Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
When I opened the door the next morning, I found a tray piled with food waiting on the stone floor. Beside it, a soldier stared at the opposite wall.
I picked up the tray and glanced at the guard. “Hungry?”
He didn’t move but slid his gaze to me, then back to the wall in front of him. “Thank you, no.” And then his stomach rumbled.
I looked down the hallway in one direction, then the other. “No one is looking, and I can’t eat all this. You’d be helping me by taking something. And if you help me, you help the prince.”
I had to work to resettle the tray in one hand—it was absolutely loaded with food—but picked up a small cake and extended it.
He scanned the hallway, took it, and popped it into his mouth. And made a very happy sound as he chewed.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Pax.”
“I’m Fox. One more?” I asked, and held the tray up. He looked longingly at a pastry but shook his head and returned his gaze to the wall.
I took that as my cue to leave and went inside. He closed the door behind me, so I put the tray on the bed and sat down beside it.
I still wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do with myself—the idea of lounging around a palace seemed like the pinnacle of sloth. Surely the Lady would find out and demand the prince put me to work. Focusing on breakfast seemed a good start.
When my hunger was dealt with, I was left alone with quiet and uncertainty. I cleaned up and dressed and braided my hair, then heard a knock at the door.
I opened it and found Talia there.
“That’s a very becoming dress,” she said with a smile.
It was the color of sweetwine—a rich purple-red—with pretty ribbons sewn across the bodice. “I found it in the wooden chest. I assumed it was for me.”
“It was. We bought a few in the market while you were unconscious and had them taken in to fit you.” She adjusted my braid so it sat nicely on my shoulder. “You look very presentable.”
“For?”
“His Highness would like to speak with you. He’s in the throne room.”
We made our way through the palace, past more murals, statues of the Terran gods, and portraits of sundry Lys’Careth royals.
We walked beneath the light of golden wall torches and chandeliers for some time before reaching a wide atrium where two doors of gleaming copper rose into the air, easily taller than three or four of me.
They were embossed with crowns and vines and mountain swallows and secured by a bevy of guards.
“The main palace doors,” Talia said. “Crafted in the City of Flowers and carried overland all the way to the stronghold. Look up.”
I lifted my gaze. The palace’s spearing tower rose dozens (hundreds?) of strides above us, and light slanted through hundreds of cleverly hidden windows in the soaring tower, making an ever-shifting pattern across the stone floor.
“The builder wanted it to feel like you were lying in a field of grown mountain lilies, with sunlight filtering down through leaves and petals.”
“He’s not far off,” I said. “And this way you don’t get muddy or bug-bitten.”
“Definite advantages. This way,” she said, then gestured to the right.
We followed another series of corridors to another set of doors.
These weren’t quite as tall as the others, but their dark honey wood was carved with delicate twining mountain lilies.
A pair of soldiers waited outside, and as we approached, they pulled the doors’ golden handles.
My heart beating a little faster, I followed Talia inside.
The room stretched far into the distance, the floors made of white stone flecked with gold and silver. If I could pry one loose, I bet it would fetch enough coin to satisfy the Lady for a month.
Above the delectable floors, the pale walls rose to a high ceiling that arched above our heads, supported by more wooden beams that reached all the way down to the ground.
The walls between curved into alcoves that bounced the light of golden candelabras.
The wax must have been scented with mountain lily oil, as the entire room smelled of the flowers’ deep and heady perfume.
The walls were adorned with paintings, scrolls, and sculptures—including a silver tiger longer than I was tall—and tables held more treasures: carved objects and golden oil lamps and tiny totems of the gods.
Oh, the fun I could have in here.
At the far end of the room—and it was far—was a wide alcove that rose to an arch. Its interior was covered in more pale green stone that seemed to glow from within, and it held a three-tiered dais topped with a gleaming silver throne.
“Head down,” Talia said before I could get my first look at the man who sat on that throne. “Eyes must be downcast when you approach His Highness.”
That seemed ridiculous, all things considered, but I did as I was asked and kept my head low as we traversed the cavernous space toward the chair and its royal occupant.
“Curtsy,” Talia said, then curtsied beside me. “Your Highness.”
“Please rise.”
I did, my gaze first on the gilded floor, and then I let it rise.
I expected to see nothing more or less than the person I’d seen before, again in fancier clothes and now sitting in a fancier chair.
I was wrong.
The prince’s legs were crossed, his elbows on the throne’s wide arms, his dark hair falling rakishly over one eye.
He wore knee-high boots of shiny black leather that led to dark fitted pants.
A shirt of crisp white linen was topped by an overrobe that fitted around his broad shoulders and fell to the floor in a puddle of luminous fabric.
The exterior of the robe was a black that seemed dark enough to fall into.
The interior was pale silver that looked liquid to the touch.
I’d thought his eyes were beautiful the first time I’d seen him, but that had been nothing compared to their devastating power now.
They seemed to shine brighter and bluer—and pierced my soul more deeply, not just because he was wearing expensive clothes and surrounded by guards, but because he could finally be himself.
Being the prince wasn’t a costume worn by a soldier. He was both royalty and warrior—powerful, beautiful, and potentially deadly.
He waited in silence for a moment, as if to give me the opportunity to take it all in. Not just to see, but to truly understand. Then he rose, his jacket falling fluidly around his body, accentuating the breadth of his shoulders and the long line of his legs.
I didn’t like the way my heart sped up. I didn’t like the charge of power in the room, like the tense moment just before the first strike of lightning in a summer storm.
As he moved toward me, the mantle of arrogance he’d worn in that chair seemed to slip away as if he was regaining a bit of his humanity with every step. Or maybe that was because he’d left Galen glowering behind him.
“How are you feeling?” the prince asked.
“Very—” I began, but my voice actually shook a little, which I refused to let happen. So I cleared my throat and tried again. “Very well, Your Highness.”
“You look a little less ghostly today. There’s color in your cheeks again.” He leaned toward me. “Should I have you empty your pockets?” His voice was a low whisper, and it made something flutter low in my belly.
“I’m hardly going to steal in front of you, Your Highness.” I smiled at him politely. And if I planned to steal something in front of him, he’d never see it.
“Since you won’t be doing laundry today, I thought I’d take you on a tour of the grounds.”
“Do you have time for that?”
He gestured to a table—dark wood with trestle legs—visible in a small room behind the throne.
The table was stacked with documents and rolled parchments, books and inkpots.
“I’ve spent the morning reviewing six months of financial records, missives about mountain lily yields, complaints about the cheating market sellers, garrison requests for additional weapons and armor.
It seems my brother made very little headway. ”
I hadn’t really considered what a prince would actually do, other than holding fancy balls and drinking from gold chalices. It was unkind, but I was impressed he’d bothered to read them all. And disappointed there wasn’t a single chalice in sight. Maybe they were in the treasury.
We followed the prince into the room, where he picked up a stack of papers and turned back to us. “Do you know what these are?”
“Love letters from would-be princesses?”
Talia snorted.
The prince looked her way and pointed to a slightly smaller stack. “This is the love letter pile, Talia.”
She nodded gravely. “Of course, Your Highness.”
I wasn’t sure if he was joking, but it could have been the truth. Carethia didn’t have many princes, and there were plenty of people who considered marrying into the royal family a personal victory. Wealth, power, money.
And death threats.
“This pile,” he continued, “is land disputes. Some are neighbors arguing about nonsense: who owns a strip of land the width of their hand, servants too noisy in the morning, dogs pissing on their statuary.”
Little wonder the former prince hadn’t wanted to deal with the commoners.
He returned the stack to the table. “After all that, I’ve earned some fresh air.” He glanced at Galen and Talia. “I’m going to give Fox a tour of the grounds. I’ll return shortly.”
“Your Highness,” Galen said, stepping forward.
But the prince waved him off. “You can stand down. I’m not leaving the palace.” With that, he gestured me toward a side door opened by a guard as he strode toward it, me behind him.
“How are you going to give me a tour of the grounds without leaving the palace?” I asked when we walked together down a stone passageway.
“I have a shortcut.”
“Shortcut” was relative when crossing a royal palace. The building was enormous, with hallways that branched into more hallways like a tree in need of spring pruning. Memorizing the layout—a thief in a palace was still a thief—was going to take time.