“Everyone’s gone,” Sasha says, from behind me, and I turn and smile at her. She’s managed to tamp down her enthusiasm over the day’s excitement. “Do you want some tea?”
I sigh. “Not the turnip stuff.”
“No problem,” she says, and vanishes into my room.
That just leaves me and the pirate, who’s still glowering at the floor. I try very hard not to think about how nice it felt when he had his arms around me.
“You’re still bleeding,” he finally says, and vanishes into my little water closet, returning a moment later with a wet rag.
“No butter this time?” I say, brightly.
He shakes his head and hands me the cloth, but I don’t know where exactly all the blood is coming from, so I hand it back to him. He takes it wordlessly and steps closer, so that I’m suddenly confronted with an eyeful of his perfect shirt and perfect chest. He dabs gently at my temple, which hurts. I make an involuntary little gasp, and he swallows; I watch his throat work. “Sorry,” he says, very gently.
I shake my head, and he presses the damp cloth against my temple again. It’s cool, and I close my eyes and inhale the wild, salty scent that follows him everywhere. After a long moment, he steps back, and neither of us says anything.
“How many more of those do you have to kiss?” he finally says, his voice rough. He’s addressing the bloody rag.
“Princes? There are only two left.”
“Maybe if your parents started sending frogs instead. Anything less chaotic than another idiotic peacock.”
I smile, a little wanly. “That’s probably what they’ll move on to next, if Honey can’t find me a proper sorcerer.”
“None of that’s going to break your curse, you know,” he says, looking up at me. Something in his expression makes my heart stutter in my chest. He looks so…soraw.
“I know,” I say, softly. There are about a hundred other things I want to say:Part of me doesn’t want the curse to end,andPart of me thinks I’ll never be able to break it, andPart of me never wants you to break your curse and leave. That thought is new, but as unwelcome as the rest, so I shove it down into the darkest recesses of my heart.
“I’ve never heard you sound so mad before,” I say, brightly. “You called poor Ternis a, a…” I don’t want to say the word aloud.
“A twat,” Bash supplies.
“Yes, that. I suspect he’s never been called anything worse than a brat before, and even that’s unlikely. His people believe in positive reinforcement at all times.”
“That explains all the…” He waves a hand in a gesture I gather is meant to suggest “windy peroration” and falls silent.
“It was probably good for him,” I add. “A positive learning experience.”
He looks up at me, and our eyes meet. I feel the usual heat creeping over my cheeks, but hold his gaze. After a long moment, he says, “You swore.”
Not what I was expecting. Not that I know what I was expecting. “I beg your pardon?” I say.
“You called the bookcases ‘damned.’ Not very polite language, Your Most Serene Worship.”
“Oh,” I say, and smile. He smiles back, and relief washes over me. Whatever moment we just shared, strange and intimate and silent, is thankfully over. “They deserved it.”
“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said,” he says, smiling back.
“You say that, but that’s because you weren’t around when my tutors were making me memorize Salvongian free verse,” I point out. “I said someverymean things to them about the Salvongians.”
He rolls his eyes. “We’ve all met a Salvongian in our time; nothing you say could be less than what they deserve.”
“They do tend to wander around telling people what they think they need to hear,” I agree. Salvongians indulge in a cultural practice they refer to as “radical honesty,” which means they’re rubbish diplomats and must be seated very carefully at dinner parties, ideally next to people with good senses of humor or bad hearing. Although my hearing is great, my diplomacy is as well; I’ve been seated by hundreds of Salvongians over the years. “I once had a Salvongian diplomat explain that it was for the best that I was the ‘working’ royal, as I was too short to be taken seriously as a head of state,” I say.
Bash closes his eyes with an expression that looks almost pained. “You are short,” he finally says.
I open my mouth to reply, though I’m not sure what I’m going to say, since Bash seems singularly disinterested in bantering, but Sasha thankfully returns with a steaming teapot and three cups on a tray, and hands them round.
“Lemon verbena and chamomile,” she says, as I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. “With a shot of mead.”
