Chapter Five #2
“You seem to have an expectation that they’ll always be gratified,” Pel responded, since he’d made his bed, and now he was going to have to lie in it.
“You’re very insolent,” the Prince told him.
“I apologize, Your Highness.”
Apparently, he sounded as apologetic as he felt, because the Prince’s lips tightened. “Is this the sort of staff that King Forex keeps?”
Pel nearly snorted. “You would need to address such a question to the King.”
“Perhaps I will,” the Prince said, staring at him like he was a bug.
“That would make my life a great deal simpler,” Pel muttered.
The Prince’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going out of your way to be rude, or does it come naturally to you?”
“I believe the King would say it comes naturally,” Pel answered truthfully.
“So if I relay this encounter to the King, he would be unsurprised?” the Prince challenged.
“Absolutely,” Pel agreed.
“Have it your way,” the Prince said and turned away.
Pel almost called him back. But he had his pride. He wasn’t going to change his behavior just because the rude man he’d met was the High Prince.
Pel had never been impressed with people who treated their equals and their supposed inferiors differently.
He heard the Prince calling for someone to take care of his horse—called Melody, apparently—and then he was gone.
All things considered, that had gone about as well as Pel’s encounters with any royal went. He still thought the man had been rude, but he supposed that when you were the High Prince, you probably did go around the realms thinking that you owned them.
No, Pel decided firmly, he was glad that he hadn’t known the man was High Prince Torex. He’d been honest, and he hated to think that he might have treated him differently just because he was royal.
He finished with Extraordinary’s hooves, told her one more time that she was the best horse ever, and gave her the treats. Extraordinary gobbled them up greedily and then lipped at his hands as though she suspected that Pel had more.
“You already get oats,” Pel reminded her. “It’s your regular meal, you greedy horse. You’re not getting any more.”
Extraordinary blew her lips at Pel, clearly unimpressed, and Pel laughed, gave her a last caress down her silky mane, kissed her soft nose, and left the stall.
He should probably head inside and get cleaned up, since it was altogether likely that they were all going to be summoned very shortly to meet their illustrious guest—but Pel didn’t exactly want to hurry to that gathering.
He went to see Melody instead. He was almost two hands taller than Extraordinary, a dappled gray who looked a bit high-strung to Pel.
Very pretty, though. He was friendly enough, coming to smell Pel, although that might just have been the treats.
Pel slipped him an apple as the stable hands continued their work cleaning him up.
He was all muddy—though Pel supposed he couldn’t really blame the High Prince for riding through rain.
It didn’t look as though Melody had been mistreated in any way, and Pel gave himself a mental shake when he realized he’d been looking for more reasons to dislike the Prince. Obviously, it was much better that Melody was well-treated, and Pel needed to be rational about this.
The arrogance was probably altogether unconscious, although that didn’t make Pel feel a lot better.
Gornexi and Marwila had always seemed fine to Pel.
But Terila was right up there with her behavior, and Pel felt sometimes like he didn’t even recognize Bavil and Larexa anymore.
His father was the epitome of how not to be a good royal, or at least not a fair one.
Pel couldn’t imagine why the High Prince had come. It was clearly not a wedding. They simply weren’t important enough for the High Prince to be the one to deliver that sort of news in person. Could something have happened to the High King? But no, that was what messengers were for.
The only reason that the High Prince would have come personally, and alone, was because the information was so sensitive that it couldn’t be shared with anyone…
but Pel couldn’t imagine what that news could possibly be.
Even then, would he really travel alone?
Pel did, but that was in his own land… and because no one really cared what the unimportant, barely magical middle sibling did here. It wasn’t the norm, and Pel knew it.
Pel didn’t like not knowing what was going on.
Everything was well in hand in the stables, and when Pel realized that he was simply procrastinating unproductively, he made himself head back into the castle.
He was most certainly not allowing any prince to keep him from his home—even if there were days where he would gladly move to the stables if only it would give him the freedom that he craved.
But his father still insisted on Pel’s presence, no matter how much he was annoyed by it.
He seemed to view Pel as a personal failure, even though that wasn’t how magic worked.
Yes, it had been a combination of his mother and father that had made Pel, but they didn’t choose the outcome.
If parents did, the realms would be populated with nothing but Extraordinary people.
Sometimes, Pel wished his father would wash his hands of him entirely. But that day had not yet arrived.
And then a servant came running.
“Prince Pelun! Prince Pelun! You’re to come at once!”
Pel suppressed a sigh with an effort. Clearly, the High Prince had reached Pel’s father.