King Forex snorted and went back to his drinking, but both Bavil and Larexa were looking at Torex as though he were amazing.
Pel… kind of wanted to do the same thing, and he didn’t know what to do with that feeling and the unsettled pit that his stomach had turned into. He glowered instead and reminded himself that those were just words, and anybody could say something like that. It needed to be demonstrated in actions every day.
Besides, it was a lot easier to say something like that when you always won.
Pel scowled at his plate.
Several days later, after Pel had taken the coward’s way out and canceled his trips to the farms, Torex still hadn’t brought the matter up. His jaw had barely bruised, and it wasn’t even noticeable two days later. Pel had hit himhard—but then he remembered that Torex was Extraordinary, and he was going to heal faster than Pel and probably hadn’t been asinjured in the first place as Pel would have been, because he had magic in excess, practically jumping to protect him.
Finally, Pel couldn’t stand it anymore, and he tugged the man aside after dinner on one of those rare evenings where King Forex was called away with an apparently urgent letter.
Pel was at least halfway convinced he had someone send those missives solely so he could make himself feel important.
“What are you going to do about it?” he demanded.
Prince Torex looked confused. “Do about what?”
He gestured at the man’s face with its unfairly perfect jawline that Pel had only briefly impaired. “The punch.”
Torex blinked. “I’m not going to do anything about it.”
Incomprehension fizzled through Pel, and it took him a moment before he spluttered out, “I punched you in the face. For what turned out to be a totally erroneous reason.”
Torex clapped him on the shoulder, his eyes clear and bright, the blue shining like a perfect summer’s afternoon. “But if Ihaddone what you thought, I deserved worse. I like that you defend your people. I’d like it even more if you’d verify your facts first, but I don’t object to your mission.”
And that seemed to be it.
Then Prince Torex grinned at him, and said, “Just to prevent any future misunderstandings, there was also one serving woman and a stable hand, not at the same time. Everyone was consenting and interested.”
Pel came awfully close to gaping but finally managed to ask, “Why would you do that?”
Prince Torex looked like he didn’t understand the question.
“I mean, what if they feel pressured?” Pel clarified.
Torex’s expression cleared. “Well, they approached me, first of all, and I’m pretty good at gauging comfort levels. I mean, there aren’t that many people who are my precise social equal, and I don’t want anyone to ever do something they don’t want. But I find that if you’re actually looking, you know whether someone wants to be there or not.”
Pel had nothing to say about that. He had no comparable experience, but he had to admit that seemed… pretty reasonable.
Torex met his eyes. “Are we riding out to the farms tomorrow?”
And Pel could do nothing but nod.
Torex beamed at him and then headed back to Larexa and the pianoforte.
Pel stared after the man, thoroughly confounded. Just when he thought he understood Torex, he twisted somehow, revealing an unexpected facet of himself. Pel still couldn’t let go of their first meeting here in Tond—nor the fact that Torex had completely forgotten their previous encounters. But… it wasn’t as simple as that.
Pel would look for actual evidence in the future.
And if he absolutely had to… he would consider that maybe he’d been a bit wrong in his initial assessment.
Chapter Ten
Tor
Tor slept poorly that night, too excited about the idea of actually joining Pelun on one of his outings. It was silly, really. This was them performing their duty, not tumbling into bed together. This wasn’t going to be the stuff that romantic poems were made of… but it was still the most progress Tor had made.
(Tor would never confess to anyone how badly he’d bungled this.)
