"Did you think I was joking?" Red Son asked. "Its not required, nothing in courting is truly required. Technically not even consent if you're powerful enough, but my family has always found those sorts repugnant." Love was very important in the Demon Bull Family and while political marriage wasn't necessarily a banned concept, it wasn't preferred. So anything worse than that was immediately thrown off a cliff. "That's why I burned down the homes of those attempts."

"But a proper courtnapping usually comes later on and its more like...an extremely involved proposal," he said. "You want the target to want to be there and that escape attempts are more akin to a test of commitment over a sincere attempt. If you can't tempt the target to want to stay, you're doing it wrong. Especially when that means keeping them in that case, they're weak and not even resourceful."

He paused at that question. "Well, I didn't say that," he said, looking down at the peonies, a thumb tracing delicately over a petal."