Aquia waved it off. "I don't care about all of that."

"Proper isn't exactly the premise of this competition," Clara added. "If any of this were proper, then the competition wouldn't exist."

Another fair point. I sighed. "This is not the reaction I was prepared for."

"You should be glad," Aquia said. "Would you prefer us to try talking you out of it? We could give it a shot."

"No, no. That's fine." I let out a nervous laugh. "I was just expecting more pushback."

Aquia shrugged. "I'm happy for you. You deserve some happiness, you know?"

"But what will your parents say?" This was directed towards Clara. "What about the other Selected?"

"Since when do you care about them?" Aquia snorted. "That should be like, the least of your concerns. I'm sure that you've been to hell and back; what are a few bitches in ball gowns going to try that you can't handle?"

Clara nodded, her expression firm and kind. "My parents and I want what's best for you and for my brother. If this is it, and if it will make you both happy, then I fully support it." She added, almost as an afterthought, "and really, there isn't much that anyone can do. You and Alexander are, for the most part, adults. You can choose your own destinies."

They made fair points; what could the other Selected do that I couldn't handle? Slander me in the tabloids? I'd already dealt with that without their help. The press hadn't needed anyone's assistance with slandering me. Bitching about me to the princes was pointless; I had plenty of faith in their judgement, and besides, they both made it very clear that they thought highly of me. Theirs was not the reaction I had expected, but it was the reaction that I had unknowingly hoped for. 

I wondered why I was trying so hard to find some reason not to go, and I realized that maybe I was afraid that I'd be the last girl that I had pitied, standing alone on the stage while Mason proposed to the girl he'd fallen in love with and listening to Alexander declare his decision not to take a wife, while I was hopelessly wishing that the elder prince had been declaring his decision to choose me.