6. Eradin #2
“The third performance ring needs raking,” he said. “Get to it.”
I grabbed equipment and hurried in that direction.
An hour later, I hauled two full water buckets through the stables to the rinse station. The buckets were heavy. My arms ached, and I hummed my mother’s tune under my breath for distraction.
I’d timed my route to avoid the main walkways, but a child darted in front of me. I stumbled.
One bucket slipped from my hand and fell to the floor, toppling over. Water splashed across the flagstones, spreading in a dark stain toward where an elite and an aide were exiting the arena.
Prince Fenian stopped, his left boot a hand's breadth from the water.
In the arena beyond, Aristus swung his head toward me, his nostrils flaring.
The dragon lunged in this direction. Fenian lifted his hand and spoke in High Aurian.
The sound slid under my skin the way a draft sneaks beneath a rickety door.
Aristus halted, his wings half-spread, his body coiled.
His pupils tracked my hands the way a bonewailer locks on a blood-scent. The fine lines across my palms burned.
This wasn’t aggression. He’d scented the wild dragon on me, though I wasn’t sure how he could when I’d bathed and washed my hands so many times they were chapped from the soap.
A groom grabbed Aristus’s harness and tried to redirect the beast.
“Sire,” he called out. “Shall I take him somewhere cool?”
Aristus leaned into the man’s grip, still straining toward me, tasting the air with the focus of a creature who’d found the day’s only interesting thing.
Fenian’s gray eyes dropped to my hand, still white-knuckled around the remaining bucket handle, catching the fine lines on my skin.
I stepped to the side. “Apologies, Sire.”
Fenian said nothing.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a small crease forming between his brows. He really was pretty, and I was well aware that I should not be noticing such a thing.
I bent to retrieve the fallen bucket, my face hot. Don’t look at him. If I looked up and met his gaze, I’d say something I couldn’t take back. Straightening, I kept my eyes on the flagstones.
“Look at me.” The prince kept his voice low. A request, not a command.
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“You handle water buckets the way some do weapons.” His voice came cool, faintly amused. “Those without training, that is.”
My teeth clenched. Flames crawled up my neck.
Just like always, commons made mistakes and elites chastised, even if they’d caused the problem.
I’d just oiled the instruments of his dragon’s torture, and he was lecturing me about aim.
I should scurry away like I was supposed to but couldn’t quite make my body move. Instead, I lifted my head, not meeting his eyes, though close enough some might consider the gesture cocky.
“Weapons don’t slosh, Sire,” I said.
His aide, Meckard, made a strangled sound.
I’d back-sassed the crown prince in front of a witness. My heartbeat thundered in my throat while I waited for the blow that had to be coming.
Fenian’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Gone before I could name it.
“No,” he said quietly. “They don’t.”
The wisest version of me would bow and flee. She appeared to have drowned in the water left in the bucket.
“If it helps, Sire, most of it missed you.”
“Most of it.” He glanced at the dark stain still reaching for his boot. “You’ll want to work on your aim.”
“I’ll try harder next time, Your Highness.”
Meckard swayed like a man watching an execution put itself together.
The prince’s mouth curved. Real this time, though brief, crooked, and gone almost before I saw it.
“Do,” he said. “I’ll wear my other boots next time.”
He said it like a small conspiracy. I should not be holding his words close.
I held them anyway.
Behind him, Aristus rumbled and pulled against the groom’s hold. At least the dragon stared at me honestly. His rider was pretending, badly, that he’d already lost interest.
“You work here in the stables, not just with the hatchlings,” Prince Fenian, or Fen to people who’d been granted leave to call him that, said.
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
I lifted my head, though I still didn’t meet his eyes. “Is it, Sire?”
“That you’re still standing after nearly spilling water on the crown prince’s boots? Yes.”
He strode past me before I could respond, but I caught the moment his pace slowed.
I’d bet anything he’d been about to say something else and caught himself.
Then he was gone, Meckard scurrying after him, still glancing back at Aristus, who dug in his claws before allowing the groom to lead him away, his head craned my way the entire time.
As I refilled the bucket, my hands wouldn’t stop trembling. The rim clinked against the spigot, too loud in the quiet stable.
What had I been thinking? Servants didn’t speak like that to royalty. They didn’t lift their chins and almost look them in the eye, not even if the prince demanded it. They certainly didn’t threaten to aim water at a prince and expect to live.
Servants didn’t notice a prince’s mouth, either.
And they did not, under any circumstances, count a prince’s almost-smiles.
Two. Not that I was counting.
I’d seen something in Prince Fenian’s face that looked almost like surprise.