Chapter Seven #3
She brought the song to a close with a flourish, and Tor wondered if it had actually borne any resemblance to the music that had been on the pages he’d turned for her.
He bowed and thanked her as she rose gracefully to her feet.
“I’ll summon the tea tray,” she told him. “You’ll want something to end the evening.”
“That would be much appreciated, Princess,” he confirmed.
She made her way to the servant waiting discreetly at the door, and Tor strolled over to Prince Pelun, who could scarcely have looked more surprised to have Tor approach him.
“Is this seat taken?”
Pelun looked as though he very much wanted to confirm that it wasn’t available, but there was no conceivable way to do so without being incredibly rude.
He gestured at it with a disgruntled look on his face.
Tor sat and gave the man his most charming smile. Quietly, so they wouldn’t be overheard, he said, “I think we got off on the wrong foot, and I’d like to start over. I wanted to apologize.”
Pelun stared at him stonily. “Assuming that is how you normally behave, what exactly are you apologizing for?”
“Well, I don’t normally mistake princes for stable hands,” he tried with another smile. “I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward situation.”
The Prince scoffed. “It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tor asked, feeling a twinge of annoyance at the continued antagonism.
He didn’t think that most of their altercation had been his fault, but he’d been willing to shoulder the blame.
Pelun met his eyes with a fierce glare. “I recognized you, Your Highness, as soon as I saw you without your helmet. You’ve met me multiple times, and you still couldn’t remember who I was.
So unless you want to apologize for every encounter we’ve ever had, you’re not apologizing for anything meaningful at all. ”
Tor blinked at him. It was true that it hadn’t been… ideal that Tor hadn’t recognized him right away, but at the same time—
“Isn’t that a little extreme?” Tor suggested cajolingly. “I meet a lot of people. The wedding and the coronation were two of the most heavily attended events in our history.”
“And the royal families of five whole other realms are that difficult for you to keep straight?” Pelun said mockingly.
Put like that, it did seem… particularly unfortunate.
“I saw you out of context,” Tor tried.
Pelun still looked singularly unimpressed. “So you can recognize royal surroundings and make an educated guess when I’m surrounded by my family? Somehow, that doesn’t indicate in any way that I was noticeable to you.”
Thoroughly irritated now, Tor snapped, “I definitely noticed that you were rude and obnoxious when all I wanted were directions to the castle where you live.”
“Then I stand corrected,” Pelun said, rising to his feet and bowing so stiffly to Tor that it was practically an insult in and of itself. “You know me in one way after all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I would like to be anywhere but here.”
To his father, Pelun made the more prosaic excuse that he was tired and wished to retire for the evening. The King waved him off dismissively.
After a moment of staring after Pelun and no doubt standing there like a fool, Tor went to sit next to Bavil.
“Is your brother always like that?” he asked, weirdly torn between irritation and something that was sort of like admiration.
Pelun certainly hadn’t pulled his punches, and Tor was way more used to fawning.
Bavil laughed, though there was a sad tinge to it. “Yes, of recent years. He doesn’t tend to be the most sociable.”
Right. So… maybe this was going to be a little harder than he’d thought.
The tea tray arrived, and Tor sat with Bavil and Larexa and ate several small pieces of cake and drank a cup of tea because it seemed better to do that than to simply head off to bed and admit defeat.
The two of them were entirely sociable, and they managed to have a decent conversation about Tor’s travels and the briefer journeys that they’d made.
Tor gathered based on what they didn’t say that while they’d visited Bessar more frequently in the past, something that was being carefully glossed over had happened in recent years that meant that even those visits were curtailed.
They insisted they were happy here, and Tor wondered if that was true.
There was a special connection to where you’d grown up and spent most of your life, or so Tor had always found. Varex, Fernila, and Yomil might irritate him immensely these days, but Alossa in general and its capital city in particular still felt like home.
But it was important to visit other locations, and while he hadn’t been delighted by Tond so far, he would probably gain an appreciation for aspects of the realm when he wasn’t busy trying and failing to seduce a prince who had no interest in him whatsoever.
He just needed to try harder.
He remembered how certain he’d been that Pelun would, what, simply fall into his bed? His brother had called him too arrogant for his own good, and Tor was starting to see the man’s point.
It was unfortunately true that had he met either of Pelun’s siblings on the road, he would probably have recognized them.
Pelun wasn’t totally wrong. Whatever the case, it was too late now for Tor to have done better with that first impression.
He had to accept that he’d messed up and figure out how to move forward.
Larexa seemed to respond to him normally, so he was probably still charming. And he hadn’t actually attached a timeline to this particular venture, he’d just been undeservedly cocky. Nothing had gone disastrously wrong yet.
Besides, anything was better than Terila. He thought again of the chill when they’d Tendrilled. It was like his insides had been trying to squirm away, and the sense of wrongness had been absolute.
There was no way he could bond with her. And since Varex didn’t listen when Tor talked anymore, this was the best plan Tor could come up with. And really, none of the best plans survived implementation unscathed. Being a guard had taught him that he needed to learn to adapt. It was early days yet.
He finished his tea with the King and the two siblings he wasn’t supposed to be seducing, and then he pleaded tiredness from his journey and took his leave.
A servant guided him back to his room, and he found that he’d only mentally missed one turn. At least that was going right.
Another servant was waiting for him, and Torex thanked him and assured the man that he would be fine for the night.
“I can take your clothes, Your Highness,” the man suggested deferentially.
Given his limited wardrobe, Tor supposed it made sense for each item to be cared for regularly. This didn’t look to be a location where his clothing was going to be tossed carelessly to the floor because he had something more entertaining to do.
Tor changed into a nightshirt, and the servant bore off his discarded clothes with a bow and a wish for him to sleep well.
Tor sucked in a breath and flopped onto the bed, then slowly exhaled.
This hadn’t been quite the progress that he’d hoped to make, but there was still plenty of time to make up for lost ground. This was one campaign that had been lost, that was all. There was still the entire war to be won. Tor would be more prepared in the future.
Then he laughed at himself. He could only imagine how Rin would have mocked him mercilessly for what had unquestionably been the biggest bungle that he’d ever made while trying to seduce someone.