by Lisa Daniels
Just what was going on?
I sat the uneaten food on the tray and returned to the window. The sun was setting, and I knew that looking at it would help me put things into perspective.
“Maybe Falmen was right. Maybe I haven’t really paid attention to those around me. But then why should I when they are only interested in using me to gain more status? It’s not me that they care about, but their own skins.”
I stared out the window, my mind lost in thought until the light of dusk was completely gone.
A deep voice startled me. “It appears you are deep in thought. Perhaps I should leave you to it.”
I spun around and leaning comfortably against the door to the hallway was the one person I did not expect to see. Blinking a couple of times, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Instead of talking, my eyes took in the figure in front of me as the candlelight danced across him. His hair was a deep brown that looked almost black in the lighting of my room. The twinkling in his eyes was hypnotic, and I felt that he was looking through me with those dark eyes. What color were they? I had never seen him in good lighting. The man was taller than nearly anyone I had ever met, but I had learned that was not always an indication of his species. The man in the courtyard wasn’t much bigger than the woman in his arms. His muscles rippled under the ragged clothing he wore, and for the first time since the encounter in the courtyard, I remembered that I had not completed my last task.
Putting my hands over my mouth, I began to apologize, “I am so sorry! So much happened that I got sidetracked and forgot to get your clothes.”
He smiled and shook his head, “That is quite alright. I can probably pick them up before leaving. But can I take your apology to mean that you still wish to leave with me? After you did not show, I began to think that perhaps your resolve had faltered.”
“I still very much want to leave. It’s just… well, your friend got captured this morning. I guess that means you will need to break him free, and then perhaps you will escape with him and the woman who has been given to him. They both need medical attention, which means you will have your hands full. Knowing all that, are you still interested in helping me? I mean, that would be fine if you said you didn’t have the capacity. Because she has been through a lot. She should be taken away from here, as hurt as she was this morning. Well, both of them, really. So if you need to focus on them, I’m alright with that. I’m sure I can figure something out.”
His brow lifted under this bangs, and I thought I saw a little smile cross his lips. “Are you worried about Bryce?”
I gave a little nod, “Of course, they dropped a gargoyle on his head. It didn’t kill him, but I can’t imagine that he is completely unharmed. And the woman he saved, well, she will need medical attention, which she isn’t going to get as his slave. Not with him being my father’s prisoner.”
“Ah yes, the woman. Do you care what happens to her?”
I sat down on the bed. “I can’t say that I care so much or that I’m worried about her. It just doesn’t seem right. He may have saved her life, but that is not a reason to give her to him. They ignored everything about her needs and just dropped her in a prison cell because of some draconian law. There is no logic to it. No one deserves that. At the very least, she should be allowed to return to the life she had before this morning.”
“And what if her life before this morning was no better?”
“How could it be any worse?”
He shrugged, “You do realize that there are people in this city who still have slaves outside of these kinds of circumstances, don’t you?”
“Surely not!” The idea was impossible; no one would allow for slaves, not in the city. Right?
“Do you really know so little of your kingdom?”
“It has never been and will never be my kingdom. I’m the wrong gender to have a kingdom. If you decide not to take me away from here, I will be married off and will have a miserable life in Evinough. Assuming I don’t come up with a plan on my own. If that happens, I’ll end up popping out a child or two, then plot against my husband until he kills me or I kill him. The usual life for a princess on this damned continent. Still better than what happened to the two women I saw today, though. All because of who my father is. That just doesn’t seem right.”
“I’m not sure if you have a good moral compass and a poor understanding of the world in which you live, or if you have a good understanding and just prefer to pretend that everything is alright.”
After all of the rebukes I had gotten that day, his words made me angry. “The point is that if you have more pressing problems, I am fine with you leaving me. What I’m not fine with is your judgment of me. I don’t care if you are a shifter—you have no right to judge me.”
“Actually, that is my purpose here. To analyze and determine the right fit for my needs.”
“That makes you sound like an entirely selfish prick. No better than any of the other assholes I’ve dealt with my entire life. They come to see if I am the right fit for their needs. Am I pretty enough? Is my figure a good fit for popping out babies? Am I pliable enough that they won’t have to worry about me making trouble?” The disgust in me was rising. I shuddered at the realization that even to this shifter, my existence was little more than a calculation for what he could get from me. “And here I had been thinking that perhaps you were different. If that is really all you are here for, then keep searching. I have nothing else to offer you.”
“I am inclined to agree with you, but analysis goes beyond just immediate impulse.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
Faster than I could have anticipated, the shifter was standing less than a foot away from me, his dark eyes boring down into mine. “There are many different analyses that are necessary, and I think that the most basic might be the best way to determine if my gut instinct is correct.”
“What are you—”
His words cut me off before I could finish. “May I kiss you?”
“What?” I wanted to take a step back, but decided to stand my ground. He approached me. There was no reason for me to run away.
One of his hands came up and brushed my long, brown hair behind an ear, then his hand remained just centimeters from my face. “May I kiss you?”
Hearing it a second time did not make it any easier to believe that he was asking me. The only men who had tried this had not been nearly so skilled, and their disinterest in me had been obvious in their eyes. I did not see that in the shifter’s eyes, though. His gaze was intense, almost like he was looking at me instead of my position. My heart began to race. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked, looking up at him, refusing to be intimidated or unnerved by his sudden actions.
“It would give me my answer.”
“And what is the question?”
“Are we compatible?”
I frowned up at him, continuing to fight the urge to step back, though I was no longer certain if I wanted to put distance between us or if I wanted to flee from that intense look in his eyes. Men wanted me for what they could get by bedding or wedding me. Money, power, and fame, all things that were pointless to a shifter. “I don’t understand why you would care. Is that why you wanted to help me get out of here? To find out if we are compatible?”
He blinked and the smile on his face grew a little wider. “I am at an age and in a position where it is essential for me to move forward with a woman. Something about you attracted my attention, and that is usually a good starting place. So I’ve been told.”
I looked up into those dark eyes and tried to figure out if he was messing with me or if he was in earnest. “Why would you be drawn to me? You could not benefit from the only thing that makes me desirable.”
“And what is that?”
“What you would gain by marrying the princess of one of the most powerful nations in the world. Marrying the princess of a human nation means nothing to you, and I know that. Without the power you would gain by finding me ‘compati
ble’ with you, I have nothing to offer a shifter.”
He smiled down at me. “That is certainly a good sign.”
“What?” I stared up at him at a complete loss.
“You are incredibly headstrong, opinionated, and definitely flawed, but it appears to be the case because you don’t see exactly what it is about you that makes you desirable or what your potential is. Not that I know the latter either.”
“Have they been starving you down there?” I reached my hand up and felt his forehead, wondering if perhaps the shifter was ill. Nothing he was saying made any sense, which was in stark contrast to our previous conversations.
Gently he took my hand and pulled it away. “You’ve learned that you can’t trust anyone, so you have kept everyone at arm’s length to keep yourself from getting hurt. You appear to want to help people, but are afraid that it will be detrimental to yourself.” He looked around my room. “I suppose this is a bit of a case in point, though I would love to be imprisoned somewhere like this than where they have actually stuck me.”
I pulled my hand away. “I think you are ascribing qualities to me that I do not have.”
“Well, Jada, on that point, we may end up differing.” The sound of my name startled me. No one ever used it, not even my father. It was always “princess” or “your majesty”, so I had almost forgotten that I even had a name of my own. He gave me a knowing look, then stepped away from me and sat in a chair across the room. “You should have come to meet me, but instead, you decided to ensure that Falmen suffered some kind of consequence for what happened this morning. It put you at risk unnecessarily. And to some, it would appear that you were just pitching a fit because you had been disrespected, and you wanted to teach the poor captain a lesson. As an aside, Bryce and I have a bet about what happens to the dear captain. My odds are on—” He stopped talking and looked at me for a moment before speaking again. “You are right, that really has nothing to do with what we were discussing. My point is that you may have done it for selfish reasons, but I am beginning to very much doubt that it was purely for selfish reasons.”
I shrugged, “There is nothing to suggest that it wasn’t something I wanted to do for myself.”
“Except that you don’t plan to be here. And from where you were standing, Falmen had put not one, but two women into precarious positions with no thought to their futures. Even if you couldn’t change things, you wanted to make people start thinking about their predicaments. Especially women.” He stopped talking and watched me.
I swallowed hard, wondering if perhaps shifters had the ability to read thoughts. Finally I managed to answer him, “You have no proof that was the case.”
“Your lack of denial is a pretty good indicator that it was correct. Even if not, there have been other signs. That and the fact that you are saying that I can help one of the women escape while leaving you here, which is not exactly a selfish thing to do. These factors are the reason why I am still assessing you instead of writing you off.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, the shifter’s gall stirring some long festering anger. “Well, there you go.” I looked up into those eyes. “Just go with your gut. If I’ve learned anything, that works better than overthinking things. You stick around here, and you will regret it.”
“But I have to stick around here.”
“Because you have to assess me?”
“You do know you aren’t the center of the world, don’t you? I’ve seen enough of your actions to know you are aware of that at least. I would appreciate it if you didn’t ascribe my inability to leave to your existence.”
Frowning, I looked at him critically. “You’ve said you came here to assess me. If not for me, then why else would you stick around?”
“Think about your day, and you tell me why.”
I tried to give him a withering look, then an image flitted through my mind. “Oh, your friend is in prison. But can’t he just get out and leave with you? I mean, you are here, so I can’t imagine that would be terribly difficult for him to escape.”
“Yes, he can. It will be a bit trickier for him to get the woman out with him, though. She isn’t small enough to slip through the bars, you see.”
“What?” It was one of the strangest things I’d ever heard. “I saw your friend—”
“Bryce.”
“What?”
“My friend’s name is Bryce.”
Biting my lip, I let the name register, then nodded. “Okay. I saw Bryce get struck by the gargoyle, and he was not small enough to slip through anything, let alone the bars of the cells here. If the woman is too big, he certainly doesn’t have a chance.”
“A wolf can fit through very nearly anything.”
The words shut me up. Of course, they were shifters, which meant that their other forms might very well fit through… anything, as far I knew. “You mean his other form is a wolf?”
“Yes, quite a handsome one, too. Then again, considering his looks, that is no surprise.”
“I wouldn’t know. From where I was standing, I couldn’t really see his face, and it was pretty dirty after the gargoyle struck him.”
“Aw, I wondered how I had remained so lucky.”
“Huh?” It was almost like every other thing he said was in another language. It was incredibly difficult to follow the shifter sometimes. Deciding it wasn’t worth trying to unpack whatever he was saying, I decided to ask a more obvious question. “If you don’t need to stay for him, why are you staying? I am ready to leave once you are.”
He gave me a strange look, then pursed his lips. “One of my other subordinates has come, and I am very concerned about why he is here. He was expressly forbidden from leaving our home because he has a bad habit of looking for death.”
“What? Why would he do that?”
“It’s a long story that may not matter to you.”
“Isn’t that a little too condescending to say?”
Never losing eye contact with me, the shifter shook his head. “You have no obligation to me. If you choose to stay, that is your decision. If you choose to leave with me, and then go your own way once we are outside of the city, that is also your decision to make. However, in either of these cases, my concern for him is not relevant to you.”
“Maybe it would help you to talk about it. I don’t usually listen, but I am willing to try. After all, you are willing to get me out of here. It is almost the least I could do to repay you.”
“My getting you out of here would require no repayment. I do it because it is the right thing to do, not for any benefit it might yield.”
“Then what about the assessment you are conducting to see if we are compatible?”
“My assessment and your decision do not have to reach the same conclusion.”
“You’ve totally lost me.”
“I know, but for now it is irrelevant to you.” He stood up and stretched his long limbs, a yawn drawing my attention to his mouth. I never did answer that particular question. Before I could say anything, he turned to the door. “Well, now that I know you are still interested, I will check back with you again once I know whether my friend is actually alright.”
His hand was on the doorknob when I stepped forward. “Why did you want to kiss me?”
There was surprised look on his face when the shifter turned to face me. “It would be part of a basic assessment. Judging by your response, though, you don’t have any experience with physical contact. I admit that is most disappointing, but at least it lets me know what I would be facing.”
“What does that even mean? What makes you think I have not had physical contact with men? I’m not a virgin, if that is what you are thinking.”
The shifter took his hand off of the door and took a couple of steps towards me. “Your reaction certainly could have fooled me. Do you find me unattractive, then?”
This question took me by complete surprise. “How could anyone find you unattractive? You look like you could be a gods damn statue.”
<
br /> His mouth turned down slightly, and I realized that I was staring at it for a little too long. He took another step towards me. “Then perhaps you prefer the company of women?”
“Gods, no. The only woman who ever made me feel comfortable was Mrs. Teasdon, but if anyone knew that we were friends—well, nothing would happen now. I’ll be gone within a week regardless. She should be fine.”
He gave me a strange look, then said, “I don’t think you understood what I meant. Are you sure you aren’t a virgin?”
“Of course I’m not. One of my father’s stewards groomed me, and a few years ago he decided I was ripe. When my father found out, the steward was executed. I’ve chosen to take a couple of men to my bed to rebel against my father, but it never lasted long. I felt nothing for them, and they were just looking for some dirt to blackmail my father. Joke was on them, though—they all got killed for trying.”
The shifter gave me a look. “Judging by your tone, you did not care that your lovers were killed.”