Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance) (37 page)

“Yeah, but you could just feed it meat or something. It doesn’t
have
to kill.”

He stares at me like I just stepped out of a flying saucer.

“Are you mocking me?”

“No! I just don’t want to hurt a little animal, is that so wrong?”

“You just told me to feed her meat. Where do you think meat comes from, tomatoes? She has to hunt.”

“I don’t have to watch. I’m going to sit here with my eyes closed and not watch.”

I close my eyes to prove my point.

“You’re acting like a child.”

“Whatever, my prince. The bird has to eat. You don’t have to get your rocks off watching it eat. I’m not going to look.”

I open my eyes when he lets out a noise that’s half groan and half growl. He barks an order at the retainer holding the damn bird and the man wheels his mount around and heads back toward the stables.

“Fine. I grow hungry. Lunch.”

The prince heels his mount forward and mine just sort of follows him. I hold on to the stupid sidesaddle and sit there, trying to figure out if my butt is actually slipping and I’m going to fall in the mud, or I’m just imagining it. God, this is dumb. Why can’t I just sit in a regular saddle?

Besides the skirts, I mean.

It’s hot out here. I’m starting to sweat. The heat doesn’t seem to touch the prince. When he stops on a rise and sits up tall in the saddle, I forget for a moment that he’s a complete monster. With the sun at his back his hair glows a little, shifting subtly in the light breeze. It would be a good pose for a painting.

He looks back at me and heels his mount forward again. I don’t have much of a choice but to be carried along.

At the end of the ride is a wide, low pavilion. The prince dismounts and the retainers fall back, doing the same. I start to scoot my ass off the sidesaddle but finally give up and wait for him to lower me down, again by the waist. To steady myself, I put my hands on his shoulders this time, but pull them back as if I’ve touched a hot iron as soon as my slippers touch the carpeted planks.

God, this is so silly.

There are servants waiting for us, which I guess shouldn’t surprise me. I sweep my skirts under the table as the prince pushes a heavy, rough-hewn chair in under me then dashes to take his own seat.

“You can feed me all you want. I’ll just get fat. I won’t like you.”

“You could stand to plump up a little. Working in that aid camp has made you skinny.”

I flinch and grit my teeth.

“I can see you bristle at that. Does it insult you to be called skinny?”

“I’m not skinny,” I growl.

“Slender, then,” he says, with a casual shrug, as a servant lays his plate before him.

He didn’t have to tell me. He’s been staring at them the whole time.

Lunch is roast beef, still steaming, roasted vegetables, and boiled potatoes that taste like onion and spices when I pop one of the little cubes in my mouth.

I’m not going to starve myself to make a point. Arguing with this arrogant bastard is hungry work.

After a moment I realize he’s watching me eat and force myself to slow down.

“Better than MREs, yes?”

“Yes, I’ll give you that. Not that you deserve the credit. One of your slaves cooked it.”

“This again? They’re not slaves.”

I look around. “Yeah, can they quit this job?”

“This isn’t a
job
, it’s an honor. Their ancestors have served my family since…” he trails off. “Never mind. Don’t belittle my people with your ignorant assessment of their well-being. They are perfectly content.”

“Yeah, the house slaves get treated better, is that it?”

“You are beginning to test my patience.”

“Good. Spending your whole life pampered and fussed over has clearly given you a fat head, my prince.”

He slams his fist on the table, and the plates and cups jump.

“
Enough
.”

I look down at my plate and saw at my meat, my chest fluttering. I pushed it a little too far that time.

“You think because I have some fine things, my life is easy.”

I take a deep breath. “I just see a country full of captive people with someone commanding their every step.”

I pop a slice of beef in my mouth and take time to chew it slowly, savoring the flavors, and swallow before I speak again.

“Only, who commands you?”

“No one.”

“Exactly my point.”

“That makes me no more free,” he says softly.

I stop chewing to look at him. He sets his knife and fork down and leans back in the chair, cocked to one side.

“Say I give you what you want. I step down right now, this instant. I go out and say, ‘You are all free,’ and then I leave. Then what?”

I shrug.

“Anarchy, that’s what. I am as locked into my role as my people are into theirs. You speak as if it is some easy thing, freedom. It comes with a heavy price. There are no easy choices in this world. I have made mine, as did my father and his father before him, stretching back to the time when my ancestors first came to this land.”

“That’s a very poetic way of dressing up your fear.”

He looks up. “What?”

“That’s why I’m here, right? I amuse you. You can’t find anybody in your little empire who will give it to you straight. Do you know how beatification works?”

He blinks. “The process of sainthood?”

“Yes, that’s right. When the process starts, the church calls in a guy to speak
against
the person’s qualifications as a saint. To argue that their miracles are not genuine, that they are not worthy, that God would not choose them to sit at his right hand.”

The prince sits up, eyeing me.

“That person is the devil’s advocate. It’s not just a figure of speech, it’s an actual position within the church. That’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it? You want to hear from somebody who isn’t afraid to lose a limb if you don’t like what they have to say.”

“You’re not afraid of me,” he observes.

“No, I’m not. You don’t scare me. I’ve met plenty of bullies in my time. I know one when I see one. You might have an army backing you up and you might have that suit you had on last night, but I’m not scared of you.”

“Why, because you’re an American citizen?”

“No, because bullies act out of a sense of weakness, not power. You don’t force the world to fit your warped expectations because you feel powerful. You force it to be the way you want because it scares you if it doesn’t bend to your will.”

The prince eyes me. “Finish your meat. Unless you wish to plead with me for the cow it came from.”

I look down and finish eating without saying anything else. I clean my plate, and I guess I’m a good girl because I get dessert, a tiny scoop of ricotta cheese drizzled with honey and served with tiny little anise cookies coated with dark chocolate.

“This is good,” I mutter, forgetting myself.

I flinch, expecting the prince to lay into me for speaking without his leave, but he just smiles. He’s skipping dessert.

When I finish eating, the food is carried away. I take a taste of the strange pale wine I’m offered and jerk back when it touches my tongue. It’s sweet as sugar water.

“That’s mead,” he says with a little shrug. “I take it you’ve never tasted it. Is it to your liking?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Honey wine.”

“I like it.”

“I’m surprised you’re not castigating me for oppressing the bees and appropriating the fruits of their labor.”

I stare at him for a moment.

Then he laughs, softly, as if the act is unfamiliar to him.

“You’re mocking me, now.”

“Yes. I am. I didn’t think you so thin of skin.”

“I’m not.”

I take a sip of honey wine and shift in my seat. I don’t want to get drunk around this man. God, what I might say. It goes straight to my head, though.

“I must attend to matters of state this afternoon. The car will take you back to the castle.”

“You’re not coming?”

As he reads the disappointment in my voice, his eyebrow twitches.

“Don’t get any ideas. I just get bored of sitting in that room with nothing to do and no one to talk to. We humans are social creatures.”

“I understand.”

He dabs at his lips with a napkin. “Let’s make a deal.”

“I want to hear it before I agree to anything.”

“I’ll give you freedom of the castle. You will not go beyond the grounds without my leave, but you will be allowed to move freely within the walls. With certain restrictions, of course. The armory and the lower levels are closed to you.”

“Trust me, I’m not interested in the armory.”

“As you say. It is agreed, then.”

“Whoa. Wait up. You offered me something. What do you want in return? I know there’s something?”

“Join me for dinner.”

“That’s all? Just dinner?”

“Just dinner, and something else.”

I sip my wine and eye him. “What else?”

“It’s a surprise. I won’t hurt you.”

“This morning you threatened to chop my hand off.”

He grits his teeth. “I only meant to impress upon you the seriousness of the situation.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll take freedom to move around in exchange for eating dinner with you, and…something else, but if you think I’m going to do anything with you, you’re delusional.”

“Do anything with me?”

He looks genuinely confused.

“Netflix and chill,” I mutter.

“I wasn’t planning on showing you a movie.”

“You know what? Never mind. Are they going to take me back now?”

“Yes. I will call upon you at seven. Wear a different dress. Something lighter. The cream one, I think.”

I nod, deciding at that moment that I will wear anything but the cream one.

I
’m not allowed
out of the vehicle until we reach the castle again, and when we get there, my freedom of movement does not begin, apparently, until I’ve gone back to the room first. I refuse to call it my room, which implies I have some connection to the place.

I didn’t sleep very well last night, so the first thing I do is put on a nightgown and crawl into the bed to lie down for a while. Seven o’clock is late, hours from now, so I have some time to doze, and doze I do.

I wake fitfully, every hour or so, and by the time I’ve tossed and turned for four or five hours, I feel rested, if it a little cotton-mouthed. I’m still stuffed from all this food the prince has been feeding me. No wonder he’s so strong, if he eats like this every day.

I find the plainest dress I can. There are no shorts or pants in the wardrobe and the uniform I was wearing last night was removed by whoever made the bed and tidied up the room while I was gone.

I pick out a pair of sturdier shoes, too. I didn’t realize that riding boots were an option. They feel a little clunky, and I look ridiculous in a dark-blue dress and big boots, but it beats padding around freezing stone floors in slippers.

True to the prince’s word, the door is unbarred. In fact, the big oak bar is gone completely. A servant passes me as I step out into the hall, stops to look at me like I’m a curious animal in the royal menagerie, and hustles about his business. I go the opposite way, for good measure.

This place is so complex that I can’t even begin to guess at the layout. I just want to get some air, get out from under the roof. The high stone ceilings feel like they’re hovering over my head, ready to come crashing down at any moment. For such a huge place, it is decidedly claustrophobic.

So, I walk.

After maybe ten minutes I find an open door that leads outside, but not to the courtyard where I came in, or where I first landed in the helicopter. It opens onto a wall that curves around into another tower. The top of the wall is ten feet across, the stones worn smooth by time. To my left, a smooth, waist-high stone wall overlooks the courtyard below.

To my right, the wall is full of little slits, as if to shoot a bow and arrow through. When I peer through them I have an unobstructed view of the valley below, brilliant green in the daylight. It’s a beautiful country, it really is. The fields are lush and the distant mountains are cloaked in mystery and mist.

Glancing back at the castle itself, I wonder about this mountain. It’s weird that it stands up alone in the middle of this huge basin. Maybe it’s volcanic?

I follow the wall around and duck inside the tower. It’s a junction point. I can keep following the wall, or walk over a stone bridge that crosses the courtyard below and head back inside.

The wind snaps at my skirts and I decide that’s enough fresh air for now. I race across the bridge, ducking instinctively even though the arched top of the doorway is ten feet over my head.

It leads into another corridor. Motes of dust dance in big sun rays from the high windows, throwing my shadow on the wall in bursts as I walk. As I go I try to make a mental map, but this place is so complicated, doubling back on itself. Somewhere I should be able to go outside again and make my way into those central towers.

A corridor leads off to my right, into a round room. No, it’s a tower of its own. The path slopes up a bit as I walk inside, lifting my skirt to keep from tripping over it. My pace slows, and my breath catches. Something about this room feels ancient and sepulchral, the air heavy and chillier than it should be.

As I turn slowly around the room, my sense of awe builds until I smile involuntarily. It’s a library, a real castle library. The roof is fifty feet over my head, a dome of painted tiles. A wooden walkway spirals up around the inner wall of the tower, and it’s completely lined with books. A long library table stands in the center, with huge old chairs covered in pillows scattered around the room, each taller than I am by half my height or more.

Closest to the ground, the oldest volumes are bound in ancient, dry leather and are chained to the shelves with heavy wrought iron links. I’m tempted to draw one from the shelf and examine it, but stop myself. It feels like a real transgression to tamper with these. Judging by their looks, they’re probably hand copied, maybe older than the United States itself. Hell, they might be from before the New World was even discovered.

I work my way up. About halfway up, the volumes become more recognizable, with buckram and vellum covers joining the heavy leather, some with titles on the spines, some faded away. They’re in all different languages, Italian, German, some I don’t recognize, English. Near the top I start recognizing the authors’ names.

Closer to the top I find…comic books.

They’re in cardboard magazine holders. Vintage comics. Somebody in this castle is a huge fan of
Spider-Man
. They have to be, they own an original
Amazing Fantasy
#15, the first appearance of the character, stored in a plastic bag. One comic book worth probably half a million dollars. I don’t dare touch them, but it looks like whoever collected these snapped up every issue from the very beginning.

I didn’t expect to find paperbacks in the library here, but they’re on the shelf, stacked up to maximize the space and nested on top of each other. Dust clings to each one, like they haven’t been touched for a while.

One of the wooden columns has been defaced, marked. Somebody carved something into it with a dull blade. I run my fingers around the edge and frown. It can’t be.

It’s a heart with initials inside. K + C.

The prince could be K. Who’s C?

The gently sloping walkway leads up to one last floor.

There’s only one shelf here and something about it unnerves me. There are maybe fifty books, all about the same size, each bound in a weird, pale leather that sort of looks like pigskin, but isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but looking at it makes my skin crawl. They’re enclosed in glass, and I turn around before I start getting too much of an urge to examine them.

I yawn as I reach the bottom, startling myself as the sound echoes. It bounces off the walls and sounds almost like laughter.

More than ever I suddenly feel like an intruder, like someone up on the balcony I can’t see is watching me. I rush back out into the corridor and start walking again, and stop after I realize I’ve lost track of where I am. I can’t remember if I turned left into the library, or right.

The walls and tapestries here give me no help, so again I walk.

After what feels like hours, I sit on a bench for a while until my aching feet feel better, then walk some more. This place is enormous. It feels like it would take days to explore it all.

I turn a corner and pass through a pair of open doors then stop and back out. I don’t know if this is the armory, but it feels that way. Suits of armor line the walls on both sides of a huge room that ends in a massive oaken throne, the back carved with the phoenix arms that the prince bears on his armor and cloak.

I can’t help but look, at least a little. The armor closest to the door is just armor—steel plates fixed onto wooden mannequin-frames, and all weirdly small, like the guys who wore them were less than six feet tall. Farther away they…change. Get more elaborate. Nearest the big throne stand suits of armor like I saw him wear last night, and one strange one.

A person can’t wear this thing. It’s ten feet tall, and two smokestacks jut up from behind the shoulders, like it has a diesel engine in it or something.

Then again, the armor he wore last night made noises when he moved…like little motors, and it was wired to provide electrical power to that sword he used. It heated the blade or electrified it, or something like that.

I swallow hard and rush back out, wondering if he’ll somehow know if I went in. This place has to be loaded with cameras I can’t see.

God, what if he watches me sleep? I shudder, and walk into another room.

I think I’m safe to go in here. It looks like an art gallery. Lots of paintings. Men that look like the prince himself, sometimes posing with women and families. In the older, faded portraits with cracked paint, they wear suits of armor, the same ones from the other room. In newer ones they wear uniforms.

I walk to the end and find the prince in a painting that looks so new, I’m surprised it’s not still wet. He stands on his own, looking younger, maybe fifteen or sixteen…next to his identical twin.

That can’t be right.

They’re exactly the same. The artist captures it so well, it’s like a photograph. The only difference I can see is a slight scar on one twin’s cheek. The prince doesn’t have it. It must mark his brother.

Where the hell is his brother? I’ve never even heard of him having one.

There’s another painting.

A tall, slender girl, of an age with the prince when the other painting was done, in a dress not unlike the ones in my wardrobe. Honey-blonde hair tumbles loose down her back, and she smiles warmly.

There’s only one painting of a woman alone in this room. This one.

Why?

I stand there contemplating that for a while, a thought nagging at the back of my mind while refusing to take shape.

Then I hear a commotion outside.

Running through the corridors, I follow the noise, lifting my skirts so I don’t catch them under my toes. I run faster, until I’m starting to puff for breath, following the sounds.

Somehow I manage to find a staircase that takes me out into the courtyard. I stop dead in my tracks.

The prince is in his armor, but it’s dented and torn up, the enamel scratched in long, jagged lines across the chest, the big shoulders dented in, and he’s limping, the armor quivering and seizing up as it moves. He lurches forward and stops.

The whole thing unfolds open. The helmet lifts up, the chest plate splits along a seam I couldn’t even see, and the the arms just…falls off. The prince struggles out of it, falling to the dirt almost at my feet, panting on all fours. He slowly stands up, swiping at blood from a split lip.

The look he gives me freezes the blood in my veins. I feel like a rabbit staring down a hungry fox, hoping if I stay stone still he’ll pass me by and not eat me up.

“Get it inside,” he roars in Kosztylan, his voice so loud it shocks me out of my stupefied stillness.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?”

“It’s nothing.”

As two men struggle to lift one of the armor’s arms onto a steel cart, I lean over and my eyes go wide.

“Are those bullet holes?”

“Not bullets. Twenty-millimeter shells.”

I turn back to him, staring.

“Are you hurt? You’re bleeding.”

He touches his forehead and his fingers come away red. He rubs them together and flicks them contemptuously.

“It’s nothing, I’m not injured. Just a scratch.”

Before I even think I rush over to him, grab his chin in my hands, and turn his head to look for myself. I can
feel
everyone in the courtyard sucking in a silent breath, waiting.

He isn’t wearing one of those uniforms, I realize. He must have to wear some kind of special suit inside that armor. It’s like a wetsuit, only thinner, and it clings to every sweeping line of his body. I can see veins through it, even. He’s even more ripped than I realized, solid muscle from head to toe. He smells like sweat and leather and blood.

He pushes me back, gently, and swipes at his mouth with his hand, leaving a red streak on the sleeve of his bodysuit.

“Go back to your room. Dinner is at seven. It’s five thirty.”

“What happened to you?”

“That is not your concern.”

“Are you alright?”

He sounds almost confused that I would ask. “I am fine. Do as you are told.
Now
.”

I flinch and, almost without thinking, bolt from the courtyard. Somehow I find the way back to the right corridor and follow it around to my room, head inside, and almost collapse onto the bench at the foot of the bed, my heart pounding a fluttery rhythm in my chest.

It hits me hard when I realize, yeah, I’m worried about him. Last night on the goat trail, it was like he didn’t even notice that those resistance men were shooting at him. No,
shooting him
, they were hitting the armor, I remember it. What were those big marks on the chest and arms of the armor?

Matters of state? Matters of state? He could have been killed!

I sit back and stare at nothing.

What the hell do you care, Penny? You just want to go home.

Questions swirl around in my mind, like leaves caught in a dust devil. I lean over my knees and hold my head in my hands. Who was that girl? What’s up with those books? They looked like… I don’t want to say what they looked like.

I…need to change. I need to shower first, I feel sweaty and grubby. I make it a quick one and peer out from the bathroom to make sure the prince didn’t decide to just barge into my room again. After I dry off I clothe myself, and not in the cream-colored dress, but a powder-blue one that laces up the sides.

I look as stupid in this princess dress and matching slippers as I did the other one. I don’t know why I picked this one. It has a plunging neckline and the sleeves are low on my shoulders. I do almost like the way it looks, though. It suits my frame, I guess. My mom always told me I should show off my shoulders, don’t ask me why.

I pace around the room, going in circles until it feels like I must have worn holes in the soles of my slippers. I almost jump when there’s a knock at the door.

“Come in?”

The prince opens the door and takes a single step inside, then stops, openly staring at me. I feel a flush creeping up my neck and realize I’m blushing.

Oh for God’s sake, Penny.

It hits me hard when I realize that I’m actually, straight-up relieved to see him.

A deep breath and then I walk up to him.

“You’re not hurt?”

“Why do you care?”

The coldness in his voice stings me a little.

“You may not be my favorite person, but you’re still a person. I wouldn’t wish any harm on you.”