Chapter 22
22
A few days later, there was a knock on the door. I jumped up to open it. Ayo was supposed to be back with tea and pastries from the kitchen, and I was starving.
But it wasn’t Ayo—it was Lucas.
I jumped back in surprise.
“Hey,” Lucas said. He looked grim. “May I come in?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, grimacing. I wasn’t sure what to feel about seeing him—elated? Or wary? Both?
He stepped in, carrying a huge rainbow bouquet of native Biringan wildflowers. “For you,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, still a bit stunned to see him here as I took the bouquet. I was almost sure he never wanted to talk to me again after giving me the cold shoulder all week.
He shuffled his feet. “They’re a little late, to be honest, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry... I should have paid you a call, after.”
I froze, still holding the flowers. “After?” I whispered.
“Well, you can’t just kiss the princess without a proper courtship, can you?” he grumbled. “I don’t have to take Pagkahari at Paggalang to know that.” He took a seat on the nearest armchair and immediately put his feet up on the table, like he belonged there. To be honest, I kind of liked that he felt so at home in my rooms.
I peeked at him over the iridescent blooms. “Is that what this is? You’re courting me?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but oh, my heart.
He looked up at me and grinned. “Do you want me to?”
Oh, we’re playing this game, are we?
“Hmm.” I put my hand on my chin like I had to think about it. “I don’t know, I mean, it has been almost a week. One could say it’s very ungentlemanly,” I said as I laid the flowers down on the nearest side table.
Lucas dropped to one knee and put his hands together. “My princess and future queen of the Court of Sirena and all the lands of Biringan, I beg of you, please forgive my foolishness.”
“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
“Not when you’ve wronged the future queen.”
“You make an excellent point.” I held out my hand so he could kiss my ring, something I’d secretly wanted to do ever since I saw the Robin Hood movie with the fox as a kid.
He held the ends of my fingers, and brought his lips slowly to my hand, letting his lips graze the skin, sending shocks of electricity all over my body.
In answer, I slowly caressed his cheek with my hand, feeling the rough stubble on his jaw. That was it; he pulled me down so that I was practically straddling him.
“You were too far away,” he whispered, pushing my hair out of my face.
“Where have you been all week?” I said softly.
“Waiting” was the reply.
I wondered what that meant, if the betrothal with Amador was real, if it had been keeping him away, or if there were other reasons. But right then, there was no more time for thinking, because this time, he was the one who kissed me. He rolled us over so that I was underneath him, and then he leaned down. “May I?”
“Kiss me, you fool,” I murmured.
When he did, I closed my eyes and saw fireworks and felt it all over, too, as his hands cupped my face and under my back, and I did the same, running my hands all over him. I lifted his shirt and touched the muscles on his stomach, making him shiver.
He kissed my neck again, and lower, and who knew how far we would have gone if Ayo hadn’t walked in right then, carrying a tray.
“Oh! Excuse me!” The old butler jumped. “I didn’t realize you had company, Your Highness. Or else I would have...”
Lucas hurriedly rolled away, and both of us sat up, disheveled and red-faced. But somehow, I wasn’t embarrassed. I was happy. “Ayo, this is—”
“I know Sir Lucas,” Ayo said primly. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“I am courting the princess,” Lucas explained, motioning to the flowers on the table.
“Ah, I see.” Ayo picked them up. “I’m going to get a vase for these,” he said, giving Lucas a lingering once-over. “By protocol, sir, if I may. You should ask the princess’s guardian for permission before a formal courtship.”
“I did,” Lucas said.
“You did?” I gasped.
“I sent a note to Elias and just heard back a few moments ago,” he said with a smug smile.
So that was what he was waiting for, I realized. He wasn’t ignoring me—he was following royal protocol. He had been raised in Biringan, and he knew its rules even if I didn’t. Plus, the guards probably alerted Elias to what they had seen in the catacombs.
“Do you need anything else, Your Highness?” Ayo inquired.
“No, thank you,” I told him. He made his escape. We were probably making him uncomfortable, since Lucas draped his arm around me once it was clear he had Elias’s permission.
I didn’t ask Lucas about Amador. If he had Elias’s permission to court me, then Amador was probably lying about the betrothal. She would do anything to keep him by her side. And I didn’t want to spend any of our time together talking about her.
Lucas rebuttoned his shirt while I smoothed my hair.
“Leave it,” he said. “It looks good like that. You never wear it down.”
“Okay,” I said, and wrapped my ponytail holder around my wrist instead.
“Um, I have something else to tell you,” Lucas said. “The page who was murdered, Marikit Baluyot.”
“What about her?”
“I asked our kitchen staff to ask around the palace staff—you know, they know more about what’s going on in the courts than anyone high up.”
“For sure.”
“She was the one who found your dad.”
I looked up at him sharply. “What?” In my shock I had lost my manners.
“The king had called for her to pick up a note.”
The letter my father was writing, he’d called for a page to deliver it. Of course, it never reached its recipient, whoever it was. Temo was right. It’s time to tell her the truth.
Lucas continued. “And she found him dead.”
“Do you think that... if the king was killed... whoever killed him killed her, too?”
He nodded. “I’m pretty sure they killed my father, too, you know,” he admitted. “That’s why I was looking into all this in the first place.”
I did an actual double take. “Your father? I thought he was ill.”
“That’s what everyone thought. That his illness caused his death. But...”
“But?”
“It happened a year ago, while I was away at Sigbin. When I came back to Sirena, he was dead. I just barely made it to the funeral.” He cleared his throat. “But I wanted to know how he died, and I discovered that he wasn’t in his room at all. He was found dead in the palace, near the king’s chambers.”
Near the king’s chambers. Lucas’s father worked for the Court of Sirena, and he was murdered there? Lucas added: “I did a lot of digging through documents recording the very brief investigation, which ended with the conclusion that he’d suffered a sudden illness. But I discovered one intriguing detail.”
I already knew what he was going to say before he said it: “There was a large black beetle in his mouth.”