Roman released Griff, and the man rubbed his throat with a few coughs. “I’m trying. Maybe next time wait until you have a room to yourselves, yeah?”
Violet wanted to crawl under the table. “Can we talk about something else?”
Ares nodded and swallowed a bite of chicken. “If we pick up the pace, we can reach Saltu in three more days.”
“Three days?” Violet asked. “It’s a week’s ride from the border to Saltu, and we’ve only been traveling a day.”
“That’s with a normal pace and frequent stops to rest,” Ares pointed out. “We can travel dawn to dusk with fewer stops and make it in half the time.” Chicken fanned out from the bone when he tore it off with his teeth. “We can knock another day off the ride if you ride a horse instead of the carriage. Griff can stay with the carriage and lead it home.”
The thought of being stuck in a carriage for fourteen hours a day with few stops sounded miserable, but so did traveling for another six days. Riding a horse all day sounded worse, and she wouldn’t want to leave Griff alone with the carriage. The horses were trained to pull without a driver, so it wouldn’t be too much work, but it’d be lonely. Griff was too social.
Violet bit into her sandwich as she weighed the pros and cons of each, but immediately gagged with the wretched taste of the devil’s spit hit her tongue. She spit out the sandwich, shoved back from the table, and leaned over to dry heave.
“Violet?” Roman’s alarmed voice broke into her internal panic, reminding her he did not know her hatred for the putrid condiment that had assaulted her senses.
She waved him off. “I’m fine.” She gagged again.
Someone—Griff—shoved a drink in her hand and patted her back. “There must have been mayonnaise on the sandwich,” he explained to Roman.
“What does that mean?” Roman asked as he crouched next to her.
“She hates it.” Griff’s voice wavered with barely suppressed laughter. “Our queen can’t even handle smelling it.”
Violet gulped down the water and glared at Griff. “It’s fucking disgusting. It should be outlawed.”
“You don’t like mayonnaise?” Roman asked. “I didn’t know.” The last words were spoken with a tinge of sadness.
A horrid thought struck Violet.Is my boyfriend a mayonnaise lover?They’d have to break up. She reached over and grabbed Roman’s ale, taking a long swig to burn the terrible taste from her tongue. “It’s not something that comes up in conversation.”
“One time she bit into a chicken sandwich and puked all over the table,” Griff continued. “My mother was mortified.”
Roman picked up her plate and quietly entered the kitchen.
Griff snorted. “He’s going to kill the cook.”
“What?” Violet snapped her head toward the kitchen door. “Why?”
Griff lifted a brow. “For making you act like you swallowed a slug.”
“I didn’t ask for no mayonnaise. They couldn’t have known.”
Roman returned with a new sandwich and set it on the table. “I asked the cook to make you another one.”
The cook stuck his head out of the door. “My apologizes. We should have reviewed the ingredients when you ordered.”
She waved him off. “No harm done.” The man disappeared back into the kitchen, and Violet squeezed Roman’s hand in thanks. The prince might be terrifying in his own right, but he also possessed a thoughtful sweetness he never showed to anyone else. “Thank you for the new sandwich.” A whiff of mayonnaise hit her, and she fought another gag. “I can still smell it.”
Roman motioned to his mouth. “That’s because you have some on the corner of your mouth.”
Violet’s stomach turned.
“You’ve done it now,” Griff mumbled right before Violet puked all over Roman’s boots.
* * *
Later that night, after Roman burned his clothes and shoes and scrubbed his body raw, Violet crawled into bed and patted the mattress beside her.
Roman folded his massive body under the blankets and rolled to his side to face Violet.
