“I, I- Pardon, sir. Where is Ser Elías?” I worried louder.“Elías?”
“Don’t worry,” Sameer purred. He raised his arm to point. “Our shadow is around the corner there. He stopped to look at one of the swords affixed to the wall. You’re not alone with me just yet.”
My lips parted; his did, too, humored at my relief or something else. Sam double-checked his fact to be sure, peering around the bend for us.
“Yes, there he is,” he said. He leaned forward and spoke quieter.“Rest assured, I’m no crook, Svana. I’ll only take what you’ve given to me. And I’m a patient man. We have all summer still.”
I nearly died, metaphorically vaulting my way through his comment. On cue, as ifsummonedby his natural sense of impropriety, Ser Elías rounded the stone wall. He looked between us as I smiled shamefully at my proximity to the Prince, stepping back.
“There you are,” I said.
Elías looked between us.
“I thought I lost you,” I said.
Sameer waited for me to take the lead, obediently falling into stride with my knight. He said, “Shall I escort us to the bedchambers then?” He was entirely at ease. “Though they are a bit tricky to find.”
“Tricky?” Elías asked. “How so?”
Sam said, “The ladies’ chambers are all on this end of the palace, whereas the men’s are clear down the other wing. We keep them separate for decorum, of course. You can get lost if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“Lost?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Some of the rooms are marked, though, which make for good landmarks. For instance, my door is red. None of the others are.”
Elías scowled at me as we arrived at a propped, ornate wood door. It was embossed with roses along the beams, and Josie was unpacking my things inside.
“How lovely,” I said, running along the flowers’ with my hand.
“And your door has roses,” Sam said. “No other room has roses.”
“I love them,” I said.
“It warms me so to know that, Princess. This is our Rose Suite. It was my late mother’s,” he explained.
I flushed.
“It’s only right that it should be yours,” he added. He held his palm out to usher me toward the window seat. “Originally, you were assigned a room down the hall, but this chamber belongs to the woman of the Palace, and it has sat empty for too long. Your reception of it only proves that I was correct to put you here.”
“I am honored, sir,” I said. “I shall do my best to respect your mother’s room.”
“She was also quite fond of horses.” He pointed outside. “You’ll find your room overlooks the yard where our team is kept.”
As promised, the view did reign over the stables and the grassy land they sat upon. The Prince was near my shoulder in a moment, peering somewhere into the barn.
“That bloody bastard!”he muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”I cried.
“Ah. It’s just Cyrus.” He pointed for me. “He’s there. That figure striking the dummy form. You can tell by how fancy his movement is. Always a show, that one.”
“What? What show?” I asked.
Below, the lord from the market used his sword against a humanoid shape, the dummy Sam had identified, but his moves were hardly fancy. Then he did a spin.
“W-What is he doing?” I asked. “Wow. Did you see that? Is your friend a knight?”
“A knight?”Sam chuckled. He moved toward the door. “No. No, Cyrus is no more a knight than I am a shepherd. Knights require honor.”
