Chapter 6
Around the time they told me the grass was in the cart and ready to go, I watched as Milo and Hydris’s brother left the tent over in Winter.
While some of the guards glared at me as I waved and hollered, not one of them told anyone that they’d seen me.
Milo walked off, never looking back, and climbed into a carriage.
Everyone else was breaking down the tent as he rode away.
At least Milo was okay. I hated that he didn’t know I was here, but that he was healthy was good enough for now.
“I’m sorry he didn’t see you,” Hydris said as I stood away from the boulder I’d been leaning against while I’d waited.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Are you going back now?” he asked with a gesture to the cart.
“I am. Do you want to ride with me this time?”
He smiled and nodded. “Yes, please.”
The grass was in large bundles tied with rope that were also then tied down to the cart with a tarp over them. I shook hands with a few people, thanking them, and then climbed aboard with Mason the horse all ready to go. Once Hydris was sitting beside me, I flicked the reins and off we went.
On the way out there, I’d thought about my future and what I might do with it if I couldn’t go home again.
While part of me was curious and eager to know whether I’d ever be able to reconnect with Milo—and if Wally and Zalman were anywhere near—I couldn’t ignore the fact that Hydris was sitting next to me.
His thigh pressed to mine on the little bench seat, the heat of him seeping into me. He was still letting his natural flowery self be free, so he smelled like the blooms ringing his head. Hydris was the personification of Spring, and I’d never realized how much I liked fresh and dewy and sweet.
But I couldn’t do anything about my attraction.
How could I? My friends teased me about how I wanted to find someone who’d let me move in, not someone who’d hook-up for the night.
I was a serial monogamist with aspirations of wedding bells and picket fences.
None of that sounded compatible with a prince whose castle I wasn’t technically allowed to even enter.
I didn’t think I’d be able to stand sneaking around with him—and I didn’t trust that he was the type to stand by me if we got caught.
Suddenly, Mason the horse came to a halt, giving a snort and tossing his head. I looked up and saw a literal wall of rain coming toward us. For a half-second, that was pretty damn cool. Rain there, no rain here—what were the odds of seeing such a thing?
And then the wall arrived, and it wasn’t cool anymore.
“Holy shit!” I hollered over the volume of rain slamming us. I was soaked to the skin in an instant. “We’ve gotta get out of this!”
Hydris pointed off the the right. “I think the village is over there!”
Considering there wasn’t a single tree with enough leaves on it so we could huddle under one and wait this rainstorm out, I very deftly and not at all awkwardly steered Mason in the direction of the village.
We bumped around as we left the road, but I worried less about that once I could see lanterns and the outline of buildings.
Though we could’ve just kept going since we couldn’t get any wetter, it was a chilly spring rain that had me shivering before long.
Thankfully, the inn had a nice big sign with a bed on it, so even if I couldn’t read the words, I knew exactly what it was.
And maybe Mason knew what it was, too, because he ignored me and walked right around back to the stable.
A teenager was there to hold Mason, while Hydris and I climbed down and got through the stable’s doorway.
“It’s two for the night for the horse,” the kid said. “An extra two for storing the cart.”
I had a little pouch on my belt with a few coins, but I was absolutely not clear on their values yet. “Is it the gold ones? Four of those?”
“Here,” Hydris said as he handed over four silver coins from his own pouch. “Take good care of both and there’ll be a gold coin for you when we leave.”
“Yes, sir!” They hauled Mason and the cart further into the stable, making Hydris and I scramble out of the way.
“So the silver ones are more expensive than the gold ones,” I mentioned as I followed Hydris through a door into the back of the inn where there was a tavern.
“Of course.” He put a hand up to stop me, and then did the same thing he’d done before to remove all the water from me. Then he did the same to himself, the both of us dry, and a ball of water floating between us.
“Wait a second,” I said as something important occurred to me. “Rain is water.”
“Yes?” he said as he sent the water ball floating through the door and, presumably, dropped it somewhere in the yard.
I pointed at what he’d just done. “You can control water.”
“Oh,” he said on an embarrassed laugh. “Um, yes.”
“Hydris, you could’ve made it so the rain fell around us instead of on us! You could’ve made it so we just kept on trotting back to the castle.”
He got all bashful with his hands behind his back and toeing at a floorboard. “Well, I maybe could’ve, yes.”
I groaned and held both hands out to him. “So why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to be alone with you.”
“We were alone.”
“Alone with you…and a bed.”
All I could do was blink at him. He wanted to be alone with me and a bed? As I watched him walk over to a big man behind the bar, I hated the fact that I was going to have to turn Hydris down. We just… We couldn’t possibly work.
I went over to stop him from getting us a room. “I don’t think we need a room. We can get back on the road as soon—”
“Considering it’s still a few hours back to the palace, the sun will set in that time, and we don’t know how long this storm will last, I’d rather not travel in the dark on a cart with no lantern,” Hydris said as he wrote our names in a book on the bar.
Okay, he had a point. A few of them actually. I couldn’t help blushing as the barman-slash-innkeeper looked between the two of us. Was he questioning our relationship? Wondering why I was talking so freely with the prince? Did he even know who Hydris was?
Then Hydris handed over five silver coins and four gold ones, the man smiled and handed over a key, and I was soon following Hydris up a set of old wooden stairs. He unlocked the door, we went in, and…
There was only one bed.
I went to the window, my heart racing. I didn’t want to lose his friendship, still wanted to brace him up enough to have him putting Mannix in his place, but how could I go about that while turning him down?
Although, my heart wasn’t the only thing throbbing at the moment. Good grief, what was wrong with me?
“Bridge?”
“Yeah?”
I took a deep breath and turned to face him only to cough and choke on nothing when faced with a completely naked prince.
Like the day we met there in his pool, he was blue on the top and bottom but, this time, with flowers peeping from both.
There were literally tiny white flowers at the base of his very happy to see me cock.
And he stood there with a smirk on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. He looked confident in every way. I’d wanted him to feel empowered. He was.
“Okay, see this?” I said, trying to sound encouraging. “This is the kind of thing you need to bring to your next conflict with Mannix.”
His upper lip curled in clear disgust as he flinched back.
“Oh. No, not the sex part. You’re right—ew. I mean the… The energy!” I said with a snap of my fingers. “This confidence and determination you’ve got going on right now. That part. Bring that.”
He nodded slowly like maybe some of my nonsense was making sense. But then he wiggled a finger at me and said, “I’d feel a lot more confident if you weren’t still dressed.”
I blushed hot and cleared my throat. “Well, yeah, about that—”
“Oh, no!” He gasped and covered himself with both hands. “Oh, Bridge, I’m so sorry!”
“No, now, hold on! I’m not saying no. I’m flattered, and you’re incredible, but I don’t want to be something the prince does to pass the time on a rainy day, okay? Hookups just don’t work for me. I always feel used and gross afterward.”
He was blushing now. “Well, this is extra embarrassing then.”
And cue me feeling like shit. “Hydris, I’m sorry. I just—”
“I thought I’ve been courting you.”
“Pardon?”
“We had dinner.”
“Oh, well…”
“I very nearly tried to seduce you that night, but after I told you about the magic fading, you were so sad and then you wanted to leave.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that probably wouldn’t have—”
“And I’ve been trying to think of reasons to visit you while you’re working, but during my observations—”
Observations? He’d been watching me?
“—I found you do a lot of heavy lifting and walking, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to ask you about that. Not that your physicality isn’t terribly impressive and definitely arousing.”
That was evident by what his two hands couldn’t quite hide. “Um…”
“I did consider making an indoor garden and requesting your assistance, though. That was going to be what I tried if today didn’t work out.” He smiled like he was proud of that plan.
“Okay, well, I apologize again because… Hydris, I had no idea. And I’m sure that’s totally on me because I’m actually really bad at noticing—”
“And that, too. You don’t call me Your Highness or Prince Hydris. You just use my name.”
“Uh, well, technically, I’m not one of your subjects?” I cocked my head as I reconsidered that. “But, no, I should probably still be proper and… Uh… I’m sure there’s something about etiquette in there that—”
“Please don’t address me formally, Bridge,” he said as he fixed me with a sad gaze and pouty lip. “I’d hate that.”
“Oh.”
He walked over, cock bobbing—lord help me. I braced myself.
“And you’re not at all something to do on a rainy day,” he said very sincerely. “That’s not me either. I like you Bridge. I think you’re wonderful. I like the way you make me feel.”
I watched as he squared his shoulders and stood up straighter, somehow managing to look down his nose at me even as he looked up at me.
“There’s no law or anything that says I can’t be with whomever I wish, so we can have dates and sex and…” He seemed to falter a bit, but rallied immediately. “And whatever else we want to do together. I’m the prince. I say so.”
Fuck me, he was adorable. I didn’t want to say no to him. I really didn’t. I also didn’t want this determined, empowered Hydris to stop.
“On one condition.”
“Anything.”
I chuckled. “You’re in charge.”
“Oh, um, I was kind of hoping—”
“You can have whatever you want—I’m flexible—but you have to ask for it or do it.”
He cleared his throat and looked away. “Well, uh, I’m not sure… Um…”
I turned and headed for the door. “Okay, then, I’m going downstairs to—”
“Don’t you dare.”
I gasped as I found that I couldn’t lift my left foot to take another step. I couldn’t get either of my feet off the floor. I looked over my shoulder to find Hydris standing there with one arm outstretched. He could stop me from moving?
“Hydris?”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know I could do that.”
I was able to turn around now, and saw him covering his mouth with both hands, his eyes huge. We were both shocked, but I was not upset. Far from it actually. Again, my heart wasn’t the only thing throbbing.
“Humans are something like sixty percent water,” I told him.
He blinked a few times and slowly lowered his hands. “They are?”
“Yep. Make me lift my arms.”
I braced myself, but he did a wave with both hands and my arms shot up to be level with my shoulders. It didn’t hurt, wasn’t uncomfortable, but I sure as shit couldn’t stop him.
With a wicked laugh, I asked, “What percent water do you think fairies are?”
He frowned at me for a second and then his eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open.
“I think we might’ve just unlocked your secret weapon.”