A Dove's Tale

Chapter 25

It was about four thirty when I left the kitchen, meaning I still had a half hour to waste until I left. That was part of the surprise. If I got home early, Mother would immediately know something was going on, and given the day, she would suspect I had a surprise for her. She wouldn’t be suspicious if I got home at six o’clock. I could sneak the beignets in behind my back and surprise her with them after dinner. Maybe I could heat them up on the stove while I was cooking dinner, and then pretend not to notice the smell when she started asking me about it.

I was really looking forward to this.

But, first, I had a half hour to kill.

I knocked on Prince Chevalier’s private library door and let myself in. He was in his chair reading, and he looked up with mild surprise and annoyance when I entered.

Surprise? He hadn’t forgotten I was bringing him beignets, had he? He never forgot anything.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d had your tea yet, Prince Chevalier, so I thought I should bring it before I left. The beignets turned out wonderfully,” I said, setting his tea and beignets on the end table.

“That’s all you’re taking to your mother?” he asked, nodding toward the small bundle I was carrying as he set his book down.

“She doesn’t have much of an appetite lately, your highness. This will be plenty for her.”

More than enough, actually. I’d be happy if she just ate one. It occurred to me, I had enough time to stop by Prince Licht’s room and give him a couple of beignets. He’d told me to stay away, but I hadn’t had a chance to thank him for knocking Jack out and stopping his horrible stream of insults that awful day. And staying here with Prince Chevalier for a half hour probably wasn’t a safe option, even if he wasn’t currently teasing me. That could change in an instant.

But he wasn’t teasing me right now, and he asked about my mother, which somehow made it more comfortable here in this little room with him.

I glanced at the clock, gauging how much time I had left.

“Do you know what stones make up Prince Yves’ earring?” I asked impulsively.

Prince Chevalier took a sip of tea, apparently unsurprised by my random question. “Rhodolite garnets and obsidian.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. He said it was his mother’s. Why didn’t you tell me about Prince Yves’ mother, Prince Chevalier?”

“I didn’t think it would matter to you,” he replied coolly, biting into a beignet.

“It doesn’t, your highness, but it matters to him.” I sighed. “But I guess it’s none of my business.”

Prince Chevalier smirked. “No, it’s not. These are good.”

That smirk set off alarm bells, but the rare compliment muted them somewhat.

“Thank you, your highness,” I replied, smiling brightly. “And this isn’t any of my business, either, but Prince Yves doesn’t think you trust him.”

Prince Chevalier chuckled. “I’m aware of that.” He propped up his elbow on the arm of his chair and rested his chin in his hand, an amused smile on his lips. “It’s almost five o’clock, and I gave you the afternoon off. What are you doing here?”

Playing with fire, according to the little voice.

I shrugged. “Mother doesn’t know about my afternoon off, your highness, and I think it will surprise her more if I arrive at my usual time with her favorite dessert. Besides, I promised to bring you some beignets, and it was a bit loud in the kitchen, once all your brothers came to eat.”

He sighed, and then he stood up, picking up a beignet and walking over to me. “Did you even get to eat one?”

“Well, no, I didn’t, your highness,” I said, trying not to blush as he stood over me with a teasing glint in his pale blue eyes. “But I’ll have one after I get home.”

“Here.”

He held the beignet up to my mouth, and I shook my head and took a step back as my cheeks suddenly blazed with heat.

“Prince Chevalier-”

“Is something wrong?” he asked teasingly.

“I have my own, Prince Chevalier,” I stammered, trying to maintain my composure.

“Oh? Are mine different from yours?” He stepped closer again. “Maybe the half-Obsidianite prince helped you poison mine.”

“Prince Chevalier!” I protested, knowing full well that he was joking.

“Maybe I shouldn’t trust him. Or you,” Prince Chevalier continued, trapping me against the bookshelves.

I scowled up at him, trying to ignore my racing heart and the heat that was spreading to my ears. This was why I shouldn’t have stayed. I should have left after I delivered the beignets and gone home. Jack was gone. There was no reason for me to feel unsafe about dallying along the way to waste time.

Except the nameless faces who frequented his brothel had nowhere to go for their preferred form of pleasure, meaning they were out on the streets, and I was still an easy target.

The predators I knew best were frightening and dangerous. The predators here in the palace were dangerous, too, but they took no for an answer, and I’d rather be here with them than be alone and vulnerable anywhere else.

“I’ll make you a deal, Prince Chevalier.”

He chuckled, his pale blue eyes amused. “I’m listening.”

“If I eat that, you’ll tell Prince Yves that you trust him.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “And you trust me to follow through on this?”

“I hope you’re not admitting that you’ve ever lied to me, Prince Chevalier.”

He smirked, holding the beignet up to my lips again. I bit my lip, and his eyes immediately dropped to my mouth, watching with far too much intensity as I reluctantly opened up and took a bite. My face felt like it was on fire. I didn’t even taste the beignet, too flustered about how he was looking at me. His eyes flicked back up to mine, and he deliberately popped the rest of the beignet into his mouth before turning back to his chair with a smug smirk.

“Goodbye, Prince Chevalier,” I said quickly, darting out the door.

Was it possible to die from embarrassment? Because I really felt like it was possible. My heart was beating so hard and so fast that it was probably going to explode right out of my chest, making a huge, bloody mess of the library and leaving me dead on the floor for Prince Chevalier to find later that night when he left. Maybe then he’d regret doing that to me. Or maybe that’s what he wanted. He would smirk at my corpse and tell somebody to clean up the mess, and that would be that. Death by beignet. What an accomplishment.

There was still too much time until five o’clock.

I headed toward the bedrooms, trying to focus on what I was going to say to Prince Licht, but all I could see were Prince Chevalier’s pale blue eyes, watching me in a very predatory manner, making me feel like he was considering taking a bite of me instead of the beignet, and the worst part was that I liked it. I had no business liking it, and he had no business looking at me like that. What happened to my mask and my resolve? Was it that easy for him to dispel them? Or was I still that careless around him, even after the incident earlier today?

This wouldn’t work. I needed to figure something out, something that did not involve any form of flirting, or teasing, or possibly even eye contact.

What if I wore blinders, like a coach horse?

A bag over my head, perhaps?

What was Prince Licht going to think when I came to his room blushing like this?

I stopped outside his door and took a deep breath. He may not even be in. Prince Leon said he’d been working nonstop since the incident with Jack, although I didn’t know why. I still didn’t know why he was even there when that ugly scene happened, but I was glad now that he was. Jack’s insults weren’t just painful - they were humiliating. Everybody heard them. And I kept hearing them every night in my nightmares. If Prince Licht hadn’t knocked him out, there would be even more tormenting words echoing in my mind.

I steeled myself and knocked on Prince Licht’s door. There was no response. I hesitated and knocked again.

“Prince Licht? I know you said you didn’t want to see me, but I brought you some beignets.”

Still no response. I bit my lip and tried the door. It was open.

“Prince Licht?”

“I told you to stay away.”

His voice was as cold and hard as I expected, and his room was as dark as before. I wondered if he kept it this way all the time. It almost seemed like he was hiding himself from the world, and from…himself. I swallowed hard and stepped in cautiously, closing the door behind me.

“I know, but I’m not sure your brothers will save any beignets for you, and I…I wanted to thank you, your highness.”

The smell of blood was absent this time. His shaggy head of hair silhouetted against the closed draperies told me he was across the room from me. The dagger was still on the table, but it was clean.

“You have no reason to thank me,” he said bitterly.

“But you knocked Jack out-”

“It was my fault,” he snapped.

“What?” I asked, surprised.

“My troops are the guards you see in the city. I am in charge of law enforcement throughout Rhodolite. If I’d done my job properly, that wouldn’t have happened.”

That explained everything - why he was there in the hallway, and why he had been working nonstop since then. I could see his reasoning, too, and it had some logic to it, but he was probably in his twenties, and Jack had been operating long before Prince Licht was old enough to take on managing Rhodolite’s law enforcement.

“But this had been going on for a long time - as long as I can remember. You were just a child when-”

“And I bring misfortune to those around me,” he interrupted, as if he didn’t even hear me. “You’re putting yourself in danger just by being here.”

I stared in disbelief at his shadowy form seated on the bed. “Is that why you cut yourself? Because you feel guilty?”

“No.”

His answer was immediate, as if he believed it implicitly, but I didn’t believe it at all.

“I don’t blame you, Prince Licht. I had plenty of misfortune before I met you, and I knew this would happen eventually. If anything, I’d like to blame myself for not paying attention, but Prince Chevalier won’t let me do that.”

I stopped and bit my lip, suddenly feeling unsure about what I should and shouldn’t say to Prince Licht. There was a reason he was like this, and without knowing what it was, I could easily upset him further. The last thing I wanted was for me to leave this room and him to pick up that dagger. I walked toward him and untied the bundle.

“Here you go, Prince Licht. They’re cold now, but they turned out well,” I said, holding two beignets out to him. “I thought the extra guards patrolling in the city were there because of Prince Chevalier, but I’m guessing they were your doing, and they do make me feel safer.”

To my surprise, he actually took the beignets.

“I hate women like you,” he muttered.

That surprised me, too. I stood still for a moment, wondering why he would say something like that.

“Because I won’t leave you alone, your highness?” I finally guessed.

“Yes.”

I sighed and tied the bundle closed, trying to decide how to respond.

“Let me just say one more thing, your highness, and then I’ll leave, and I won’t come back - unless you do something nice for me again,” I said carefully. “And maybe Prince Nokto already told you, or maybe you figured it out for yourself, but Jack bought off the guards in the red-light district, and he killed anybody he couldn’t bribe. That was why I didn’t tell anybody, and that was why nobody here at the palace knew about it. I just thought you should know that.”

I turned to go, but his hand grabbed my wrist, stopping me.

“You’re sure about that.”

I nodded, although I wasn’t sure he could see it in the darkened room.

“All of them?” he pressed me. “Not just one or two, but all of them?”

I nodded again. “They got free service, too. I saw them going into the brothel all the time.”

He released my wrist and stood up with a rustle of blankets being pushed back. I stepped away, feeling a pang of guilt as I realized he had been in bed, finally taking a break after three days of working nonstop, and I had to choose this particular time to ruin it all by stopping by to see him.

“It’s okay for you to rest today and get back to work tomorrow, Prince Licht.”

“No, it’s not,” he replied, shrugging his jacket on. “You can go.”

I hesitated. “At least eat the beignets first, Prince Licht?”

He sighed, and then I heard the distinctive sound of chewing. I turned back to the door.

“Goodbye, Prince Licht. And…thank you again.”

It was five o’clock when I left the palace, and I suddenly realized that I should have left earlier if I had planned on taking a detour around the red-light district. I really had been careless today. I sighed, irritated at myself. There would be no detour today, which meant there could be no distractions. Especially not distractions involving a certain pair of icy blue eyes.

Mother was asleep when I got home, and I set the beignets on the stove while I started dinner. She didn’t wake up until I finished dinner and woke her up myself, and she didn’t notice the smell of warm beignets. I saved them for an after-dinner treat. Pain tainted her smile, and she couldn’t even finish one.

I had a lot more important things to worry about than princes.