A Brother's Price

He was afraid, though, of his sisters’ fury, and the cold disapproval he would have to live with until he married well, proving he wasn’t ruined by the incident. His life would be bearable only by claiming the part of wronged innocence.
    Still, it galled to leave the dangerous word floating there, uncountered. “I’m still a virgin, technically. In the end, when I said that going farther would ruin me, she let me go off to bed alone.”
    The level of anger in the room lessened slightly. He rocked slightly in his chair, chiding himself for being a coward. Should he tell them how he surrendered to the seduction, enjoyed giving pleasure to the princess, and received ecstasy beyond description? Who was the true hussy in this family?
    “Do you think,” Summer said quietly into the stunned silence, “he did enough to catch any diseases she might have?”
    “She’s a princess!” Jerin cried.
    “She’s a rapist,” Eldest snapped.
    “She didn’t rape me. She didn’t try to use any crib drugs on me. I’m still a virgin.”
    “She took you. Maybe not completely, but still she took you against your will.”
    Was it rape? He didn’t know. Certainly if she had let him go when he first asked, he would have fled back to his bed, remaining chaste in his lips, his hands, and his memories. Now only parts of him were virgin. He wavered in the belief of his virginity. Maybe being a virgin was like planting a garden—you could turn the earth and rake down the soil all you wanted, but until you pushed a seed into the dirt, you hadn’t created a garden. Or was being a virgin like a frosted cake, where once someone stole a slice, you couldn’t proudly serve it to visitors?
    He realized that while he debated his virginity, his sisters were discussing the issue of diseases. It would be too soon, they had decided, to tell if he had caught something. They would take him to a doctor, but one far away, so his reputation would not suffer.
    He remembered with sudden, sickening clarity how experienced Princess Ren had seemed, how sure her touch, how skilled her kisses. If she could have any man that she wanted, then what was to say that she hadn’t already taken them all? What was to say she wasn’t diseased? Had they been intimate enough for him to catch something from her? God, they could barely have been more intimate!
    If he was diseased, who would take him as husband?
    The answer was obvious. The Brindles would take him.
    The thought made him cover his eyes and weep.
    Eldest pulled him into a hug, murmuring, “Hush, honey, hush,” as the rest of the family fled or were shooed away.
    “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Jerin sobbed.
    “We don’t blame you, honey,” Eldest murmured.
    “I could have fought.”
    “She’s a princess. All her life people have obeyed her commands. You’re a boy. All your life you have listened to others. It was up to her to stop at any no you gave, even if it was whispered.”
    “Please don’t hate me, but I didn’t say no. I protested some, but I didn’t say no, not until the very end, and she listened to it.” He could not look at Eldest when he admitted, in a whisper, “I liked what we did, only I was afraid to do more.”
    When silence was the only answer, he peeped at her. Eldest gazed unseeing across the room. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were sad. “I don’t hate you. Truly, it is easier to know you gave in to passion. It hurt to think you had been pinned and taken against your will in our very kitchen. I’m still angry with her. Making advances on you is akin to dangling candy before a child.”
    “I’m not a child. In a few months, I’m going to be a married man.”
    “That’s not what I meant. Jerin, have you not noticed how we are with Doric compared to Heria? Boys are cuddled by everyone from the day they are born. Heria, we discipline sternly. We’ve taught her how to protect what belongs to us. Doric would think nothing of a stranger wanting to cuddle with him. Heria would look for knives.”
     
    Sell one, swap the other.
    Jerin’s last words rolled about in Ren’s head during the ride to Heron Landing. Strange how two days could change one’s perspective. She had presided over countless marriage cases—all those bitter battles over money and men as if one were interchangeable with the other. Every season for the last six years, she had attended the society functions designed to bring prospective wives and the sisters of unmarried brothers