33. Casualties of Kin
CASUALTIES OF KIN
ERIC
“ M inion Pro Italic,” I say to the redheaded menace before me, watching her for a reaction as I pop a sour pineapple square into my mouth.
I only met her two hours ago, and already she’s following me around as though she found her personal form of amusement for the night.
This time she’s cornered me by the fruit platters.
“ Or —now stay with me here, Your Highness,” Percy raises her hands, palms facing me and eyes widening in exaggeration, “you’re just throwing out random font names to impress me and sound clever. Bleh .”
I let one corner of my mouth lift and stifle a chuckle in favour of another piece of pineapple.
“Hardly. Robert Slimbach, 1990. Inspired by the classical typefaces of the late Renaissance era. It’s crafted to be highly readable yet simultaneously elegant and beautiful.
Italics, however, is where its true voice emerges.
Elegant surface, yes, but it tilts just enough to showcase motion beneath.
Upright Minion Pro holds back; you don’t. I’d say you tip towards mischief.”
She startles, snorting so hard that we get side-eyed by Octavian Halpine’s wife as she fills her plate. My companion seems to not give a fuck. “Okay, wow . Did you read my childhood disciplinary notes, or something? That’s uncomfortably accurate.”
“I don’t lie.”
“Can’t believe I almost trusted Ed’s word.” Biting into a strawberry, she says with juice dribbling down her chin, “He said you were a creep. Took my chances on you anyway because you’re hot and Chess hasn’t complained yet so… I guess we can be friends.”
Charming. If I’m a creep, then what does that make the man who salivates when his cousin speaks? Can’t forget how much he despises Hamish either. Oedipus needs to calm the fuck down.
“Excellent, I’ve collected both a wren and a magpie. Does that mean I’m qualified to attend family arguments now?”
Using a green serviette to wipe her face, she laughs once more.
“Oh, trust me, you’ve got the full pass now that you know everything.
Witches, taboo names you’re not allowed to say thrice, ancestral curses, bodies in the lake and ears in the castle walls.
Any sane man would be fucking fleeing.” One unnervingly red brow lifts. “Are you gonna flee, Prince Eric?”
Without offence to Percy or anything, but upon her question, my gaze refuses her.
It slips over a freckled shoulder, drawn to the extravagant savouries table just a few feet away, one that Lydia currently operates.
And there she is, Francesca, laughing at something her aunt just said.
She tilts her chin when Lydia tips a piece of pepper steak pie towards her mouth.
Carefully, she takes one bite, gravy glossing her lower lip when she leans back to chew, mumbling something.
Lydia’s smile broadens at what is undoubtedly a compliment.
Francesca pulls that soft, kittenish expression when Lydia scoldingly tosses a serviette at her, one that’s secretly content because the six-year-old inside of her still remembers being reprimanded by parents long gone.
I tell myself to breathe steadily, but my windpipe misbehaves and imitates a crushed soda can. Run? Whatever loyalty Godwyn once possessed, dormant in my blood, pulsates as though reminding me it’s alive again.
Man down. Man utterly fucking down.
“No,” I answer at long last, without tearing my gaze from her.
Percy’s snort makes me wonder if I should have said anything at all. Because the next moment, Lydia is pointing in our direction, and Francesca turns slightly, attention passing right over her cousin to land on me. My answer is in the red of her cheeks once she realises I’m already looking.
“Didn’t think you would. And she’d never forgive you for even trying,” Percy says around another bite of strawberry.
The fragile eye contact between me and my delightful phantom fractures the moment Charlie Henderson pops into view.
A request for permission stays tucked behind his grin (if it even existed), and he just slides a silk-gloved hand to her waist before delivering a kiss to a still red cheek.
His ego’s probably saying that shade belongs to him.
Lydia, catching Francesca’s subtle wince, bows her head and fucks off to convene with her employees.
Percy watches with carnivorous eyes, a grimace painting her mouth. “And his font?”
“Wingdings,” I say before she’s even finished the question. Percy cracks a loud laugh, her free hand bracing on my forearm to steady herself. “A collection of symbols that passes for meaning. Needs a key to understand, and even then he still says nothing.”
“Ouch.”
Charlie’s leaning down to whisper something, hand bunching the golden trim of her dress.
My own itches to pull her to my side, to see what he does when I’ve claimed the space he hungers for.
But that would be a sort of declaration, wouldn’t it?
Something primitive and audacious. Here, on Sheffolk land, Charlie is a prospective suitor in talks of replacing Gabriel.
In this glittering hall of nobles, I’m nothing but a visiting prince, a potential political ally—a scandal with a pretty title.
The things that make my ears burn to even think about remain unknown to them.
They don’t know I’ve tasted her mouth, had her naked in my lap.
They haven’t seen her body go heavy at the offering of my arms, breath soft as she accepted ten minutes and then gave me the entire night. The hall doesn’t know any of it.
What I want is to tug her clear from his orbit, but want and need are on opposite ends in a place that sees gossip as currency. So I walk Percy back to the Marathid table and take a seat at my own. The minutes pass by, loud as forks against stainless steel, and I feel each tick in my teeth.
Laughter ripples around me as duck mousse begins to make its rounds.
A shadow eclipses my view of Thalia snapping pictures of the edible 24-carat gold leaves on her chocolate pudding, and I look up to see Lydia.
She hands me a green paper cone, folded from one of the fancy damask-print menus they ordered for the occasion.
Inside are slap chips, perfectly golden and perfectly limp, served with a tiny silver fork.
The smell of salt and vinegar hits me square in the chest.
And I try—fuck, do I try —not to smile. “I seem to recall being branded ‘difficult’ for requesting for this to be on the menu. Thought you said these weren’t appropriate for formal functions,” I say, reaching for the cone.
All she does is raise a thick brow and respond in a heavy accent, “They’re not, but you’re mos? 1 not exactly an appropriate prince either.”
My smile slips free. There’s a little apron tied around her waist that wasn’t there earlier, and it takes me a second to realise this is what she left the ballroom for.
To fry a few potatoes for me, in the middle of the most ostentatious event in the duchy.
Everywhere I look, guests are eating hors d’oeuvres with difficult-to-pronounce names, and I’m sitting here with a cone of slap chips.
I can’t remember the last time somebody went out of their way for me like this: not because of my title, but in spite of it.
A ‘thank you’ builds in my mouth, stopped only by the fear that it wouldn’t even be enough. Lydia watches me with a knowing glint in her dark gaze, like she knows I don’t exactly have the words for this.
“Stay,” I offer instead, reaching to pull out Francesca’s seat. “Share this with me. Unless you’re allergic to salt, vinegar or my company. Still testing that latter theory, by the way.”
That earns me a half-hearted eye roll. “You’re too charming; did you know that? One of these days I’m gonna klap you, royalty or not. Can mos never make a lady swoon like this.”
We don’t talk much after that, mostly because I can feel about a million eyes watching my every move.
Lydia uses a toothpick from the jar on the table to pick up her chips, and the cone gets passed back and forth.
When there’s only one left, she gestures for me to have it because apparently I need it more.
Grabbing the empty cone, she gently pats my shoulder and says laughingly, “Sterkte, liefie.”? 2
Then she’s gone, swept back into duty, and the ballroom feels carnivorous again.
The ache only lessens once Francesca is back at my right, and I’m very polite about the way I squeeze her hand beneath the table in greeting—polite enough not to smirk at Charlie and Edmund, both pretending not to be watching us.
In the next few moments, the cakes are rolled in beneath glass domes; Francesca’s is seven layers of towering buttercream, rising like a forest at dusk with fondant of a deep green.
Each tier is dense with detail, with moss- shaped marzipan scattered on the edges and twisting chocolate branches wrapped around the base.
By contrast, Percy’s cake is an explosion of colour, the precise shade of childhood dreams in a bold, brilliant purple.
The tiers are separated by clouds of meringue with sugared petals of violet bursting across it.
I get a toothache just staring at it. Though I look away, the sickly taste of overwhelming sugar doesn’t leave.
It doesn’t come from the cakes, at least, not all of it.
I’m being force-fed sweetness in different forms: velvet waistcoats, candied compliments and teeth bared in what the nobles here call smiling.
Sickening .
I reach for my wine glass to drown out the taste; the stem is so thin it practically vanishes between my fingers.
The first sip tells me everything, and I freeze.
You don’t forget a taste like this: plum and blackberries macerated in alcohol, so ripe it’s almost overripe.
I could recognise it in a coma. Another sip takes me back ten years to my fourteenth birthday.