Chapter 7
Maybe it’s strange to enjoy walking the city at night, but as Hex and I take to the street through a light drizzle that started up while we were inside, my body relaxes.
My head clears. It’s always easier to breathe out here, away from the stifling office and out of sight of the prying eyes of the Candoran people.
The working class started to pay attention to me when I became the queen’s bodyguard to replace her now-husband, and now the nobility have started to take notice too—as I wanted them to—so there are always eyes on me. Under the cover of night, I can finally let down my guard.
Even with Hex next to me.
“Is he always like that?” Hex asks, breaking the silence between us. He keeps his voice soft, like he can tell I’m searching for peace out here. “Virek?”
I shiver, wishing my jacket had a hood and I wasn’t wearing a dress. “Does he always think he’s right? Yes, I suppose you would recognize that particular trait.”
He chuckles. “I’m familiar with it, yeah.”
Glancing at him, I snicker at the way the rain is quickly soaking through his jumper as we walk because he didn’t bring a proper coat.
“You know,” I say, “if you had followed my suggestion and worn something a little less casual, you might have had a waterproof jacket.” At least I’m not the only one who’ll be cold.
There aren’t many street lights in this part of the city, but there are enough for me to see him meet my gaze as his lips twitch. “Probably.” He pulls the cap off his head and tugs it onto mine before I can stop him. “I like the rain, though.”
“Me too.” Particularly now that my body has caught fire from his gesture, small though it was. Coming from Hex, it feels enormous. “Er, thank you. And thank you for following my lead at the gallery.”
His eyes spark with amusement. “Which time?”
“Both of them. Bidding on the painting and helping me get invited to that dinner.”
“Why do you want people to think you’re not interested in me?”
It’s as much his direct question as it is the wrinkle in his brow that makes me pause. I turn to face him and look him in the eyes. It’s rare for Hex to admit he doesn’t know something, and I won’t treat this moment lightly.
“It isn’t that,” I say, though he’s partially right. “And I could be completely off the mark with my plan.”
“Tell me.” The words sound more like a plea than an order, surprising me once again.
He’s been different tonight—less thorny—and for a moment I just watch him, studying every inch of his expression as if I might find something to help me understand his change in demeanor.
“My choice to leave Freya’s side sparked curiosity,” I tell him eventually, “but I need more than that. I want people to think you are interested in me.” True though it is, it sounds so self-centered.
I quickly add, “If you’ve set your sights on a commoner and are willing to fight for my attention, it puts us both in a position for the antis and the rebellious nobles to take an interest in us. ”
His jaw tightens. As always, it doesn’t take him long to figure out what I don’t say. “They might start to see each of us as a potential ally.”
“And invite us both to exclusive dinner parties to scope out our usefulness to the cause,” I confirm with a grin.
“Bring us closer to the inner circle. I can get there easily enough, but you don’t have much of a chance without me.”
There’s the arrogance I know and love. “More or less,” I say with a sigh. “If I could have done it without you, I would have.”
His lips quirk in a half smile. “But Virek isn’t fond of your plan,” he guesses.
“Virek doesn’t know my plan. Can you imagine me telling him that I want to fake a romantic entanglement with a prince? There’s no way under the skies that he would agree with it.”
“I’m not so sure Virek agrees with anything you say.” He hums and slips his hands into his pockets, a thoughtful look on his face. He’s far calmer right now than he usually is, and it’s nice to see a softer side of him. Even if it’s weirding me out.
“Do you think Bellgaard is collaborating with the anti-royalists?” he asks after a moment. “He’s not the type to invite someone to dinner just as a gesture of gratitude, particularly not someone like me.”
Shrugging, I motion for us to keep walking.
The wetter I get, the more a chill sets in, and my bed is calling my name.
“There’s a good chance he invited you to his dinner because you made a statement by buying that painting, whether you know what that statement means.
He could be the man behind the funding, or he could simply be curious.
Either way, someone at that dinner is going to be paying you close attention. ”
“Just as they’ll be watching you,” he points out.
I shiver again, both from the cold and the idea of so many eyes trained on me.
I’ve gotten used to being in the background and mostly ignored, and these missions are the first time I’ve truly been in the spotlight as more than the queen’s bodyguard.
“Let’s hope they’ll be watching me, even though Virek expects me to trail after Blackmere the way Blackmere’s sister trailed after you. ”
Hex wrinkles his nose. “Was that an insult toward me or Eloise Blackmere? Sometimes I can’t tell with you.”
“All part of my charm, Prince.”
We slip into silence again, our steps the only sound breaking through the rain’s soft buzz.
This is the most comfortable I’ve ever felt with Hex, and I can’t help but wonder what changed.
For all his resistance to helping me, he’s been crucial in moving the investigation forward, and tonight it almost feels like he’s on my side.
It’s as unnerving as it is relieving, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with a civil Hex Alverra.
He’s making it far too easy to hope things might change between us for good and that he’ll see me in a way he hasn’t before. As something more than his enemy or even as a friend.
To distract myself from that dangerous thought, I take in our surroundings, realizing with a jolt that my feet have been carrying me down a familiar path. We’re only a few blocks from my flat.
And nowhere near the palace.
I swear under my breath and stop again, guilt building in my chest. “The palace is that way.”
He glances in the direction I gesture. “Well met, Storme. Glad to know you’re good at directions.”
“Then why are you walking this way?”
His eyes lift over my head, though I doubt he can see far in the darkness. “You live this way, don’t you?”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t, but seeing as you’re not worried about getting yourself home, I can guess easily enough.” He starts walking again, straight toward my building, and I have no choice but to follow and let him walk me home.
He doesn’t say anything when I come up beside him again, nor does he look at me.
He’s taking in the neighborhood with an unreadable expression.
I’m sure the narrow streets and cramped townhouses look like slums in his eyes, but unlike the RIA offices, I like my neighborhood.
It’s quiet here, and people can be themselves without any pressure to live up to an unreachable standard.
A question comes to mind that’s hard to ignore. If he wasn’t a prince, would Hex still be the same arrogant overachiever? Could we have gotten along in school if he wasn’t so dead set on proving himself?
He’s different out here, which makes me think things could have been different between us if he wasn’t an Alverra. Casually walking a dark side street of Invem with his hands in his pockets, he seems more comfortable in his skin than he ever has.
Where’s the reluctance to help me? What happened to his hatred of being told what to do? How can he be so different from day to day?
“You’re staring at me,” he mutters, looking at me from out of the corner of his eye.
My stomach does a flip, and I scramble to come up with an excuse that isn’t along the lines of ‘You’re not acting like Hex.’ “Still trying to wrap my head around a prince wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap to an art auction.”
His answering smirk fills my already unsettled stomach with butterflies.
“You forget you’re wearing the cap now, Storme.
I think—” A low rumble of voices ahead of us cuts him off, and he instantly goes on alert, grabbing my arm and pulling me into the closest alley.
Pressing me against the wall and shielding me with his body is overdoing it, but I’m not about to complain. He’s so much warmer than the rain.
“Is this necessary?” I whisper.
He shushes me and presses closer. Apparently my little neighborhood looks dangerous rather than peaceful in his eyes, and this protective streak making an appearance is highly attractive.
The voices grow louder, words becoming distinguishable through the drizzling rain.
“…be a problem if wages kept up with costs,” a man is saying, “but skies forbid we get paid a living wage.”
“All these empty promises the queen’s been making,” a different voice replies, the words gruff.
“None of her so-called reforms make it down to us at the bottom,” the first man grumbles.
It sounds like they’ve stopped walking, and the faint smell of tobacco hits my nose. My heart starts pounding, and I take a few calming breaths so I don’t miss anything they say while they take their smoke break.
“You regret voting for her?” the second man asks.
The first laughs. “I didn’t vote for her. Grimstad would have done more for us than she ever will.”
Hex’s weight shifts away from me, and by the looks of his scowl, the prince is getting ready to go confront the men.
I grab his arm, shaking my head when he looks at me. “Don’t,” I whisper. The last thing I need is for my ticket to the nobility to cause a scene on a public street.
The conversation shifts to Freya’s electoral opponent, Markham Grimstad, and how his new position as Prime Minister has kept things from completely falling apart.
“Unfortunate that there’s no telling how long the queen’ll decide to keep her crown,” the first man says with a heavy sigh. “And if she starts popping out half-American babies, I can’t imagine things’ll get better in the future.”
“I kind of like the American,” the other man says. “He, at least, doesn’t have all sorts of royalist notions clouding his judgment.”
“Still accepted the crown when given the chance,” the first man mutters.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I dunno. Sometimes I think the anti-royalists have the right idea about things. Equality, you know?
“They’re organized too,” says the second man. “They might actually get something done if things keep going the way they are.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
They’re quiet for a moment, and then the second man brings up the Candoran rugby team’s latest match and how poorly they played and could use their own change in organization.
The conversation shifts to the sport, and not long after, the men move on, passing the alley without a glance in our direction.
I look forward to the day when these types of conversations fizzle out and disappear, but as time goes on, that feels more and more like a pipe dream.
I don’t think either man is affiliated with the antis, but if their opinions reflect the majority of the populace, it might not be enough to track down whoever’s funding the group, particularly if the anti-royalists are as organized as those men think.
If the monarchy is going to survive, so many things need to change.
Hex is still pressed against me, and as I turn my attention to him, I take note of how stiff he is. He’s frozen in place, his eyes on the street and his jaw clenched tight.
“Are you alright, Prince?”
He startles, then relaxes, slowly pulling away as he shakes his head.
“It takes time to fix things,” he mutters, like a response to the men’s conversation, but his comment doesn’t do much to alleviate his underlying frustration.
I don’t know why, but I don’t think it’s entirely because of what the men were saying.
“Do you…” I hesitate, knowing this question could be taken the wrong way. When Hex looks at me sharply, I swallow and raise my voice. “Don’t hate me for this question—more than you already do, anyway—but do you think Freya is going about things the right way?”
“Of course she is,” he snaps back. He winces and clenches his hands into fists before letting his hands relax again.
“But I… Sometimes I wonder if she’s doing enough.
Freya wants what’s best for the people and always has.
She’s incredibly smart when it comes to politics, and Elliot’s time in the Special Forces was centered on stabilizing governments around the world. They know what they’re doing.”
As worrisome as it is, he seems to be trying to convince himself that he means what he says.
Is the prince not as fully in line with the RIA’s goal as we need him to be? If he’s uncertain, that will help convince any anti-royalists and their noble supporter that he could be useful to them. But it will also make him a wild card on our side. More of a wild card.
I don’t understand him. One minute, he’s locking me in a room for the fun of it, and the next he’s walking me home and protecting me from danger, all the while harboring thoughts that seem to leave him firmly in the middle of the royalist/anti-royalist issue.
My gut says I can trust him, but it’s becoming clear that there’s more to him than what I know.
He looks at me again, and all of his frustration and uncertainty melts away, his emotions hidden behind a mask of confidence and a carefree attitude.
It’s so similar to what Blackmere did at the gallery that it leaves me on edge.
“I’ll walk you home, Storme.” He offers his arm, which I take with a moment of hesitation.
I’ll need to keep a closer eye on him going forward, but if I can’t trust Hex Alverra, who can I trust? I can’t save an entire country on my own, and right now it feels like he’s my only true ally.
When we reach the door to my flat, I slip free of his arm but pause on the step, turning back to look at the prince. Maybe it’s because I saw some of his real feelings tonight, but it’s easier to see through his mask now. There’s a good chance I’ve been wrong about Hex always being self-assured.
What am I supposed to do with that?
I’m too tired to think clearly, and my safest bet is to say goodnight and start making a new plan in the morning. “Well, Prince,” I say with a halfhearted smile, “it looks like you’ll have to endure me as your date once again.”
His lips twitch. “I think I’ll survive, Storme. Do you intend to, er, throw yourself at Blackmere like Virek wants you to?”
“I’ll give Blackmere the attention he deserves.” A small thrill runs through me when something like disappointment flashes across Hex’s face, and I can’t help but add, “Unfortunately for him, I’ve set my sights on a prince, and I’m generally not one to change my mind when I’ve made a good choice.”
Maybe I imagine it, but I’m pretty sure Hex blushes as I head inside.