“Not at all, Your Highness.” He gestured over his shoulder. “With these two knocking down walls every hour, I can hardly ever catch my own bearings.”
From behind them, Corvin snickered to his twin. “Baron said you’re so clumsy, you knock down walls.”
“When we get to the kitchen,” Leon shot back, “I’m gonnashove a pack of herbs down your throat and cook you like a turkey.”
“The one we should cook is you. You could feed a whole hamlet. I’m not even food enough for a cat.”
He paused as if realizing what he’d said, and Leon hooted with laughter.
Aria smiled, though she should not have; indulging fights between siblings was surely unmannered behavior.
“This is a generous offer,” said Lord Reeves, “but I hesitate to keep you from your other guests.”
“They’re Eliza’s guests, truly.” Aria had already mismanaged her job as hostess, and she couldn’t imagine making it better by standing around, nodding off during conversation. Better to let her father smooth out the event with no further interference from her. “It’s no trouble, Lord Reeves.”
“It’s no longer ‘Lord Reeves,’” he said, a bit of an edge to his voice.
Surely it must sting to have the title taken from him, but without Aria’s intervention, it would have been taken from his family completely. Could she not earn a moment’s gratitude?
Bitterness. Mark.
“Lord Guillaume, then.” He was still part of a titled family, after all.
“You didn’t have to ask Baron how to say it?” Leon piped up, suddenly right on their heels.
Aria frowned. “Of course not.”
“But it’s a weird name no one uses.”
For that, he earned another sharp elbow from his twin.
Aria was left with only the former Lord Reeves to address her remarks to, so with a side glance, she said, “It’s a Patrian name, isn’t it? Like my mother’s. It’s lovely, if a bit uncommon.”
“No one aside from my own mother has ever found my name lovely.”
No matter how she tried, she could not get a thing right. How was she meant to slyly interrogate a Caster for information on curses when she couldn’t even manage a regular conversation with one? She could hardly manage anything given the steady pounding in her head and the increasing heaviness of her eyelids.
Lord Guillaume said, “I forget the queen is Patrian.”
Aria startled upright, blinking hard. “Most of court does, encouraged by both my parents. It was a necessary political union, not a pleasant one.” She rubbed her forehead. “Forgive me. I’m not myself.”
“So you’ve said.” He studied her, green eyes much too piercing.
Realizing her makeup would be more obvious up close, Aria quickly looked away. She spoke for a moment about the tapestries they passed and the historic scenes they depicted. Something she said made the twins bicker again, and she winced, though Lord Reeves hardly even glanced back. As long as their arguments remained verbal, he did not seem inclined to intervene.
“Your Highness is fond of history,” he said.
“Very much so.” She meant to expound, but the walk to the kitchen was a short one, with its necessary proximity to the ballroom. So as it turned out, Aria had seized an opportunity, then accomplished nothing with it. Per usual.
“Here we are,” she said, somehow managing to hold back her grimace at such an inane comment as she swung open the kitchen door.
Leon burst eagerly through the door, Corvin only a step behind. Baron winced inwardly, trying to maintain an outward confidence that his family was completely normal and not the least bit ill-mannered in royal company.
Oddly enough, he seemed to care far more than the royal herself.
Princess Aria slipped her arm from his and greeted the kitchen staff like old friends, asking briefly after families and well-being. Just as Leon seemed about to burst with questions, the princess made proper introductions between the boys and “Cook.”
“Don’t you have a name?” Leon demanded.
