11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Kat
The prince watches me. His body language is deceptively relaxed, the wrist resting on his knee loose, but there is a focus in his gaze that makes me think he is just waiting for the moment I slip so that hand can shoot forward and choke me.
I can hardly think under his study. My attention shifts away from his scandalously bare chest to the half-eaten biscuit on his plate. He didn’t cut it open and butter it. Instead, he took a large bite right into the side of it. I might find it amusing in other circumstances. “My sister—her name is Mary—she has been taking care of me much of my life.”
“What happened to your parents?”
I hesitate. Best to tell the truth whenever I can so I can keep my stories straight. “My mother was lost to the Long Lost Wood when I was a child—”
A glint comes into his black eyes. “You still are a child.”
I’m so going to get myself killed. “When I was a younger child,” I correct, hoping that’s enough to cover my mistake. “My father waited over a year in hopes she would return.” Then he married Agatha. “She finally did return.” And my father nearly went wild when he realized his love had finally returned to him—but he was already remarried. “She wasn’t the same person, and she died not even a week after her return. His heart gave out shortly after that. Mary and I have been on our own ever since.”
There is no sign of pity in his hardened jaw. He eats the rest of his biscuit in one bite. “How old were you?”
“Nine.”
“And how old are you now?”
“Twelve, my lord.”
“So you’ve been an orphan these last three years.”
Those words startle me more than I expect. Three years . Would that I had seen my mother and father only three years ago! Would that I hadn’t been carrying their loss for eleven years instead.
He takes my silence as assent. “And tell me about Mary. She is how much older than you?”
Mary is several years older than me, and I run the calculations in my mind to see how implausible it would be that she would have a twelve-year-old brother. I decide it’s safe to be honest—and I could hardly lie since her age is easily verifiable.
“She is twenty-five.”
“She has been working as a maid for some time, then?”
I don’t like these questions. Why is he prodding? Is he suspicious of me because I am not a skilled servant? Or does he simply wish to build rapport with his attendant? I don’t like it at all. Especially while he’s shirtless and only a foot away.
“Yes, Master,” I answer. “She began working when she was fourteen.”
That was when she began working in earnest as a servant—when my stepfamily entered the mix—but before that, when my parents were still alive, she’d been hired as a companion for me.
“Did any of your family ever go to the Long Lost Wood to look for your mother?” the prince asks, taking a deliberate bite after the question.
My world freezes. Memory flashes across my mind of that dark forest, and how terrifying it was when I first stepped foot into it as a child. Wailing my mother’s name at the top of my lungs. I find my answer with difficulty. “My father looked into it. He was told that no one entered the Long Lost Wood and returned. Mama was gone and dead, they said.”
“But she wasn’t.”
Curse it all! My throat thickens, my heartbeat turning to a painful pulse. I clamp down hard on the rising emotion with gritted teeth and look away.
“I’ve upset you,” declares the prince.
If my job wasn’t on the line, I would have scowled at him.
He pushes away his plate, empty of every last crumb. “This problem of the Long Lost Wood and the border between our peoples is why I am here. Your loss must have been hard on you. And your sister.”
Did he just offer me consolation? A fae of the Nothril Court? I didn’t think such a thing was even remotely possible. I steal a hesitant glance up at him.
He taps one finger on the table. “Did you or your sister ever go after your mother?”
This man is relentless! “Of course not,” I lie, anger snapping back the emotion and making me pull myself under control. “It was too dangerous. You have to be a fool to walk into the Long Lost Wood.” I almost let Caphryl Wood —the fae’s term for the Wood—slip past my lips.
I’m not sure how many graves I can dig myself out of if I keep wagging my stupid tongue. I should take his advice and keep my mouth shut.
The prince regards me in silence for several minutes. Then, he says almost casually: “I’m sorry for what happened to your family.”
Sorry, is he? The comment is more insulting than anything. I sniff. “It is what it is.”
“You seem very accepting of your loss for a child.”
“I’m not a child,” I growl, because it seems like the sort of thing a twelve-year-old boy would say. And because I don’t like it that he keeps referring to me as a child.
He nods, acquiescing. “I forgot. You are a grown man.”
He says it with such a straight face that if I actually were twelve years old, I would have missed the gleam of amusement in his eye. He has the gall to press me about my family’s losses and then mock me a moment later?
“I am a youth,” I correct stubbornly, offended on behalf of the lad I’m pretending to be. If I let the silence linger, he will come up with more painful questions to ask. I’ve got to flip the dynamic. There is a reason I came to work for him. I need information. It’s time to play the curious young boy. “What’s it like living in Faerieland?”
His brow twitches. “It’s never boring.”
“Why? Because there’s always war and such in Faerieland? I hear there are lots of wars.” I do my best to sound ignorant and boyish.
“Faerieland is very vast,” he says with a sigh. “I’m sure there are many parts of Faerieland that are always at war. My side of Faerieland, however, doesn’t often have outright war. Instead, there is usually the looming threat of it.”
I find it curious that he indulges my questions. It is not what I expected from someone who previously refused to have humans even attend him. “Is it exciting? The threat of war?”
He trails his finger on the edge of his teacup, and I tense as he regards me. “For some, I imagine.”
“But not you?”
“I do not find it particularly enjoyable, no. I hear you humans love war so much you can hardly restrain yourselves.”
“I do love war,” I say, hoping that’s the sort of thing a young boy would say. “I hope Harbright attacks someone soon so I can go to war.”
To my shock, the prince snorts, his mouth twisting into a surprised smirk. “Do you, now?”
What’s so funny? I cross my arms over my chest and scowl.
“What draws you to the idea of battle?” the prince asks, leaning forward slightly. He pulls his smirk away, but the shadow of it remains. Mocking me with his innocuous question.
“I want to fight.”
“For what?” he presses.
For justice. For hope. For the chance the future can be brighter than the past.
I scratch the back of my neck. “I don’t know. Anything.”
“Not everything is worth fighting for.”
“I would fight for my sister,” I say, lest he think too little of Nat.
He nods slowly. “So would I.” That glint returns to his irises. “We men have to protect our sisters.”
“You have a sister?” I ask, even though I know of the Nothril princesses.
“Three.”
“And you would go to battle for them?”
“I already have,” he replies, getting to his feet and shrugging. “I’m sure I’ll do it again.”
I scramble up after him. Apparently, our conversation is over—which is both relieving and frustrating. I was just racking my brain over how to prod for information on the Star City, and now I’ve lost my chance. How am I to know when I’ll get another?
“May I take your dishes, Master?” I ask as the prince strides past me toward the clothes laid out on the freshly made bed, taking his shirtless self mercifully out of my vision.
“Please.”
I’m almost out of the door, his breakfast tray gripped tightly in my hands, when his voice arrests my movements.
“Tell Edvear to inquire after one of the city’s tailors,” he says with just enough wryness in his tone that I glance back at him. “Apparently I have need of one.”
I flush. “Yes, my lord.”
That night, my feet drag with exhaustion as I carry the prince’s empty supper dishes from his study to the kitchen. I nearly drop the dishes at the sight of a familiar smile beaming at me.
“Look at you—so grown up in your uniform and working hard,” Mary teases with a rare smile.
I’m so relieved to see her I could laugh. Catching myself, I glare at her instead while Charity Finch chuckles and the other servants look on in amusement.
“I had to come visit and see how you were getting along at your first job. I’m told you nearly got dismissed on your first day.”
Mrs. Banks, who stands severely in one corner, arches a brow as the other servants laugh. My cheeks burn with embarrassment. “I didn’t spill the milk on purpose.”
She laughs and ruffles my hair.
“You should have come work for us instead of the boy,” says Mrs. Banks. “We’d pay you more than what you make at Vandermore Manor.”
“Tempting,” says Mary with a wink.
She’s so at ease here, among these people. The men in the room all seem to lean a little closer to her sparkle. I blink to clear my vision. I’m so used to Mary in the context of home. She is the bossy but loving sister-friend whose job is to worry about the things I neglect to. Here, however? Now I can see her infectious energy and the shine in her perfectly tidy red hair. Why has she never married? Why has she stayed at our estate, even after she was demoted from my companion to my servant?
Me.
I set the dishes down with a clatter.
“Mrs. Banks, could I steal him for a few moments?” asks Mary. “The evening sunshine is so lovely, and I hate to let it go to waste.”
“Just so long as he’s finished his duties.”
All eyes turn to me. I nod quickly. “Master dismissed me after he ate, saying he had business to attend to in his study.”
“Very well then.”
Mary and I step out of the darkness of the kitchen into the glow of late evening. From this side of the estate, the manicured walking paths among the hedges are visible, but so is the forested edge of the creek and the lush field where Missy grazes in her corral and chickens scratch and peck.
“Look casual,” Mary orders, her smile turning tense. “I bet they’re going to watch us through the window.”
I take up toeing a pebble in the grass, trying to look like the distracted schoolboy. She crosses her arms and eyes me—the perfect older sister.
“How’s it going?”
“The fae is Prince Rahk of the Nothril Court.”
Mary’s face turns white. She may not know the prince by name, but she’s heard my tales of the horrors of the Nothril Court. She hides her shock in a few blinks. “Do we need to get you out?”
“Is there some other place I can work?”
She shakes her head. “Not without a recommendation from this situation. Which, it sounds like, you haven’t earned yet—even if you could on such short employment.”
“I promise I’m trying! There’s just a lot I didn’t know!”
She lets out a long sigh. “I know. I was afraid of that, but I didn’t have time to teach you everything. Is he very hard on you?”
I think of the intense power that follows his presence, the way he looks at me as if he knows all my secrets. And yet . . . “He has not been hard on me.” In fact, he should be much harder on me.
“That’s a relief.”
“How have things been back at home? Is it too much to ask if they bought Bartholomew back?”
She gives me a sympathetic glance. “I’m afraid not. Things have not been well at the manor, actually. Your stepmother has been in quite a rage. Lord Boreham was furious too, and one of the girls overheard him yelling to your stepmother about how he’s been putting up with you for this long and, ‘this is what I get? ’ She was pleading with him to not revoke his offer of marriage, but he stormed out in a fury.”
“So . . . I might be free of him?”
“I wouldn’t be quite so optimistic at this point.”
“Did they give you trouble?” I wince.
“Oh, of course they did. I told them you’d been cooking up some scheme to keep your money and not get married, but that you refused to tell me any of it and I was surprised with the rest of them when your room turned up empty. In fact, I was the one who came running down saying you were gone. I think they believed most of it and moved their wrath on to other things.”
The sun dips below the horizon, and the evening glow fades.
“I need to go,” Mary says, glancing back toward the kitchen. “I hid your box of ollea and your raid essentials behind the outhouse. Send word if you need help. I’ll drop everything and come at once.”
I refrain from hugging her. I wish I could repay all that she has done for me. “You are too good to me. I promise to be careful. You must also promise me that you will get out of my stepmother’s house if they are cruel to you.”
“Don’t you worry about me.” She pats my head, even though we’re the same height.
Then it’s goodbye, and I’m left to head back inside by myself.
Right as I’m about to open the door, a tall silhouette in my periphery catches my attention. My head swivels just in time to see the prince stride casually toward the stream, staying in the shadows of the trees.
I stand there for a heartbeat, debating with myself, and then let go of the door handle and creep along the wall, trying to get a better glimpse of what on earth the prince is doing at this hour. An innocent evening walk? Somehow, I don’t think so.
I angle my body until I find a good view of the prince. His back is to me, so he doesn’t see me, and he’s far enough away that he cannot catch my scent. Why has he stopped walking? Is he—
Suddenly, it’s as though two great shadows emerge from behind him—massive and towering. They spread wide, and I’m still puzzling over what I see when the prince leaps into the air, and the shadows begin beating, carrying him into the night sky.
Wings.
My mouth falls open and I stand as though I’ve grown roots, watching until the darkness swallows him whole. Even when I was at the Nothril Court, he didn’t have wings! Does he always glamour them away?
He’s heading toward Caphryl Wood.
Why is he here, in the human world?
Did he come to hunt the slave girl I freed? She’s long gone by now. He won’t find her by searching along Caphryl Wood.
Or is he here for another reason?
I wish I dared follow him. But no, I need to stay alive. I have my raids to accomplish. How I will manage those without Bartholomew . . . I have no idea. But I’ll figure something out.
Until then, I intend to figure out this prince.