Chapter 29 #2
He can lie. Perhaps he gives the appearance of acceptance, peace-making, submission, because he too is playing a long game, the one those of weaker power must play with these demigods.
Or maybe I’m being optimistic because I don’t want to be abandoned by my father if he succumbs to Renaud’s delicate web.
Agitated, I drink. After the third glass, Juliette intercepts the servant with a curt shake of her head. I see it only because I twist in my seat to wave someone down for more.
Prince Renaud has somehow misplaced the bottle out of my reach.
I sit in my chair, fuming. Never mind them, I’ll find something harder than alcohol once I’m home.
It’s probably a good thing they cut me off, because a wave of dizziness blurs my vision, muscles stiffening as my jaw grinds. I've avoided this for weeks, skirted disaster earlier with Renaud.
No, not here. Please, not here.
My father says nothing. He won't bring attention to my weakness.
I count several long minutes in my head. Around me is laughter and conversation, the clink of dinnerware. No one notices my rigid posture.
Once the attack eases, I lift my strained gaze to my father's pinched expression. He nods at my plate and I take a bite, nausea roiling in my gut, and try to choke it down.
Stupid mistake. I press the back of my hand to my mouth against the urge to let it all come back up. I breathe shallowly for a few minutes until the nausea passes.
“Aerinne?” Renaud says, voice pitched for my ears only. “Are you unwell?”
Damn him. Of course he'd notice.
Breathe. Just breathe.
I close my eyes, then open them.
Nope. Still in purgatory .
I give him a hunted glance. “I'm fine.”
He studies me, then gestures to a servant, who leans down. The Prince murmurs an instruction. Moments later, a clear bowl of broth appears in front of me. Some vegetables and slivers of meat float in the liquid.
“Try this,” Renaud says. “It will be gentler on your stomach. . .especially with all the wine.”
I almost take the bowl and throw its contents in his face in defiance of the command, but a warring instinct conflicts with that desire.
I don't expect kindness from him, or enough caring to observe that I’m unwell.
It perturbs me enough that I pick up the bowl with shaking hands and sip in silence.
Simple kindness is rare enough even among family who love each other.
That he’s capable of it cracks the foundation of everything I think I know.
“Bread?” A roll is the only food on the Prince’s plate. Renaud tears off a tiny piece and raises it to my lips, waits until I’m forced to take the morsel, my lips brushing his fingers. “A small piece.”
There’s a sharp inhale from the general direction I noted Baroun earlier, and I conclude he doesn’t like this servile behavior at all.
That's enough incentive to cooperate.
Renaud feeds me tiny bits of bread like a broken bird he’s nursing back to health and I take a quick glance at Baroun to rub it in his face, but he’s not looking at me. He stares at Renaud, his expression blank.
Over a few pieces of bread?
The Prince meets his gaze, holds it. No more than a few seconds, but long enough. I want to know what that silent malespeak means.
Then the entirety of what’s happened this evening, the ramifications, hits me.
“You kissed me,” I say, still in the privacy of my paternal language. “You almost did more.”
The Prince of Everenne kissed me. Stated he would court me.
Has been sending a fine symphony of subtle cues all evening to cement my status and his mark without the vulgarity of blunt speech, a dance of culture and politics lost on no one—not even those who can’t speak my language.
Though I’m uncertain where the bread fits in, only that it does.
The intimacy of the three of us conversing in Kikuyu sends a stronger message than if the Prince allowed them to understand our conversation.
The son of two Ancients has chosen an infant halfling, unranked, undereducated, often doped out on a concoction of PTSD pills. The Mad Dog of Faronne.
Do you understand, Darkan says, almost gentle, that he will not turn from this choice, now affirmed before the Court?
It is not lightly made, and even if unwisely done, he will still accept the consequences.
A Prince cannot be seen as fickle or he is beheld with contempt.
Your youth has now passed, Aerinne Nyawira, and you must leave Neverland behind.
Renaud is still, then his velvet voice rubs against my bare skin. “I did. I'll kiss you many more times, Nyawira.”
Looking around for anything calming to rest my gaze on, I find no relief.
Baroun won’t look at me. Baba’s expression is in its frozen pleasant mask.
Numair looks beyond my shoulder, face clean of emotion.
Even the trees appear sinister, shadowed and gnarled.
The pressure between my temples increases .
With each carefully calculated gesture of honor and respect, Renaud backs me into a corner. Well. . .the other House Lords aren’t that naive, but they won’t help me even if they see this for what it is.
Renaud fed me from his hand, and though I don't quite know what the significance of that is to Baroun, I can make some wild guesses. I close my eyes for a few seconds.
I understand neither Renaud nor the game he plays, but his intent is painfully clear.
My stomach retains the bread, so I eviscerate a roll into several little pieces and sit them on the small plate next to my bowl, shaken with the need to run since drinking is no longer an option, but that would be the worst thing to do.
A male in rut is bad, a warrior worse, so logic dictates a High Lord to be disastrous.
So then what does one call an Old One spiraling into heat?
A nuclear disaster?
“Is there anything left of a lover after an Old One finishes with them? Anything besides blood and meat?” Because logistics are important.
His contemplative look surprises me. The question should anger him, or at least cause offense.
“How frightened you are,” he murmurs.
I touch my forehead with the back of my hand, feel the sheen of moisture. “What did you think I would be? Tripping over my feet onto your?—”
“Lady Aerinne,” my father says. “Your broth is cooling, Wakīa Maitū.”
Fine. I pick up the broth.
After several minutes of watching me sip, the Prince speaks again. “You told me about when you were sixteen. Tell me about when you were eighteen.”
Baba sighs, and signals a servant for another bottle of wine. I resent that.
“Do you have a kink for even numbers?” I ask, the bleating of hunted rabbits in my mind. The forest around us rustles, and a slight chill comes with the evening air. Golden lamps are lit and cast a warm glow over the white and black stone palace walkways just beyond this clearing.
He strokes a finger down the back of my hand. “It seems balanced.”
Is the caress a taunt? Or does he think it harmless, just a simple touch in front of every House Lord in Everenne ?
I stare into my soup bowl. “Balance would be paying the same gilt to us for our dead warriors that we pay to you, Renaud.”
“You think so?”
I look up. His eyes once again sparkle with shards of amusement. For the nth time, I’m glad no High Court has been called in my lifetime, and the High Lords forbidden true rule while the Prince slept. I don't know if I would have survived the acting.
Actually, scratch that. I wouldn't have survived. The Low Court maintained in the Prince's absence is dangerous enough, and we’re confined only to ruling our Houses and maintaining our Districts.
“Eighteen?” he prompts. “You are so young though, we'll soon run out of years and then I'll have to think of a different way to amuse myself with you. ”
I’m amusing the Prince. It pleases him to extend that amusement.
Don't kill him yet. Not yet. Not in front of Baba, who will be cut down.
You can try, Darkan says, voice searing. It will be more entertaining than watching you make yourself ill with anxiety and compound it by drinking your weight in wine. Because, of course, that makes everything better.
You've never said anything about my drinking before.
You must learn to handle Court games, Aerinne. You must learn to handle the Prince. I am displeased with Nora. She knows better.
Knowing better is no good if your head is in the clouds most of the time.
Any advice?
He pauses. Show strength, but do not overtly challenge him. If you behave like prey, you will be taken down like one but it would also be foolish to force him to punish you.
“You mean draw and quarter,” I mutter.
“Eighteen?” Renaud says again, fooling no one with the even tone, not with the ice crystals forming in his eyes. This is the voice he uses right before he kills.
Those ice crystals prick at my temples, grow in the pit of my stomach. He doesn't like repeating himself.
I force myself to relax. Even numbers mean skipping year twenty-one. A small favor.
I can't lie, I suck at omission, and revealing the events of my twenty-first birthday will earn me a slow execution.
1 ? Mukimo with ugali and grilled meat.