by Dan Wingreen
Elias shot the Prince a skeptical look. He seemed to be sincere, at least. And Elias really did want to see what the Prince thought about what he'd written. And he was hungry.
And the cake did look rather delicious.
Pushing down the part of him that wanted to refuse on principle, Elias nodded. "Do you have a plate?"
He was not at all surprised when the Dark Prince produced one from the folds of his robes and handed it to him with a bow.
Chapter 15
The ten days leading up to the ball were, with the exception of the first year after his parents died, the most trying of Elias's life. Which actually said a lot about how well off he usually was and might have been another minor revelation, had he any interest in acknowledging silver linings.
Their nights, which had previously been about working on their book and having entertaining conversations, were now at least half taken up with what Elias had started referring to as "Ball Triage". It took years, after all, for young nobles to learn all the required social skills and court etiquette before they were allowed to debut in public life. And while Elias had ostensibly received all the same lessons, he'd never really paid them much attention and his instructors were always more interested in rapping the knuckles of the Crown Prince or the next Duke of Wherever to care that the peasant had no idea how to wear a cloak so as not to cause offense. If Elias had realized agreeing to go to the ball would require attempting to squeeze five years' worth of lessons into ten days, he would have left the Dark Prince to hang, friend or not.
It was decided early on that eating etiquette was pointless. Balls were generally buffet style, so as long as Elias didn't shove his head into one of the trays and spray food all over the important guests, there wasn't much he could do wrong there. Dancing was another lesson that could be skipped, since Elias had absolutely no intention even approaching the dance floor, much to the Dark Prince's displeasure. Elias already knew the proper forms of address for each noble title, so that could be skipped as well, along with how to properly dress himself—scholar's robes were much more complicated than court robes after all, for some reason he'd never quite determined—and how to converse with people above and below his station. Everyone there would be above Elias's station, and he already knew what he could get away with when speaking to nobles.
Unfortunately, that still left quite a few gaps in his education he needed to fill.
The lessons were tedious, and contradictory, and served almost no practical purpose whatsoever; a perfect embodiment of nobles themselves. It was little wonder they loved court life. Elias had always been a quick study, though, and by the time the day of the ball arrived he was deemed passably educated enough not to make a complete fool out of himself.
Supposedly.
Not that I care if a bunch of nobles think I'm a fool, he thought for the eighth time as he made his way through the unfamiliar areas of the castle towards the ballroom. No, it was all the Dark Prince's fault. Elias was worried about reflecting badly on him, of all the ridiculous notions. And while he didn't mind helping his friend, he hated that he needed to play along with stupid noble games to do so. Elias scowled fiercely for a moment, only peripherally aware of the way it made servants leap out of his path. He was dressed quite nicely, after all, easily passable as a noble, and angry nobles had a habit of taking it out on the help. When this is over, I'm going to find something he hates and force him into doing it. And I'll make him wear a cassock. A brown one.
He nodded to himself, his neck rubbing against his unnaturally stiff collar, and fought against the almost overpowering urge to start pulling at his brand new set of court robes. Elias had never realized before how incredibly comfortable scholar's robes were; for all that they were overly complicated, they were still designed for function rather than form. Court robes, however, were the exact opposite. They were designed to make the person wearing them look as proper and attractive as possible, which meant high collars, tight material, unwieldy boots that gave their wearers at least two inches of unnecessary height, and so much starch it was a minor miracle any of the nobles could move at all.
It didn't help that Elias's robes were so obscenely expensive he was almost scared to bend a joint lest he wrinkle it or, gods forbid, tear a delicately stitched seam.
The Dark Prince really had gone all out on the robes, though, and the small part of Elias that hadn't started quietly panicking when he realized how much they had cost was actually rather impressed with how well they fit him. Not just in size either, although he was surprised about that as well, since the Prince hadn't stopped forcing him to eat when they were together. They were deceptively simple, made up of a tunic, breeches, boots and an outer robe, all in varying, yet perfectly complementary, shades of dark green. The Prince had looked incredibly smug when Elias had given a small, brief smile at the fact he'd remembered the scholar's favorite color.
The tunic was much looser than Elias was used to, and the breeches much tighter, but it was the outer robe that he'd had the most trouble with. Unlike scholar's robes, the sleeves of court robes were of "proper" length, meaning they fell to the second joint of the middle finger on each hand. They were also ridiculously voluminous and seemed specifically designed to get in soups and knock over goblets. Most of Elias's triage lessons had involved learning how to avoid such occurrences.
For all that the sleeves were extensive and cumbersome, the rest of the robes were almost as thin and tight as his scholar's tunic, conforming perfectly to the lines of his body without highlighting the fact that he still looked like he was routinely starved, as the Dark Prince so flatteringly put it. There was a single, large button just below his sternum which held the top part of the robe closed securely to his body, while still letting the part below billow out behind him tastefully as he walked, although not as much as his scholar's robes. To complete the image of Elias-as-nobility, his light brown hair was unbound, spilling over his shoulders and halfway down his back, which he absolutely hated. It was necessary, though, since, for some idiotic reason, nobles never bound their hair. Elias and the Prince had decided Elias should look as noble as possible, to avoid spending the entire night answering the same questions about why a commoner was wearing such expensive robes. But it was also so he would be more difficult to recognize as the somewhat notorious scholar people liked to gossip about. Since he wouldn't be doing much reading at the ball, his glasses were not in evidence, but tucked securely inside a small, felt-lined wooden box. It was, in turn, secreted inside a pocket in the robe, which seemed specifically designed to hold the case without ruining any of the garment's lines.
Still, issues with his hair and stiffness and sleeves aside, Elias found he rather liked the robes. They were the only things he'd worn in years than wasn't a set of scholar's robes or sleepwear, and he was actually enjoying the novelty. Not that he was ever going to let the Dark Prince know. He'd have an entire wardrobe full of wildly varying clothing within a week.
After a few more minutes of wandering through halls he'd never been in, and a few very lucky random turns, he finally arrived outside the main entrance to the ballroom and got in line behind the small group of nobles who were just as late as he was. They were all young and at least somewhat inebriated already, and Elias didn't recognize any of them. They all looked at him when he arrived, but other than a few appreciative—and envious—glances at his raiment they all uniformly ignored him. It took several minutes for the doorman to get all their names and check them off the guest list he was holding—all the drunken giggling made it difficult to understand them—and then it was Elias's turn.
"Name, my lord?" the tall, reedy man in the brightly colored valet uniform said.
Elias held back a scowl at the appellation. "Elias Sutterby."
The doorman, who looked rather like he was going to collapse with relief at the clear, precise way Elias said his name, quickly scanned the list. "All right my lord, there you are—" His eyebrows rose so high they seemed in danger of popping off
his head. "You're the Dark Prince's plus one?!"
This time Elias did scowl. I knew I should have asked more questions when he said he could get me into the ball without asking for an invitation from the Crown Prince.
"Apparently."
"Oh. Of course, then! Right then! Right this way Your…" The man froze, his mouth working silently for a moment. "Lord…ship?" he finished hopefully, obviously having no idea what the proper honorific was for a companion of the Dark Prince.
"Thank you," Elias said with a nod that was hopefully less stiff than his voice. It wasn't the poor doorman's fault, even if he was making the scholar extremely uncomfortable.
The man bowed with undisguised relief as he gestured for Elias to enter the doorway behind him. He walked through the opening, past the ornately carved doors being held open by bowing liverymen, and down a short hallway before passing through another doorway into the upper floor of the ballroom itself. Elias had intended to start searching for the Dark Prince as soon as possible, but couldn't seem to do anything other than stare in absolute awe.
The ballroom was, in a word, beautiful.
It was built in the Siennish style, with polished cherry wood floors and blindingly white marble walls. The upper balcony, which ringed the entire perimeter of the room, was made of marble as well, with thick red carpeting, and benches placed in small alcoves every ten feet or so for couples to rest and hold secluded conversation. The lower level, which was bookended by two large, marble staircases with red runners down the middle, was a large, open space which was only broken up by strategically placed columns. The very middle of the room was subtly marked off as a dance floor, filled with beautifully dressed nobility gliding together with varying degrees of grace. Off to the left was a slightly raised platform where musicians, wearing what looked like tuxedos straight out of a piece of period theater, played elegant ballroom music. Across from them on the opposite side of the room was table after table of the most mouthwatering food and desserts Elias had ever seen, except for a spot directly in the center which was bare where Elias knew the birthday cake would be placed once the ball had reached its fourth hour.
But, by far, the most breathtaking part of the ballroom was the ceiling.
It was almost impossibly high, ending in a large dome covered in mosaic after mosaic depicting every king Ellington ever had, up to the current king's father, during one of the most well-known moments of their life. They all flowed gracefully into one another creating a stylized, chronological history of Ellington which spread out from the middle. There was the Twelfth King, riding into battle against the Mermaid Army. The Third King negotiating a trade agreement with the notoriously isolationist and trade-averse Kevish Collective. The Twentieth King proposing to a dragon prince. The Twenty-First King being hastily coronated the very next day with a crown that still glowed slightly from the heat. And, right in the center at the very top, one of the only depictions of the First King fully outside the womb Elias had ever seen.
It was almost enough to make coming to the ball worth it on its own.
Reluctantly, Elias tore his gaze away from the ceiling and started to look for the Dark Prince before any of the nobles around him could sneer too much at him for gaping like a tourist. The room was well lit, with fireplaces set in the walls in regular intervals, but most of the light came from a large chandelier which hung from the center of the ceiling and was filled with specially imported alchemical candles that lit the room with bright, natural light. It was beautiful as well, even if Elias vastly preferred normal candles in otherwise dark rooms, but he wasted little time admiring it.
Servants flitted through groups of nobles, most of whom Elias didn't recognize. A few were familiar, such as the Marquis and Duke Hightower glaring at each other from opposite sides of a buffet table, the Agricultural Council, who were so wide they took up an entire corner of the room all by themselves, and Baron Connolly staring forlornly into a goblet. He wondered briefly if the baron had finally summoned the courage to approach the object of his affection, only to be rejected, and made a mental note to do his best to avoid him for the rest of the night.
And then he spotted the Dark Prince.
He stood alone in the middle of a sea of merry nobility, without even a drink to occupy his attention. No one approached him, no one talked to him; in fact people seemed to be going out of their way to avoid him.
It was one of the saddest things Elias had ever seen.
He found himself walking to the Prince before he even realized he was moving. It was wrong for the Dark Prince to be shunned. That was just a simple fact of the universe, like gravity or the cycle of precipitation, and Elias was nothing if not a believer in natural law. He picked up his pace, eager to reach his friend.
Elias slid through the last of the crowd surrounding the Prince just in time to see the expression he'd been too far away to determine earlier—bored, not sad or frustrated like Elias had half expected—before the Dark Prince spotted him and his face lit up with a rare, honest grin.
One Elias found himself returning, albeit in a much more restrained fashion, as he looked the Prince over.
He was surprised to see the Dark Prince out of his customary dark, scholar cut robes and wearing a set which looked remarkably like the one Elias was wearing. He was even more surprised to see that they were a pale green. Elias had never seen the Prince in any color that wasn't supposed to be oppressive or sensual, or some combination of the two. Of course, he was less surprised to see it suited the Prince perfectly. There was probably very little which didn't.
"Elias!" the Prince said as the scholar stopped in front of him. He kept up the grin for a moment, before letting it dim into a sardonic smirk. "I never would have guessed you'd be the kind of person to be fashionably late."
Elias let out a snort that was half amusement, half disgust. "It's not like I have practice navigating this part of the castle, Highness."
"You got lost!" The Dark Prince let out a delighted laugh.
"I misjudged the complexity of the layout."
"I told you that you should have let me escort you."
"Actually you told me that I should arrive on my own. I was the one who said you should escort me, if only to make sure the Crown Prince knew I was here at your request, which, as you'll remember, is the entire point of me being here. You refused."
Honestly, if he's going to be this contradictory and annoying from the start I should plan to limit my time near the food tables lest he end up covered in them…
"Although…" The Prince continued, completely ignoring Elias. "I'm rather glad you didn't." He slowly looked Elias up and down. "It would have been a shame if the first time I saw you like this was in that dark hovel you call a room. These robes suit you rather well. As does the lighting."
Elias held up an arm, letting the overlarge sleeve fall down and clump at his elbow. "These sleeves suit no one," he said, ignoring how pleased he was that the Prince thought they looked good on him. Half the reason Elias had refused to try on more than the outer robe in front of the Prince was because he was afraid the Prince would laugh at him.
The Dark Prince held up his arm as the sleeve clumped—somehow much more elegantly, Elias noted—at his own elbow. "You may have a point," he said dryly.
The Prince kept his arm raised as he took a step closer. Something shifted in his eyes, in the way he was looking at Elias, and before Elias could say anything else, the Prince reached out and picked some of Elias's hair off of the scholar's shoulder and rubbed it between his fingers. "This is the first time I've seen you with your hair down." He murmured so low Elias had no idea how he even heard it over the noise of the ball. "That rather suits you as well."
Elias blinked rapidly as some of the churnier of his unidentified feelings made themselves known. He wanted to slap the Prince's hand away, but for some reason, he couldn't force himself to act on the impulse even though his own hand was still raised. Instead, he slowly lowered it.
"It's also the first
time I've ever seen you without your glasses," the Prince said in that same low tone. He stared into Elias's eyes and studied him for a long moment, which seemed to stretch well past any reasonable breaking point. "You do have very lovely eyes." Elias's blinking intensified, and he had to force himself to stop. The Prince smiled slightly. "But I do think I prefer you with your glasses on. You just aren't 'Elias' without them."
Elias tried to swallow, but it was rough on his suddenly too dry throat. He felt trapped; cornered in a way he hadn't felt even when the Prince had him backed up against the Librarian's desk, giving veiled threats of sexual assault. Of course, he knew the Prince wouldn't follow through then. Was that what was different now? And follow through with what? This seemed like another attempt to get a reaction out of Elias, but glowering or glaring or snapping back an insult or any of the other dozen things the Prince usually wanted to provoke were the last things that Elias wanted to do. And he had no idea why.
"Well," Elias said finally. It was only when he opened his mouth to continue that he realized he had no idea what was going to come out. "At least I'm two-thirds presentable."
Something passed across the Prince's face, just for a moment. Something that could have been disappointment or triumph or delight, or maybe all three, or maybe more. Then the Prince laughed, and whatever strange moment had held them a second before broke. He let go of Elias's hair and took a step back. "But at the same time you're still one hundred percent Elias, glasses or no. Which is much less confusing than it should be."
"I apologize for not being more confusing," Elias said, his lips twitching. This kind of interaction was much easier.
"Apology accepted." The Prince responded magnanimously. "Of course—" He paused, his eyes suddenly fixing on something to Elias's left. Annoyance flashed across the Prince's face for the briefest of moments before being smoothed out into an expression of indulgent boredom. "It seems we're about to be greeted by our host."