A Brother's Price

divan, gave a nonchalant. “Hoy.” Lylia, sideways in the leather armchair with her booted feet on the antique cherry end table, feigned a look of surprise. Plainly, they had been waiting for her. joining sides to do gory battle, but over what?
    “Well?” Ren pushed Lylia’s feet off of the end table.
    “Well, what?” Lylia put on her doe-eyed innocent look, perfected and much abused over the years. It worked well with people outside the family, but Ren had witnessed too many of Lylia’s maneuverings to believe it.
    “What are you two here for?” Ren asked.
    Odelia smirked at Lylia. “Told you she would know.”
    Lylia stuck out her tongue at Odelia, then addressed Ren levelly. “What are you doing about Trini and Halley?”
    “Trini?” Ren could understand their worrying about Halley’s prolonged absence, but they’d worked alongside Trini that very morning. “What’s wrong with Trini?”
    “She’s taken a tray in her rooms every meal since Jerin arrived,” Lylia groused. “She’s refusing to meet him. She’s still saying it’s too soon to get married.”
    Ren jerked in surprise at the word “married.” She hadn’t talked to her sisters about a possible marriage in hopes of staving off any negative reactions before they had a chance to meet Jerin personally. Apparently Lylia, Odelia, and, unfortunately, Trini all knew why the Whistlers had been invited to the palace.
    “Completely pigheaded.” Odelia added, hopefully meaning Trini. Odelia lay back on the divan, tossing the ball upward until it nearly touched the ceiling and catching it when it dropped.
    “This is a perfect opportunity, and she’s letting it slip away.” Lylia launched herself out of her seat to rove through Ren’s study with restless energy. “Every nobleman available for us to marry has been raised like a vacuous songbird. Other than ignoring traditions and marrying Cullen, quite frankly, I don’t see another alternative on the market.”
    “ ‘Vacuous.’ Is that really a word?” Odelia asked as the ball rose again in another orbit.
    Ren settled herself on the edge of her desk, trying to smother a smile. Obviously both of them were for marrying Jerin—but then, she had figured they would be. “We can’t marry Cullen.”
    “There’s precedent for royal cousins marrying,” Lylia stated firmly.
    Ren shook her head. “The parents weren’t full siblings in those cases. The bloodlines are too close with us and Cullen. I checked it one time—his mother was full sister to Father.”
    Odelia caught the ball and sat up in one smooth motion. “You two are serious! Cullen? Holy Mothers, you’re both as bad as Trini.”
    “What’s wrong with Cullen?” Lylia asked, jerking up her chin.
    “Besides being more like our brother than our cousin?” Odelia scoffed. Then, apparently realizing that she about to fall into full warfare with Lylia, she threw up her hands. “Forget I said anything. We’re here to talk about Jerin and Trini and Halley.”
    Lylia swallowed her attack, and nodded. “Trini can’t be allowed to get away with this. It would be one thing if she met Jerin and found fault with him, but she’s being completely irrational. We need to get married. She has to be reasonable.”
    Odelia snorted. “Trini is never going to be reasonable when the subject is men.”
    “What Keifer did to her couldn’t have been that bad!” Lylia snapped, then glanced to them, uncertain. “Could it?”
    This is going to hurt a little, right, Keifer? Oh, no, Ren,
    it’s going to hurt a lot ! Ren flinched at the memory. At the time she believed the pain had been unavoidable. Since then, she had grown sure that Keifer had enjoyed inflicting much more pain than necessary.
    “Oh, don’t do that!” Lylia snapped at their carefully blanked faces. “Since I was ten. every time I ask about this, everyone gets quiet and then they change the subject. I’m an adult now! I’m a royal princess of the realm. I have a right and a duty to know what happened.”
    Ren sighed. Lylia was right. “You might not remember, but Keifer was very beautiful. Eldest and the others fell in love with his beauty, and didn’t care that he wasn’t very intelligent.”
    “I’ve seen dogs smarter than him,” Odelia muttered, then added wistfully, “But he was beautiful.”
    “Trini was only thirteen,” Ren continued. “She wasn’t interested in men yet, and I think she saw him more clearly than the rest of us. She saw that he was