Daughter of the Disgraced King Read Online Free

taken some time to come to this realization, too. More than three
days, certainly. Shouldn’t she have as much time as Sav had taken?
    Sav. She’d allowed herself to daydream about him, a little.
A girl had to dream about something and Sav was what most girls would dream
about—tall, handsome, smart, kind, an actual prince, even. Why shouldn’t she
dream about him? But she’d never allowed the dreams to go further than a secret
kiss. She’d never actually expected him to say he loved her, let alone want to
marry her. Partly because it simply hadn’t seemed possible. Only now, apparently,
it was possible after all. If she was willing to give up her other dreams,
anyway. Daydreams aside, did she love Sav? Really? As more than a friend? Maybe.
She felt closer to him than just about anyone else, even her parents. And when
she’d kissed him . . . .
    That kiss. True, she didn’t have a lot to compare it to.
Perion and Cergio had both found opportunities to get her alone for a kiss on
her seventeenth birthday, as was customary for a girl reaching marriageable
age. Not Sav, though. If only he had, maybe she wouldn’t be so confused right
now. Perion’s kiss had been sort of a near-miss peck, which she nevertheless
found to be damp and a little strange. Cergio had more practice—well, of course
he had. His kiss wasn’t damp or strange. In fact, Cergio’s kiss had been rather
nice, but it was nothing at all like Sav’s, either. There’d been no tingles, no
fire with Cergio. She hadn’t been breathless or confused. She hadn’t wanted to
cling to him and kiss him again, over and over. No, there was definitely
something very special about kissing Sav. And she very much wanted to keep
doing it.
    She was too restless to stay in bed. She got up and paced
back and forth across the room, instead. It wasn’t reasonable to expect her to
make a decision like this—a decision that overturned everything she’d ever
expected of her life—in only three days. It wasn’t fair. Her mother had taught
her two things, above all. One was to never make a big decision on an empty
stomach or without sleeping on it. The sleeping on it part was proving harder
than Ailsa expected. The other was to always look carefully at both sides
before making a choice.
    She’d already been musing over the plus side. What about the
other side? Well, there was the king. Having King Ewart as a father-in-law was
a pretty big negative. Just the thought made her shudder. She couldn’t imagine
the king would be too pleased to have her as a daughter-in-law, either. Though
he tried, Sav was already constrained by his father’s edicts in what he could
do to make things better in Far Terra. Would marrying her make that even harder
for him? Definitely something she should talk over with Sav before making a
decision.
    Then there was her year of study in the south. That had
always been her plan. Ailsa’s great secret fear was that she wouldn’t have
significant magic, or that it would be something useless to Far Terra. Her
great hope was that she had some talent that could actually help in taming the
desert wilderness, like Aunt Izbel’s water magic. If she did, and she didn’t
develop that talent, she’d regret that for the rest of her life. She stopped
her pacing. Regret. That was the key. If she never found out what she was
capable of, she’d always wonder, always regret the missed opportunity.
    If Sav really loved her . . . if she loved him . . . then a
year wouldn’t matter. She was only seventeen and he wasn’t even nineteen yet. There
was no reason not to wait. Give both of them time to be sure. Having made a
decision—even if it was only to wait before making a decision—Ailsa’s
restlessness drained away. She crawled back into bed and closed her eyes. And,
as if she wasn’t already confused enough, she dreamed about kissing Sav.
     
     

Chapter 3: Farewells

     Ailsa allowed Pearl to follow Sav’s lanky black onto the
path that wound up into