Tor waved this aside. “Oh, no, I definitely sprang upon you unannounced. I don’t mind waiting to be reintroduced. I think the last time I saw them was at Varex’s wedding, and that was far too long ago. Oh, and I believe Prince Bavil came for Princess Cala’s naming ceremony.”
The King nodded. “Yes. I was not feeling well, so he went in my stead.”
“I’m looking forward to getting to know him better,” Tor said politely. “And your other children, of course.”
Forex grunted at this.
Had they exhausted the possibilities of small talk?
“I look forward to dinner,” Tor tried.
King Forex waved his hand. “A servant will show you the way to the dining room.”
Tor offered another neat bow and happily accepted the dismissal.
He had a couple hours to pass, and he hadn’t exactly given a lot of thought to what he was going to do besides seduce a prince. He assumed that Terila and her parents would have pulled out all the stops to entertain him. It was part of why Tor had been so eager to get away.
No one had been expecting him here. Tor grinned to himself. Whoknewwhat was going to happen.
Back in the hallway, Tor found that there was another servant waiting to show him to his rooms. She was a few years younger than Tor, he thought. Mid-twenties, maybe. She had pale skin and dark blond hair that was neatly bound up in braids and coiled around her head. She was dressed in gray, as all the servants seemed to be, but she had a lot oflovely curves, and her eyes were a piercing gray that seemed only to be enhanced by the dress. Her expression wasn’t quite no-nonsense, but he didn’t think she suffered fools.
“This way, Your Highness,” the woman said, gesturing.
It was impossible to both walk deferentially behind someone and lead the way, so Tor solved the dilemma by simply walking beside her and trusting that she would direct him.
Sure enough, with a “Just here, Your Highness,” she directed him where he needed to go, rather than leaving him to head off into the depths of the building, never to be heard from again. Whoever had built this castle must have liked mazes.
“I apologize if I’ve put you to any trouble to get everything prepared so quickly,” Tor said. “I know I arrived a little unexpectedly.”
“Not at all, Your Highness,” the woman said politely.
Tor couldn’t blame her for not wanting to tell a prince to his face that he was a nuisance, but he was pretty sure that the stable hand would have told him exactly what he thought of him. He suppressed a chuckle.
“Thank you for saying so. But I’m a guard in addition to a prince, so I’m used to roughing it more than you might expect. I also fully understand how long it takes to clean rooms that may not have been used in a while.” He offered a wry smile. “I’d be perfectly happy to take the very, er, scenic way to my rooms if that will give everyone a few more minutes to get everything prepared.”
Her eyes flickered to his face, a break in the calm demeanor that she was exuding and something that looked like a smile starting in her eyes and the corner of her lips, though it never formed fully. He wondered if someone had taught her it wasn’t appropriate in front of royalty.
It was the first thing he’d like to change—but he didn’t suppose that was an option. Marry someone like Terila, and he’d be stuck at her castle with her rules. Marry someone who wasn’t firstborn, and he’d be stuck with his brother and Fernila. Tor loved his brother, he really did, but it had become increasingly clear over recent years that living together was far from ideal.
It was no doubt why Varex had thought the position of captain of the guard was going to work so well, granting responsibilityanda reason to travel. But that had ended practically before it had begun, because his brother didn’t believe in second chances or explanations or anything but blaming Tor for everything.
Tor didn’t feel like he fit inanyof the realms, if he was being perfectly truthful, and he wasn’t sure where that left him. Or, rather, he knew exactly where: appearing to becourting Prince Pelun to convince Varex that, after all, it was better not to try to force his brother to marry anyone but instead to simply leave him be.
Then he could keep visiting Ada, and maybe he really would visit each of the realms and learn more about them. That would keep him occupied and out of the castle at Nexa, which surely Fernila would like.
Yes, this was going to work. Tor was here in Tond, and he already had a flurry of people prepping rooms for him and no doubt in the kitchen trying to come up with something extra special for dinner. He’d put a lot of people to work, and he needed to make sure that it was for a good reason. Tor needed to stay committed to his plan.
He noticed that their steps had gotten a bit slower, and he was pretty sure that this was the second time that they’d gone through this particular corridor, because he recognized the tapestry that was hanging along the wall. It had a particularly difficult-to-decipher design on it. He squinted at it again. Were the figures supposed to be at a picnic? Were they eating on a particularly flat table? He was reasonably certain it was meant to be depicting people gathered around a table-like something in the middle, but he was having trouble working it out.
“If we go by a third time, I daresay I’ll have figured it out by then,” he said with a gesture at the tapestry.
Her lips quirked, and Tor suppressed a grin.
“They’re building the castle,” she said matter-of-factly.
Tor craned his head back. “No, are you sure?”
“Quite sure, Your Highness,” she said primly.
