Chapter Nine #3
And clearly, Tor needed all his wits about him while he was dealing with Pelun, trying to charm a man who was determined to think the worst of him. He rubbed at his sore jaw and reflected that he was impressed with the punch, but Pelun probably wouldn’t take it well if Tor offered a compliment.
He’d said that Pelun’s hair looked nice one day, and the man had touched his head as though to make sure that his hair wasn’t in disarray, glared at Tor, and stomped off.
Seriously. It had been a banal opening gambit, and the man had reacted as though Tor was deliberately mocking him.
And now Pelun thought he’d gone around seducing unavailable women—or worse. Tor wasn’t ashamed of his behavior, but he hadn’t really thought about the story being shared.
Short-sighted of him, really.
Pelun’s assumptions had been incredibly rude, but it wasn’t everyone who would try to take the High Prince to account for his behavior towards a servant. And Tor had to admire that.
Even with his sore jaw.
Pel
Fury pulsed through Pel with every step he took through the hallway.
Prince Torex was a menace! How could he think it was all right to just take what he wanted without considering anyone else’s feelings?
How could he be so offhand when Pel had confronted him?
He’d been so calm the entire time that Pelun had started to feel like he was the one who was reacting weirdly, and that just made the hot anger spike higher.
Unfortunately, no matter how reluctant Pel was to admit it, he hadn’t heard directly from Lashuna but from someone who’d seen Torex wrapped around her while she was crying, and there’d been something about beds and what would her partner think, and…
Well, Pel hadn’t stopped to get more information, he’d just stormed off to find Torex and let him know what he thought of him.
But now his conscience was pricking at him, because while he couldn’t imagine that Torex was innocent, he should have spoken directly to Lashuna. At least he could rectify that now.
It took him nearly twenty minutes to track her down, and he finally had to ask Tramili, their steward, who directed him to where Lashuna was supervising a small group of staff who were cleaning some of the little-used rooms on the third floor.
He apologized for interrupting and asked if he could speak with her. She looked puzzled but not alarmed as she acquiesced, and he led her to one of the unoccupied rooms further down the corridor, where they wouldn’t be interrupted or overheard.
She looked unharmed, no visible injuries or hesitance in her manner, but Pelun knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Once they were both seated, she asked, “Is everything all right, Your Highness?”
Belatedly, he considered that she might not want to be alone with him.
“Not exactly,” he said carefully. “I wanted to start by assuring you that you’re completely safe and nothing bad is going to happen to you no matter what you tell me, all right?”
She now looked rather more alarmed than less so, but Pel still thought it was important to explicitly state this.
“All right,” she agreed slowly.
“I heard there was an… issue with Prince Torex,” Pel said after a moment, not sure how best to bring up this topic in a way that wouldn’t alarm her further.
Her brow furrowed, not with fear but with something that looked like genuine confusion.
“With Prince Torex? Is he all right?”
That was… not the reaction that Pel had been expecting.
“Physically, he’s fine,” he answered, not wanting to speak to the other man’s mental state. Then, conscientiously, he amended, “Well, he’ll have a sore jaw for a few days, but otherwise, he’s physically fine.”
“Oh, no, what happened?” she exclaimed.
Pel cleared his throat. “I punched him in the face when I heard what he did to you.”
She looked astonished. “Punched him in the face? What he did to me?” Her expression morphed into one of horror. “Oh, no!”
Pel’s gut squirmed uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, and you hit him in the face? He was so good to me!”
“Good to you?” he parroted.
“Yes.” She nodded emphatically, her cheeks taking on a rosy hue.
“You see, Takun and I were having some issues. We love each other, but something was missing, and we were both trying to hide it from one another and winding up miserable as a result. Prince Torex came across me while I was a little overwhelmed, and he offered to be a nonjudgmental ear. I laid everything out, and he suggested that perhaps what was missing was someone else.”
Pel felt irritation flare once more. It was way better than what he’d at first assumed, but still, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “He suggested getting involved with you?”
Only she shook her head. “Oh, no. He thought we might want to look for someone else together. Everything discussed and communicated. But I wasn’t sure that was even the issue, and I didn’t want to make it worse.
” Her cheeks went even pinker. “I talked to Takun, and he was intrigued, but we were still worried. What if we got someone mixed up in our issues even though we didn’t mean to?
” She cleared her throat. “So I, uh, actually asked if he would be willing to, uh, let us experiment. If that’s what you want to call it. ”
Pel could feel a headache coming on. “And he agreed to that.”
“Yes.” Her cheeks were scarlet now. “Once he’d spoken to Takun too and ensured it wouldn’t cause any issues between us.” She cleared her throat again, and her face lit up. “We all agreed, and it was—”
“—I really don’t need details,” he hastened to interrupt her. “I’m very glad to hear that it was all consensual.”
“I wouldn’t ever cheat on Takun!” she assured him, looking a little offended.
It was his turn to clear his throat and confess, “I might have thought that you hadn’t been given a choice.”
She looked aghast again. “Prince Torex would never!”
Pel was starting to think… maybe she was right? He had to reluctantly admire that Torex had kept Lashuna’s and Takun’s business private and not revealed anything, even to protect himself.
Only Pel had now dragged it out in the open and made Lashuna explain more about her intimate life than he needed to know.
He tried to apologize, but she said she appreciated that he was looking out for them.
With a smile, she added, “I know you always do.”
He always tried, but he had very little influence over his father, and… sometimes he got the wrong end of the stick and accused an apparently completely innocent guest of terrible behavior.
She went back to work, and Pel just sat there for a moment and wondered if he was supposed to apologize to Prince Torex. He had the lowering feeling that he had to.
Pel had punched the High Prince of the United Realms and accused him of taking a servant against her will on the flimsiest of evidence and without actually talking to her about what had happened.
He’d been looking for evidence of wrong-doing again, hadn’t he? He’d been so fired up at the idea of evidence backing up his opinion of Prince Torex that he not only hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt, he’d jumped to conclusions.
Pel didn’t at all understand the draw to sleep with someone else with your partner, but it was clear that Lashuna wasn’t upset about it in the least. To the contrary, before Pel had cut her off, she’d seemed about to tell him just how well it had gone.
It might not be conventional, but Pel couldn’t really accuse Torex of just suggesting something that would benefit himself. It didn’t sound like he’d been the one to suggest himself at all.
Ugh.
Maybe Pel could sit here and think about it for a little longer.
He drew a deep breath and then blew it out, forcing himself to his feet because he had the lowering thought that if he didn’t move now, the servants would find him in here hours from now, still procrastinating.
He marched out of the storage room, marched back to where Pel had confronted Torex, and… he wasn’t there, of course, because why would he just stand around where Pel had attacked him?
Pel checked the stables, the gardens, the portrait gallery, the dining room… and finally tracked him down to the kitchen, of all places.
Torex was surrounded by servants, laughing and joking as he was fawned over for his injury, a compress of some kind pressed to his jaw. All the crystal lamps in the kitchen had been lit, something that Pel’s father never did, since he didn’t come into the kitchen, so it would be of no use to him.
Pel felt like the room went unnaturally silent when he arrived, but after a moment he realized they were behaving much as they normally did, several staff coming over to see if everything was all right and if he needed anything, most continuing on with their tasks.
Pel assured them that he was fine and that there was nothing that he needed, and then he reluctantly drifted over to the other man and was slowly absorbed into the worried and enthralled throng around him.
Prince Torex met Pel’s eyes with a challenge in his own.
Pel gritted his teeth but made himself speak. “I was misinformed. I apologize.”
To his astonishment, the man simply flashed him a smile, absurdly charming and handsome given that he was holding a compress to his jaw.
He said simply, “No problem,” and went back to the story that he’d been telling when Pel arrived.
Pel stared at him for an unflatteringly long moment, not really sure what to make of that. Surely it couldn’t be that simple.
But perhaps Torex didn’t want to drag it out in front of the staff. That actually made sense, especially since he’d been so circumspect about Lashuna. Pel would no doubt hear about it later. He might even get his own punch to the jaw and couldn’t really blame the man for it.
He’d accept it because he’d made the error.
Only it didn’t come up again. That night at dinner when the King questioned him about the bruise, Torex passed it off as a training injury. And when the King flat-out mocked him for falling prey to someone so much weaker than himself, Torex merely laughed.
“There’s no guard in the United Realms who’s never been bested by another. That’s why we train. It’s not about always winning, it’s about being strategic and working as part of a team.”
King Forex snorted and went back to his drinking, but both Bavil and Larexa were looking at Torex as though he were amazing.
Pel… kind of wanted to do the same thing, and he didn’t know what to do with that feeling and the unsettled pit that his stomach had turned into.
He glowered instead and reminded himself that those were just words, and anybody could say something like that.
It needed to be demonstrated in actions every day.
Besides, it was a lot easier to say something like that when you always won.
Pel scowled at his plate.
Several days later, after Pel had taken the coward’s way out and canceled his trips to the farms, Torex still hadn’t brought the matter up.
His jaw had barely bruised, and it wasn’t even noticeable two days later.
Pel had hit him hard—but then he remembered that Torex was Extraordinary, and he was going to heal faster than Pel and probably hadn’t been as injured in the first place as Pel would have been, because he had magic in excess, practically jumping to protect him.
Finally, Pel couldn’t stand it anymore, and he tugged the man aside after dinner on one of those rare evenings where King Forex was called away with an apparently urgent letter.
Pel was at least halfway convinced he had someone send those missives solely so he could make himself feel important.
“What are you going to do about it?” he demanded.
Prince Torex looked confused. “Do about what?”
He gestured at the man’s face with its unfairly perfect jawline that Pel had only briefly impaired. “The punch.”
Torex blinked. “I’m not going to do anything about it.”
Incomprehension fizzled through Pel, and it took him a moment before he spluttered out, “I punched you in the face. For what turned out to be a totally erroneous reason.”
Torex clapped him on the shoulder, his eyes clear and bright, the blue shining like a perfect summer’s afternoon. “But if I had done what you thought, I deserved worse. I like that you defend your people. I’d like it even more if you’d verify your facts first, but I don’t object to your mission.”
And that seemed to be it.
Then Prince Torex grinned at him, and said, “Just to prevent any future misunderstandings, there was also one serving woman and a stable hand, not at the same time. Everyone was consenting and interested.”
Pel came awfully close to gaping but finally managed to ask, “Why would you do that?”
Prince Torex looked like he didn’t understand the question.
“I mean, what if they feel pressured?” Pel clarified.
Torex’s expression cleared. “Well, they approached me, first of all, and I’m pretty good at gauging comfort levels.
I mean, there aren’t that many people who are my precise social equal, and I don’t want anyone to ever do something they don’t want.
But I find that if you’re actually looking, you know whether someone wants to be there or not. ”
Pel had nothing to say about that. He had no comparable experience, but he had to admit that seemed… pretty reasonable.
Torex met his eyes. “Are we riding out to the farms tomorrow?”
And Pel could do nothing but nod.
Torex beamed at him and then headed back to Larexa and the pianoforte.
Pel stared after the man, thoroughly confounded.
Just when he thought he understood Torex, he twisted somehow, revealing an unexpected facet of himself.
Pel still couldn’t let go of their first meeting here in Tond—nor the fact that Torex had completely forgotten their previous encounters. But… it wasn’t as simple as that.
Pel would look for actual evidence in the future.
And if he absolutely had to… he would consider that maybe he’d been a bit wrong in his initial assessment.