Chapter Six
The next day, Father and two guards visited the accident site to see if the carriage was salvageable.
They returned with news that the main structure was broken, and it needed to be scrapped for parts.
We couldn’t buy a new carriage in the small town we’d stayed in, so he went ahead to the next town to purchase one and brought it back.
Because of the delay, instead of arriving the day before the meeting like we’d originally planned, our carriage rolled into Misfortune’s capital with barely an hour to spare.
“I can’t meet my future spouse looking like this!
” Delilah cried, holding a mirror with one hand and her brown curls with the other.
She dug around in her trunk—which she’d refused to let out of her sight since the ‘bandit’ incident—and thrust a brush at me.
“Trey, brush my hair while I do my makeup.”
“Brush your own hair,” I said, shoving her hand away. “And since when do cats wear makeup?”
“As Uncle Rick has repeatedly reminded me,” she began, sticking her nose in the air, “I am also a princess, and princesses wear makeup.”
“Do you even know how to apply it?”
She warily eyed the collection of various cosmetics. “It can’t be that hard.” Then she uncapped the lipstick and drew the world’s wobbliest line.
Dad chuckled at her attempt. “Perhaps riding in a carriage isn’t the best time to experiment. Let me see.” He wiped off her mess with a handkerchief, then held her face firmly in one hand as he gently traced her lips with a dusky pink.
Father watched the exchange with an odd sparkle in his eye.
I turned away before my brain started asking questions I did not want the answers to. In the end, I took the brush from Delilah and worked through her hair. The tight curls expanded into a fluffy mane around her head. “Is this the look you want?” I asked tentatively.
Once Dad stopped dabbing pigment on her eyes, she looked in the mirror. “Yes! This is perfect!”
As long as she was happy.
By the time Dad and I finished, she’d transformed into an electrocuted wild cat princess. Even if she were wearing her ears, they’d be lost in her hair.
She looked in the mirror again and made a noise deep in her throat to imitate purring.
“You should cut back on the cat sound effects,” I warned.
“I will not,” she replied primly, sticking the mirror back in her trunk. She eyed me and said, “You might want to do some grooming of your own.”
I looked down at myself, plucking at the front of my blue jacket. “What’s wrong with how I look?”
“You have surpassed rumpled and are dangerously close to bedraggled.”
“Those mean the same thing.”
“No, bedraggled is definitely worse.”
I frowned and examined my clothes further, noting the various creases.
Alright, so I was travelworn, but what did anyone expect after a week in a carriage?
I’d only brought so many changes of clothes.
“You’re aware that if we go on a quest, there won’t be daily baths and ironing boards, right?
Wrinkles are the least of my concerns.” I subtly smoothed them out while never breaking eye contact.
“At least do something about your hair,” she said, tossing the brush at me. It smacked my chest with surprising heft. “Otherwise, I’ll be too embarrassed to be seen with you.”
She thinks she’s a cat, but I embarrass her? With a few quick swipes, I dragged the brush through my hair, then chucked it back at her.
“That hurt!” She picked the brush up and tried to smack my head with it, but I grabbed both her wrists, holding her away from me. Spitting and hissing, she struggled against me, then kicked me in the shin.
“You little monster!”
Father leaned toward Dad and asked in a loud stage-whisper, “Should we intervene?”
“Only if you want to get scratched.”
The carriage slowed, warning us that we were close to our destination.
Delilah and I froze, then looked at each other in horror. I reached for her hair at the same time she reached for my lapels, straightening each other up in sync. By the time the door opened, we were at least somewhat presentable.
As we exited the carriage, two attendants hurried toward us as fast as they could without running.
The first bowed to my fathers and said, “Queen Davina apologizes for being unavailable to greet you. She has bid me to show you to your guest quarters while my companion escorts the young prince and princess to the meeting.”
“Of course,” Father said. “Please send her majesty our apologies for our late arrival. Some trouble on the road delayed us.”
The attendant’s stoic expression crinkled, like they desperately wanted to interrogate Father but didn’t have the authority to.
“Let us know how the discussion goes,” Dad said, squeezing my shoulder before following Father and the attendant.
The other attendant led Delilah and me past the main building, deeper into the grounds. “Prince Fitzroy is hosting the meeting at his private residence.”
As we approached the building, I noticed Delilah had fallen a few steps behind. We were walking briskly, and she was almost a foot shorter than me, but she should have easily kept up. I stopped abruptly, and so did she.
“Delilah.” I kept my gaze forward, refusing to look behind me to confirm my suspicions.
“Yes, Trey?”
“Take it off.”
“I don’t know what you could possibly be referring to.”
“If I turn around and you are wearing that stupid collar, I will rip it from your neck and toss it into the nearest pond.”
Clink, clink, shuffle, rustle, swish.
Delilah passed me, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “You’re the most paranoid man I’ve ever met, Trey—and one of my parents is a former bodyguard.”
“Kit’s not a man, so I guess that lowers my competition,” I replied as I matched her pace.
“He is when it suits him, though I have no idea why they would ever want to be one.”
Before we could delve deeper into the complexities of gender and what we wanted versus what we got, the attendant stopped at the front door of a small outbuilding and pulled a bell rope.
The door flung open as the bell finished its first ring.
From their eagerness, I expected recriminations for being late, but the man on the other side only beamed at us.
“Welcome to House Fitz. You must be our cousins from Bane and Woe.” He had tawny hair artfully tousled to one side and round, dark-rimmed glasses framing deep brown eyes.
He wore no jacket, only a simple green waistcoat and white shirt, and the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows like he’d already started on the day’s work.
Scholar, I determined immediately, though his lithe frame hinted at hidden strength. His studies might extend beyond theoretical knowledge.
“Sorry we’re late,” I said as we followed him into the house.
“Technically, you still have thirty seconds before you’re officially late.”
“Unless that took thirty seconds to say,” Delilah quipped.
“Then apology accepted,” he replied promptly. He opened the door and called out, “The Officially Late Arrivals are here!”
I’d expected a stuffy, formal meeting room, not a cozy sitting room with plump furniture, books scattered haphazardly in a ‘I tried to clean and partially succeeded’ fashion, and a full tea service. Or, it had been full at one point. The others had selected the best morsels before we arrived.
“Finally,” a woman groaned from the couch.
“We’ve been waiting for hours.” Her tone implied a strong sense of self-importance that matched her carefully crafted appearance.
Thick, golden ringlets cascaded over her shoulders and the full skirts of her dress spread over the couch, preventing anyone from sitting near her.
Once the old man saw her, he’d be crowing in triumph over the addition of a potential damsel-in-distress to our story.
“You’re the one who insisted on rising at dawn to socialize,” our host said, frowning at her.
Another man waited in the shadows, his face turned away.
Towering over the rest of us, with broad shoulders and closely cropped dark hair, he oozed menace.
Between the two of us, he looked more like an evil mage’s son than I did.
He said nothing while the other two bickered about social niceties and the definitions of ‘late.’
“Enough,” our host said, holding up his hands in surrender.
“We’ll scare the others away before we’ve even introduced ourselves.
” He bowed deeply to Delilah and me. “I’m Prince Fitzroy Unfortunate, not to be mistaken for Fitzroy the Unfortunate, who had his title long before we ever changed our surname, so you think my mother would have chosen a different name for me. You can call me Fitz.”
Delilah curtsied. Without skirts, that mostly involved her bobbing up and down quickly. “Princess Delilah Katherine Marcella Cornelia Woeful.”
The other woman stood and performed an actual curtsey, picking up the edges of her periwinkle skirts and gracefully lowering herself almost to the ground before smoothly straightening. “Princess Angelica Calamitous.”
The man in the corner stepped forward. Once out of the shadows, the light warmed his olive skin and hazel eyes. What I’d mistaken for menace softened into shyness as he bowed and spoke toward the floor, “Prince Maximus Gloom.”
All eyes turned to me.
My cheeks heated and I coughed into my hand, purposefully obscuring my words. “Treasure Banes.” More clearly, I added, “Please, call me Trey.”
Fitz rubbed his hands together, reminding me of my old man in serious-plotting-mode. “Now, let’s get to the meat of the meeting. Are we going to keep the marriage tradition going for another generation, or are we going on a quest?”