Chapter 8
Sweat slid down Asta’s back as she hoisted her leg up over the windowsill and climbed into the art room of the north wing. Linnea was there, nervously rubbing at her scar on her wrist.
“I made it, Linnea. I’m fine. I’m okay.” Asta reassured her cousin, patting her on the shoulder.
Linnea nodded. “Let’s get back to your suite. I have a bad feeling about tonight.”
Asta wasn’t going to argue with that. Linnea was usually quiet and didn’t have an assertive bone in her body, so if she was giving Asta an order, the princess knew to obey it.
When they got to the suite, Asta stripped off the black pants and tunic she was wearing and slipped into a purple nightgown. She knew she should bathe, but she was just so tired. Her trips to the village always left her exhausted between the climbing, the riding, and the training.
Gyrial had worked her hard tonight. Her arms and legs felt like jelly.
But she hadn’t been to training in over a week and had to make up for it, so she embraced the pain.
She walked out of this session without a scratch or bruise, even after she fought three opponents simultaneously during her final match. Asta smiled. She was getting better.
Her doofus of a dog came barreling in, ducking into a play bow. Asta stomped at him to taunt him and he ran off in a flash. She could hear him knocking down various items throughout the rest of the suite and she laughed. Dyri was a bull in an antique shop.
“Did you see anything?” Linnea asked, trying to keep such a heavy question as light as a feather.
Asta splashed her face with water from the basin in her room and patted her skin with a cloth.
“I think so. There was a woman who left the village with a married couple while I was leaving my session. Something about the woman seemed strange, like she was coaxing them into going with her, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear.
I trailed them to the path that cuts through the forest and down to the shoreline, but I lost them in the dark.
I turned around and came back before I was caught. ”
Linnea contemplated Asta’s words but didn’t respond, which Asta was relieved about. She was too tired to dissect that information tonight. They could talk about it with Gyrial and the twins tomorrow.
“The new orphans are sweet. Everyone was quite happy that I brought paints and bread this week.” Asta looked to her cousin. “Any trouble here?”
“None,” Linnea shrugged. “There are extra guards on duty tonight, though. The castle is swarming with them. I was sure you’d be caught when you returned.”
There was a knock on the main door and Linnea walked through the common room to answer, Dyri hiding behind her legs.
Linnea’s voice was raised—alarming Asta immediately. “You can’t just—”
She turned to find Kaid standing in her bedroom doorway, dirty and panting. Something about him looked so primal, far from the clean-cut, finely pressed appearance he always presented himself with.
“What the hell are you barging into my room for?” Asta approached the lord and pushed him back into the common room with a swift shove of her palm to his chest.
“Do you want to tell me why the fuck you’re wandering around the village and swinging swords in the middle of the night?” Kaid snapped. “And don’t lie to me. I know it was you, blondie.”
Asta’s blood went cold as the color drained from her face. How had Kaid caught her? She had been doing this for years by herself, only having Linnea’s help starting a few months ago. She had never been discovered.
But she knew there was no sense in acting confused. Kaid would see right through it.
“Why do you care? It’s not hurting you. Unless you would like me to demonstrate my blade skills on you,” Asta smirked, and she was relieved to see that the joke made Kaid’s shoulders loosen a bit.
His turquoise gaze swept over Asta’s body and she realized she was only wearing her nightgown—her short, tight nightgown that barely covered her legs—and she immediately felt very exposed.
“Wait here,” Asta gestured to a sofa in her common room, “I’ll be right out.”
After dressing in the longest robe she could find, Asta returned to the common room and sat in a chair opposite the sofa.
Her traitor of a dog had joined Kaid on the couch and laid his head on the lord’s lap, enjoying the ear scratches the man was giving him while his ridiculously long tongue flopped from the side of his mouth.
Kaid leaned forward, bracing a forearm on his knee. It reminded her of earlier that day when those same forearms had been resting atop hers.
He spoke softly. “I won’t tell anyone. Just tell me what you’re doing. Tell me, so I know what kind of family I’m getting involved in.”
Asta laughed harder than she thought she would.
A family. Maren had hardly socialized with her in two years and Asta still held a grudge against her father for his unfaithful acts and insistence to ignore the happenings in his closest village.
They weren’t a family. They hadn’t been for a long time.
“You’re marrying a polished, proper princess. That’s what you’re getting involved in. The rest of us don’t matter.”
Kaid’s brows furrowed. “Look, I know enough now where I could keep tailing you to find out, or you could confess. Your choice, sweetheart.”
The dark-haired lord leaned back now, crossing one leg over the other. He had collected himself and returned to his usual charming form once more.
“Fine,” Asta said curtly.
She told him about the missing villagers and the increasing number of orphans.
Asta explained that she started going to the village to try and investigate the cause of it all, but then Gyrial suggested she should know how to defend herself if she was going to keep putting herself in dangerous situations.
Kaid listened intently, and Linnea had made herself a ghost in the room, straightening piles of books and clothing strewn about.
“So the first place you were visiting was the orphanage?” Kaid’s eyes wandered back to the canine’s face that rested in his lap and he patted Dyri’s head.
Asta nodded and explained that she brings gifts to the orphans and has grown to love them. She mentioned that she even learned sign language so she could play with the nonverbal and deaf children.
“Why do you do it? Why do you go there and risk it so often?” Kaid asked through narrowed eyes.
Asta couldn’t quite read his expression. It was stuck somewhere between curiosity and disbelief. “Don’t you ever want to be something more than a title? Don’t you want to make an impact on the world?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and Asta took in the sight of his flexing arm muscles. “Sometimes, I guess.”
Asta sat forward in her seat. “Well it’s not just sometimes for me.
It’s always. It’s fate. I am going to make a damn difference in this world one way or another, whether it’s something small like bringing more funding to the orphanages or something large like apprehending whoever is responsible for our missing villagers.
Either way, I will be more than just a princess. I’ll be a savior.”
Asta would live up to her title of the “salvation child,” as the nobles ironically called her in secret. But she would change the meaning. When her kingdom remembered her, they would not remember her as the child born to symbolize unity, but the princess born to wield it.
Kaid was quiet for a long while. Asta simply watched him, wondering what he was thinking.
Wondering what he was doing with all the information he had learned.
A small part of her hoped that it was finally the moment he would decide to return to Haalberg and call off the engagement, realizing that he was taking on more than he wished by helping rule the chaotic Salendron, but another small part of her didn’t want to see him go.
She tried to stomp that part out, kicking and shoving at it to leave her mind, but it remained.
“I want you to teach me sign language,” The lord said.
Asta stared blankly. That wasn’t quite the reaction she expected from all this. “I—You what?”
Kaid smiled, clearly pleased that he caught her off guard. “I want you to teach me how to speak to those children, so I can go with you.”
“And if I say no?” Asta sat back and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
The lord held a hand to the side of his mouth to intensify the volume of his voice. “Oh, King Botmar-r-r-r!” He elongated her father’s name. “You would never guess what your perfect princess daughter does at night!”
Asta took off her slipper and threw it at him, which he deflected and sent flying to the side. “Oh, shut up, you prick! I’ll do it!”
He wanted to go with her to an orphanage in the middle of a dirty village. He wanted to learn something that had no advantage to him. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to the lord than Asta had first assumed.
After about an hour of teaching, and a whole night of signing before that, Asta’s hand muscles were throbbing. She led Kaid to the door for his departure.
He stopped in the doorway, a hand lingering on the handle. “You’re not as stealthy as you think, Princess. This was the second night I’ve spotted you climbing down the castle wall since I got here.”
Asta’s brows furrowed. “You must be delusional. Running a fever?” She placed the back of her hand to his forehead and he swatted it away. “This was the first night I’ve gone since your unfortunate arrival. It must be all the alcohol you consume. It’s finally killing your brain.”
Kaid rolled his eyes. “I saw someone climbing out of the same window you did just a few nights ago. I swear it. Why must you argue with me?”
“Why must you say stupid things?”
Asta felt quite accomplished as Kaid sighed in discontent.
“Fine, fine. I’ll keep an eye out for your imaginary friend.
” Asta waved an arm lazily, “Maybe we’ll bump into each other on one of our climbs and I can ask them what fairytale they’re from,” Asta laughed.
She could irritate him all day. The memory of what Niklas had told her about his fear of the ocean surfaced in her mind.
She would store that information and utilize it at the right moment when she knew it would send him reeling.
A little trick, Asta told herself. Nothing that would scar him for life.
Kaid narrowed his eyes and flicked her nose. “They’re real.” He turned and opened the door, stepping into the hall.
Asta popped her head out of the threshold as he walked away. “I’ll ask them what their magical powers are!” She shouted.
Kaid shook his head and glared over his shoulder as he continued down the pristine hall.
“Maybe they can teach us how to fly! Oh, or talk to animals!” She mused.
Kaid never looked back as he held a middle finger up over his shoulder and disappeared into his suite.