Fortunately, I am an excellent actor.
“What?” I say again because he keeps looking at me with that irritable expression on his face.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last ten minutes.”
Did I mention he likes to exaggerate?
“We haven’t been sitting here for ten minutes, brother,” I begin. A servant leans between us to pour wine into our goblets, momentarily halting this inane conversation. I nod my thanks and the young male gives me a small smile. I try to be kind to the staff, iffor no other reason than to make up for Troi’s constant mistreatment. The servant moves on, and I lift and rotate the glass, watching the red liquid swirl like a tiny whirlpool. “What do you need?”
“I need you to get my idiot wife and bring her back before I bash her fucking head in,” he says, smiling all the while.
I wish I could say he’s joking, but—
“Good gods, Mother. Again?” Troi whines, barely keeping his volume in check, as our meals are set in front of us.
I have to say, I agree with him. You’d think the queen would have more discerning tastes, but no. All the woman wants is sausage. Sausage, sausage, sausage. If I never eat another fucking sausage in my life, it will be too gods damned soon. Tonight’s sausage has been thrown into the middle of a stew, so it looks like a floating turd. Mmmm, yummy.
“Shut up, boy,” the queen says, smacking him upside the head like a toddler. “Or I’ll send you out with that poor excuse you call a wife.”
This is the wife she forced him to marry, but we don’t talk about that.
“She was your choice, not mine,” Troi says.
Check that. I don’t talk about it.
The queen scoffs. “Of course not. You can barely choose your own shoes. You think I’d leave such an important decision to you. You’re your father through and through—all bravado, no brains. Gods knows what will come of the crown when you become king.”
It’s a lecture I’ve heard a hundred times and is easily tuned out—for me, at least. On the plus side, now that Troi is occupied, I can return my attention to the little siren—and Duke Berezin, who has leaned in so close to her, he’spractically on her lap. She’s not happy about it either. She’s got her head turned away and her eyes squeezed shut. I’d bet all the queen’s jewels the man has the breath of a horse. There’s some sort of scuffle going on between the two of them under the table, and the other diners are starting to notice.
Suddenly, she leaps to her feet, knocking her chair back. It crashes to the floor and every head snaps to where she’s standing. Quickly turning a startling shade of tomato, she mutters an apology and rushes from the room, leaving the overturned chair where it lays.
And Berezin laughs and laughs.
I grit my teeth against the urge to jump from my seat and beat the man into a bloody pulp right here and now. It would be terrible table manners, after all. Too bad for Berezin because when I finally get my mitts on him, I’m going to hurt him slowly.
8
The murmurs start the moment the door snicks shut behind me. Well, that stretch of anonymity lasted all of five seconds. At least this time the whispers are about something other than my illegitimate birth or lack of magic. Change is good, right? Even if the step I’ve taken is more sideways than forward.
Biting my lip to stop myself from screaming, I stomp into the hallway and kick the wall with my stupidly delicate shoe. Pain erupts in my big toe. Now I really want to scream because my toe is probably broken and all of Leodin’s plans will have to be scrapped because I can’t exactly go unnoticed when I can’t walk.
I take a seat on the edge of a massive marble planter, ease my throbbing foot from the shoe, and wiggle my toes. Not broken, thank the gods. This is all Berezin’s fault. The dumb bastard. I should have stabbed him with the fork.
“Ahhh, another satisfied diner,” says a female voice, startling me out of my fury induced fugue.
A fae girl in a lovely pink and white gown is leaning against the wall opposite me. She’s probably around my age—though she could be two-hundred judging by the way full-blooded fae age—and pretty with ash brown hair, rich mahogany skin and eyes that appear to be a brownish green but are hard to make out in the waning light.
I huff out a laugh, even though it isn’t the least bit funny. “Well, I’m not trying to escape the food, if that’s what you’re thinking, though it was definitely a meal worth running away from.” Shoe in hand, I limp over to the woman, noting as I draw closer her puffy red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. “Are you alright?”
She waves me off, the white handkerchief in her hand flapping like a flag of surrender. “I’m fine. Just peachy.” She’s clearly not fine or peachy, but I don’t press. I step around the girl and, imitating her stance, lean against the wall. “So, if it isn’t the food you’re running away from, what is it? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s a tale as old as time, I’m afraid. A much older and incredibly unattractive male trying to grope the young maiden under the table.” I press a hand to my chest dramatically.
“They’re not very creative, are they?” she says, the corner of her lip lifting just a smidge.
I sputter a laugh. “No, they’re not. Though I’m fairly certain this one mostly does it because he enjoys watching me squirm. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the wordno,so the only thing I could do was get up and leave. Made a bit of a scene, though, so I’m sure my stepfather will rip me to shreds when we return to our rooms.”
“You? I would think he’d be angry with him.”
