Hydris pointed off the the right. “I think the village is over there!”
Considering there wasn’t a single tree with enough leaves on it so we could huddle under one and wait this rainstorm out,I very deftly and not at all awkwardly steered Mason in the direction of the village. We bumped around as we left the road, but I worried less about that once I could see lanterns and the outline of buildings. Though we could’ve just kept going since we couldn’t get any wetter, it was a chilly spring rain that had me shivering before long.
Thankfully, the inn had a nice big sign with a bed on it, so even if I couldn’t read the words, I knew exactly what it was. And maybe Mason knew what it was, too, because he ignored me and walked right around back to the stable. A teenager was there to hold Mason, while Hydris and I climbed down and got through the stable’s doorway.
“It’s two for the night for the horse,” the kid said. “An extra two for storing the cart.”
I had a little pouch on my belt with a few coins, but I was absolutely not clear on their values yet. “Is it the gold ones? Four of those?”
“Here,” Hydris said as he handed over four silver coins from his own pouch. “Take good care of both and there’ll be a gold coin for you when we leave.”
“Yes, sir!” They hauled Mason and the cart further into the stable, making Hydris and I scramble out of the way.
“So the silver ones are more expensive than the gold ones,” I mentioned as I followed Hydris through a door into the back of the inn where there was a tavern.
“Of course.” He put a hand up to stop me, and then did the same thing he’d done before to remove all the water from me. Then he did the same to himself, the both of us dry, and a ball of water floating between us.
“Wait a second,” I said as something important occurred to me. “Rain is water.”
“Yes?” he said as he sent the water ball floating through the door and, presumably, dropped it somewhere in the yard.
I pointed at what he’d just done. “You can control water.”
“Oh,” he said on an embarrassed laugh. “Um, yes.”
“Hydris, you could’ve made it so the rain fellaroundus instead ofonus! You could’ve made it so we just kept on trotting back to the castle.”
He got all bashful with his hands behind his back and toeing at a floorboard. “Well, I maybe could’ve, yes.”
I groaned and held both hands out to him. “So why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to be alone with you.”
“Wewerealone.”
“Alone with you…and a bed.”
All I could do was blink at him. He wanted to be alone with me and a bed? As I watched him walk over to a big man behind the bar, I hated the fact that I was going to have to turn Hydris down. We just… We couldn’t possibly work.
I went over to stop him from getting us a room. “I don’t think we need a room. We can get back on the road as soon?—”
“Considering it’s still a few hours back to the palace, the sun will set in that time, and we don’t know how long this storm will last, I’d rather not travel in the dark on a cart with no lantern,” Hydris said as he wrote our names in a book on the bar.
Okay, he had a point. A few of them actually. I couldn’t help blushing as the barman-slash-innkeeper looked between the two of us. Was he questioning our relationship? Wondering why I was talking so freely with the prince? Did he even know who Hydris was?
Then Hydris handed over five silver coins and four gold ones, the man smiled and handed over a key, and I was soon following Hydris up a set of old wooden stairs. He unlocked the door, we went in, and…
There was only one bed.
I went to the window, my heart racing. I didn’t want to lose his friendship, still wanted to brace him up enough to have him putting Mannix in his place, but how could I go about that while turning him down? Although, my heart wasn’t the only thing throbbing at the moment. Good grief, what was wrong with me?
“Bridge?”
“Yeah?”
I took a deep breath and turned to face him only to cough and choke on nothing when faced with a completely naked prince. Like the day we met there in his pool, he was blue on the top and bottom but, this time, with flowers peeping from both. There were literally tiny white flowers at the base of his very happy to see me cock.
And he stood there with a smirk on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. He looked confident in every way. I’d wanted him to feel empowered. He was.
