by Vivian Wood
“Your shirt,” she whispers.
The footsteps in the tower get closer, and even though I’m beyond tempted to tell her that I need my shirt back, now, I have a little mercy.
“It’s under control,” I whisper.
“Won’t it look worse if I’m hiding?” she whispers.
“Only if you’re found,” I whisper back.
Hazel scampers over, tosses me one last glance, then disappears. I turn toward the stone wall and look out over the ocean, breathing the cool, salty air deeply, pretending that I’m just up here to clear my head.
Hopefully whoever’s coming won’t notice my massive, aching erection.
Twelve times three is thirty-six, I think. Twelve times four is forty-eight, twelve times five is sixty —
The heavy wooden door opens and a palace guard comes out. The moment he sees me, he snaps to attention and bows his head slightly.
“Your majesty,” he says.
“At ease,” I say, the words almost automatic.
He doesn’t relax.
“I heard voices and thought it best to investigate,” he says.
“It’s only me,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”
He nods again, brusquely. Then he pauses and sniffs the air slightly, his brow furrowing. It’s obvious he’s about to say something he doesn’t want to say.
“I’m obligated to tell you that these ramparts are off-limits for safety reasons,” he says stiffly.
I nod once.
“I’m being very careful,” I say.
“Have a good night, your majesty,” he says, then nods and disappears.
I listen to his footsteps fade down the tower stairs, then walk to the spot where Hazel’s hidden in the shadows.
She’s sitting with her back against the wall, elbows propped on her knees.
“Coast is clear?” she asks, her voice low.
I offer her my hand, and she takes it. I pull her to her feet so that she’s standing just a little too close to me, just close enough that I can smell her, a combination of sweet floral shampoo and the bite of pot smoke.
“I should go,” she whispers, but she doesn’t try to remove her hand from mine. The air between us feels like it’s sparking, charged with static, and it’s all I can do not to press her against the stone wall and fit my fingers to the dimples in her back.
I’m hard again. The multiplication tables barely helped, and we’re so close that it’s a miracle if she can’t tell. I should let her go and tell her to go back to her bedroom, forget any of this ever happened.
Instead I ask, “How much of Velinsk have you seen?”
Hazel blinks.
“Most of it, I think,” she says. “It isn’t very big.”
I’m close enough to see the shape of every freckle, even though here in the shadows it’s nearly dark.
“Do you want to see the real Velinsk?” I ask. “The parts the palace tour guide doesn’t show visitors?”
Hazel hesitates, pressing her lips together and looking down.
“Why do I get the feeling it’s something else I shouldn’t do?” she asks, looking up at me.
“Because it is,” I say, and half-smile.
“You know, Kostya, everyone thinks you’re the perfectly upstanding, well-behaved prince, and here you are telling me to burn my clothes and asking me if I want to see the seedy parts of the city.”
“It’s a good reputation to have,” I say, and I let my mouth curve up, just a little. “Do you think you believe it, zloyushka?”
“I think I need to find out what that word means before I say yes to anything else,” she says, eyebrows raised.
“I’m sure you can figure it out,” I say.
“So you’re not going to tell me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Her hand is still in mine. Neither of us has let go, and the warmth of her skin against mine is making electric ripples spread up my arm and across my chest.
“It must mean something bad,” she says. “What is it? Loud? Mouthy?”
Now she’s smiling up at me, the challenge back in her eyes.
“Déclassé drug smuggler,” she guesses.
“We don’t have a single word for that,” I say.
“Rude foreigner,” she goes on.
I put one hand on the stone wall above her head and lean over her, just a bit. She doesn’t move or flinch, and it takes every ounce of self control I’ve got not to push her against it right then and there.
“Tomorrow night,” I say. “The bench in the garden nearest the stone arch. Midnight. If someone sees you, say you can’t sleep and you’re taking a walk.”
She cocks her head to one side and examines me. I can’t remember the last time I was this close to someone else. The air between us is crackling and snapping, and it feels like I’m breathing in electricity.
I don’t know how much is the pot and how much is Hazel, but I’m not that high. Barely buzzed.
“Does it mean something like hot mess?” she asks.
“No, but that’s closer than déclassé drug smuggler,” I say.
“You won’t tell me where we’re going, you won’t tell me what zloshka means,” she says.
“Zloy-ush-ka,” I say, very slowly. “You’ve got to spell it right if you want to figure it out.”
“Or you could tell me,” she says, her voice low and quiet.
Somehow, her face is even closer to mine than it was before, and the urge to kiss her, to push her back against the wall and press myself against her is overwhelming.
This is stupid, I think. This is impossibly stupid.
“Tomorrow night,” I say.
Then I finally drop her hand and step back. The electricity disappears. I almost feel like I can breathe again.
Hazel gives me another long look, and then the corners of her eyes crinkle, just a little.
“Maybe,” she says.
Then she walks back to the door in the tower, still wearing my shirt and carrying hers, heaves it open, and disappears inside. I watch the door shut behind her, then walk back to the wall.
I look out over the ocean and force my breathing to slow. I force myself to stop thinking about the swell of her breasts, the dimples in her back, her nipples poking through my shirt.
Most of all, I wonder what the hell I was thinking, inviting her out tomorrow night.
Chapter Eleven
Hazel
When I get back to my bedroom I sit on the edge of my huge four-poster bed, still wearing Kostya’s shirt, and put my head in my hands.
What the fuck are you doing, I think.
I take a deep breath, grit my teeth, and remind myself that nothing actually happened. Yeah, we both got half-naked sort of in public, and now I’m wearing his shirt and my entire core is one feverish, hollow ache because he does things to me, but we barely touched each other.
I take another breath.
We didn’t do anything, I think. See? No international relations problems.
Slowly, I lay back on my bed. I stare at the ceiling because every time I close my eyes, I see Kostya standing in front of me, shirtless, that massive bulge in his jeans.
Holy hell.
My eyes snap open and I stare at the ceiling, clenching and unclenching my fists.
Despite myself, I think about Kostya leaning over me, one hand on the wall behind me. Still shirtless. So close that if I’d moved at all we’d have touched.
Zloyushka, I think. The memory of his voice saying it low and slow sends a shiver down my spine, and the ache inside me deepens.
I sigh and slide my hand under my shorts, unsurprised to find that I’m wet as fuck, my underwear pretty much soaked through. I squeeze my eyes shut and rub myself fast and hard, thinking of Kostya in the moonlight, until my toes are curling against the bedsheets.
I come hard, and as I do, I wonder whether Kostya’s doing the same thing.
After breakfast — sardines, thick yogurt, and toast, which is
actually much better than it sounds — I wander the palace halls for a bit. There has to be a library here somewhere, and that library’s going to have a Russian dictionary in it.
I could probably just ask someone, but I have no idea what it means. I don’t think Kostya is calling me a stupid gorilla vagina or something, but I still prefer to find out from a book, not someone who can make a face at me.
Zloyushka is a challenge, and I fully fucking intend to at least show Kostya that this loud, awkward, déclassé American can at least use a dictionary.
Well, after I find the library.
I walk around for twenty minutes, and start to wish that this place had a directory, like a mall or something. I’ve always had a good sense of direction, and I could find my way back to almost anywhere in the palace, but these doors aren’t labeled, and I’m not about to be the idiot American girl who just walks about opening doors in a foreign ruler’s house.
At last, staring a big double door in a stonework arch, I hear someone clear his throat behind me, and I turn around.
It’s Nikolai, one of the king’s aides.
“Miss Sung, correct?” he asks very, very politely.
“Yes,” I say. I walk toward him and hold out my hand. “Please, call me Hazel.”
He doesn’t smile, but he does shake my hand.
“Are you lost, Miss Sung?” he asks.
Shit, I think. I’d been hoping he’s remind me of his full name, because it makes me feel like a dick that he knows mine and I don’t know his.
“I’m actually looking for the library,” I say. “I wanted to learn a little more about Sveloria’s fascinating history.”
And also find out what the prince keeps calling me, I think.
He raises both eyebrows so slightly that I could be imagining it.
“It’s on the ground floor,” he says, and points down a corridor. “Down the main stairs, to the hall on the right. Heavy wooden door with a stained glass inset.”
I nod once, very slightly, and remind myself not to smile.
“Thank you,” I say.
He nods formally, and we walk in opposite directions.
The library is exactly where he said, and unlocked to boot. There are high, iron-wrought windows set in all the walls, and the place is beautiful and sunny. I’m practically humming as I grab a thick Russian dictionary, an English-to-Russian dictionary, A Guide To The Svelorian Dialect For English Speakers, and a pencil and scrap paper.
The first challenge is figuring out how to spell it in Cyrillic, the alphabet that Russian is written in. I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between some of the letters without someone here to guide me, but I give it a shot.
Then I crack open the dictionary to the end and scan the page, biting my lip.
Zloyushka isn’t in it, and I sigh dramatically, leaning my chin in my hand. I consult the English-to-Cyrillic guide again. I look back at the Russian dictionary, scanning my eyes down the page.
This time, my gaze falls on zloy, and I almost laugh out loud.
Duh, Hazel, I think. It’s a root with some stuff tacked onto the end. You know, the thing languages do?
Zloy (adj). Bad; wicked; naughty. See also ploho, neposlushnyy.
I stare at the word and think for a long second. There’s a suspicion bubbling up in my brain, and I flip to the front of the Russian dictionary where the section on nicknames and diminutives is.
I read it, frown, stare at the wall, and think for a long moment.
Then I grab A Guide To The Svelorian Dialect For English Speakers, and flip through it until I get to the nickname section.
I read it. Then I read it again, just to make sure I’ve got it right.
I look at the word I’ve written in terrible Cyrillic on the scrap paper, and despite myself, I start smiling. The -ushka ending is a diminutive, something that attaches to a name to make it into a nickname.
Russians in Russia don’t attach diminutives to adjectives to create nicknames, but Svelorians do. The most literal translation of zloyushka would be something like naughty little female person.
Bad girl. The crown prince is calling me bad girl.
That means I’ve got no choice but to meet him tonight, right? So I can tell him I figured out his stupid nickname?
It would be rude not to.
At least, that’s what I’m going to tell myself.
The rest of the day seems endless. I play some badminton with my dad, go visit the horse stables, and walk along the beach for a spell. Even though I was enjoying the break at first, I can feel myself start to get a little itchy at the inactivity, like there something I ought to be doing, but instead I’m hanging out at a palace being absolutely useless.
At eleven, I head back to my own rooms, because I feel like my face is one giant billboard that says I’VE GOT A SECRET.
I tear through my closet, and finally pick out ankle boots with a low heel, dark skinny jeans, a green tank top and a black, long-sleeve shirt. The shirt zips diagonally up the front, so it’s at least a tiny bit stylish.
Not that I have any idea where we’re going. It could be a black tie event for all I fucking know, in which case I’m wildly underdressed, a feeling I’ve already gotten a pretty good grasp on during my short time here.
The minutes tick by. I pace back and forth, flipping through TV stations on the TV, but they’re mostly in Russian, though I think there’s one where they’re speaking Turkish. We’re not far from Turkey, after all.
At 11:40 I give up and tiptoe to my door, and then I stand there with one ear to it, listening.
It quickly occurs to me that I’m being ridiculous. I’m allowed to leave the room, after all.
For that matter, I’m allowed to walk to the garden, and I’m allowed to have a conversation with Kostya. Hell, I’m allowed to go wherever he’s taking me. I’m a guest, not a prisoner.
I just probably shouldn’t.
With that in mind, I walk through the palace as casually as I can manage, like I’ve never even heard the words clandestine meeting in my life. I see a few staff members, but they just nod at me.
Finally, I’m there. At the bench, by the arch, the heavily sweet smell of roses trickling through the air. My stomach is tied in a million knots, or maybe it’s one giant knot. Maybe it’s a million knots that have formed themselves into one big knot, like some kind of anxiety Voltron. It doesn’t fucking matter.
At exactly 12:00am, a dark form steps through the stone arch and looks around. I stand, adjusting my shirt, and step forward.
“Kostya?” I murmur.
The other person steps forward, and the second he moves, I know something’s wrong — he’s a little shorter than Kostya, and he’s got a very, very slight limp. I stop short and hold my breath, but it’s way, way too late.
Run! I think wildly. He’s got a limp, he won’t catch you!
I force myself to stand there. If I run, someone’s going to think there was an assassin in the garden, the whole palace will go on alert, and I don’t need to cause any more trouble.
“Miss Sung,” a familiar voice says.
I exhale.
“Nikolai...” I say, trying desperately to remember his formal patronymic. “Sergovich?”
I’m almost positive that’s not it.
He inclines his head very slightly.
Oh, my god, just tell me what your fucking name is, I think. I already feel like an asshole.
“It’s a lovely night,” he says, very formally.
“Yes,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep so I was taking a stroll through the gardens. They’re very beautiful, and also relaxing and mesmerizing.”
Mesmerizing? I think. Moron.
He just nods again.
“I frequently walk through them when seeking calm,” he says. “Pleasure to see you again, Miss Sung.”
“The pleasure was mine,” I say.
He walks on, disappearing as he rounds a bend in the path.
Shit fuck shit fuck shit cock damn
hellfire, I think.
I wonder if I should give up and just go back to my rooms, because now Nikolai knows I was expecting to see Kostya in the garden at midnight, and if that’s not suspicious as shit, I don’t know what is.
You haven’t even done anything, I remind myself. Besides get high on the roof, but there’s nothing between you to keep secret.
It just feels like there is.
More footsteps. I take a deep breath and turn to see another figure standing in the stone archway. This time I keep my mouth shut as the figure walks toward me, approaching until he’s towering over me, so close I think I can feel the body heat radiating off him. I swallow hard.
“I was right,” Kostya says, his voice low.
Chapter Twelve
Kostya
“I figured out your nickname,” Hazel says, looking up at me.
She’s always got this expression in her eyes like she’s laughing, and I don’t know whether she’s laughing at me or at the world or whether I’m misreading, but there’s something enticing about it. Like she and I share some joke, some secret from the outside world.
No one’s ever looked at me that way before. I don’t know what it means, but I know I like it.
“And?” I ask.
“It just means bad girl,” she says. “I’m disappointed. I thought maybe you were more creative.”
“Is that a request?” I ask. “I can send you to the dictionary every day if that’s what you want.”
“There’s already enough here I don’t know,” she says. “I like at least knowing you’re not calling me a squirrel scrotum or something.”
“Squirrels are revered animals in Svelorian folklore,” I say, keeping my face perfectly straight. “Their scrotums have a long, storied history in alchemy and magic here.”
Hazel looks up at me and pauses, narrowing her eyes.
“That’s a joke,” she says, but she sounds uncertain.
I stare at her for another moment before I crack, letting myself smile.
“It’s a joke,” I say, and offer her my arm. “Would you care to stroll the gardens with me?”