The prince’s cane hit the ground as he stalked over to where Tiana was sitting, Nik bemoaning, “To think I have to work with a bunch of fuckheads for guards. Ballerinas would be easier to train than you lot!”
Tiana, however, was deciding she could watch his legs all day, the powerful muscles shifting and his narrow hips moving as he prowled. How a man using a cane could prowl, she had no idea, but she was feeling dizzy, and it wasn’t the heat.
“Good afternoon, your highness,” said Yanner pleasantly, looking up from his work to bow his head minutely.
“Mornin’, Yanner,” Roland said gruffly back. “Nice shorts.”
Gerod snorted, earning a glare from his husband.
“What can I do for you, Highness?” Tiana asked, startled by the full weight which swung on her at the question. “Nik’s howls weren’t music enough to your ears so you came to bother me?”
“My side is ailing me,” he said. “Can you do anything about it?” “You looked fine before.” And he had. His mouth tightened. “I”m not now.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, I left my medkit inside.”
“Then, by all means, lead the way.” Having little other choice, Tiana stood and moved towards the barracks, which were all but abandoned. It was far cooler inside, compliments of a pile of ice packed with straw and thawing in the corner. It was also far better for her potions and whatnot to be kept out of the heat. It tended to expire them annoyingly quick. And considering how long she toiled over each and every one, it was an irritation she’d rather avoid. She shut the door behind Roland, stopping Nik mid-rant about his men’s mothers.
“He’s so pleasant,” she said, gliding past where he was leaning on one of the bunks.
“I don’t want to talk about Nik.”
“Alright, fine. What kind of pain would you describe it as?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s in a lower region. I’m aware of it at all times. It throbs and twinges whenever I look at you.”
She turned, ready to reprimand him, but the words died in her mouth and all she managed was an, “oh,” and quickly twirled back to her kit.
“Yes, I agree.”
She cleared her throat, more so to see if it would convince any liquid at all to wet the desert blistering there. “I’m not sure what I can do to help you with that.”
“Can’t you?”
“How do you know I’d be remotely interested in helping you with such a thing?”
“You yammer on about how many anatomy books you’ve read in the last year alone, I figure you’d want some hands-on practice.”
“I do not.” “So can you help, or not?”
Her ire rose a bit, her pride warring at his assumptions as she whirled around to face him. “What? Will you just go elsewhere if I refuse?”
He looked at her oddly, as if he couldn’t imagine such a thing. “Refuse?”
“Yes, if I refuse, your highness.”
“Then I suppose I would have to look elsewhere. The service isn’t exactly difficult to come by.” She really wished she were the one holding his cane so she could hit him with it. Hard. She did consider briefly kicking it out from his grip in the hopes he’d topple over, but he was much too sturdy for that now. And, there was a reason she used things like wall-destroying pistols and poison. She wasn’t a very good fighter. She was a better con.
However, now she was just mad, and vaguely insulted. Perhaps even...a bit jealous? How great it must be to be a prince, and a handsome one at that, endearing in his brusque, awkward way. Oh, how she despised him. Oh, how she loathed him. Oh, how good his arms looked...
“I didn’t realize I was so expendable,” she bit out.
He blinked at her in surprise. “Tiana, what do you think we’re talking about?”
She snapped the lid of her medkit shut. She was a fool for having given him one little pinch of her refined Yai Root. The trouble she’d gone too and...she wanted to scream. Men were so aggravating.
“We’re talking about you presuming you could bed me in a barrack, in the middle of the day like some Sludge whore.”
Bristling, she turned back, kit in hand. The idea of smacking him with it rang brightly in her mind. It was quite heavy and it would do very much damage. Perhaps she’d shove more powdered yai root down his throat. Then he’d feel really nice.
He then did the stupidest thing; he laughed.
Tiana stomped by him, believing fully the ice would melt faster in the room with the steaming rage pouring out her ears. This only pissed her off even more because then everything in her medkit would go bad and he’d have ruined that too! She was better off in the library; there she didn’t have to deal with bothersome, annoying, dickish—
He dropped the cane with a thud and caught her wrist.
“Let go of me,” she hissed, fist clenching in his grip. “Or I will knock you over the head with my kit.” “It isn’t usually wise to admit your plan of attack.” “I’m not sure about that, it feels pretty wise so long as you end up unconscious at my feet.”
He chuckled, eyes crinkling, and she moved her arm in preparation to swing, when he winced. Then, coughed.
She froze and nearly all the blood drained from her face. “Oh, gods,” she cried. “You really are in pain! But you said it twinges whenever you look at me and I thought…”
“I just meant that the sight of you reminds me of how much it still hurts. Though, I can’t pretend I hadn’t thought once or twice in the other direction, or experienced the sensation.”
Her face went from cold to hot in two seconds flat.
Then he wheezed and she just felt bad.
Herding him to one of the nearest bunks, she pushed him to sit down. Kneeling at his feet, she flipped open the medkit and immediately brought out a bit of taler leaf for him to chew which would bring down the pain and then a jar of salve to do the same.
Without prompting, he lifted up the corner of his shirt for her, revealing the hard plains of his stomach. Trying her best not to look, especially at the bead of sweat mockingly slipping by and into the band of his pants. She bit her lip and put her fingers on the spot which was now yellowing from the bruise. The color was actually a relief. At least that was healing. Her pride on the other hand...it might take a few centuries.
Roland flinched as he always did, air hissing through his teeth.
“That’s cold,” he said.
“Tch. You’re too sensitive.” He shivered again as she stroked a bit higher on his side, determined to cover the entire bruise with the goopy salve.
“Please, stop,” he requested hoarsely.
She paused and look up into his face. His eyes were closed and his nostrils flaring.
“Are you ticklish?”
“No,” he snapped, eyes flying open. “And don’t you dare tell anyone.” She smirked. “Wouldn’t want to ruin the good opinion of the kingdom, I suppose. What’ll you give me to pay for my silence?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What do you want?”
To lick the sweat off your stomach, said the worst voice in the world: her own. Luckily it was only in her head She cleared her throat and said, “I heard there’s a secret place at the top of the castle where you can see everything.”
“And just who did you hear that from?”
She shrugged innocently.
“Nikolas,” he growled, “can’t keep his damn mouth shut.” “Why does he even know about it if it’s so secretive?”
“He’s stupidly silent for his size, that’s how. Even as a lumbering, lanky, jackass of a teenager, he crept like a kitten.”
“So, will you show it to me?”
He grunted. “The best time is to see it at night, with the stars.”
Her smile slipped a little bit, thinking of her promise to her father. So far she’d been dutifully turning up to Blood Alley, been a good little son and having her meeting with Pene the bearded dwarven woman, who’d be stuffing her ears full with a dreary lecture about the process of harnessing the powers of
magic and bending them to the right usage for what they needed. Elven crystals were apparently great for blowing things up, which Tiana had known just fine without having to take notes on it. Not that she had.
She’d made Asha take them.
“I’m busy at night.”
Something flashed across his eyes, but was gone too quickly for her to interpret.
“Can we go up there right before sunset?” she offered, hating herself just a little bit. Hating, even more, the stupid, girlish hope rising up in her chest. It was not the time for a frivolous crush. Nor was it the time to be fantasizing about princes and then hoping to literally jump them. It would only make her life even more difficult. Yet, here she was. Still talking. Still thinking about jumping him.
“It’s my favorite time to see the city.”
“It is?” he asked.
She grinned. “It’s the absolute best time to see anything at all. Gods...when there’s snow, it’s practically magic.”
Chapter 8
Roland found it bewildering that his nurse, who harped on him when he got up too quickly, wanted him to climb twelve sets of stairs, on top of the five to the library he met her at. Yet, here he was, standing amongst the stacks of books, cane in hand, waiting patiently for her to make her grand appearance.
Roland stared down at the book in his hands, not seeing it in the slightest bit. Instead, he was thinking of a woman, kneeling before him, and looking up at him with a half smirk on her bewildering and taunting and annoying, beautiful face.
He hated how she spoke to him, yet he craved it desperately when she wasn’t around.
He loved hearing her spar with Nik about the weather and why it would rain the next day. He always smiled when he heard her coming, already sharply instructing Gerod about precisely what he had done to make his husband angry and what he was going to do that night to fix it. And he could barely stand it when she stood in front of him, dark eyes flashing, and challenged him head on like an angry, riled bull.
So, he kept coming back for more.
She made him laugh and she made him wild and damn her for knowing he was ticklish. Damn Killian for tossing him out a damn window and bruising him in exactly that spot. Though, there was a bit of fondness for the asshole merely because he’d brought him close to her, even if ninety percent of the time in his company was her bristling; even if she’d nearly blown a gasket at him yesterday for propositioning her and now, here he was, taking her to watch a sunset.
What was even happening?
He was a prince. A soldier. A goddamn captain. And now he was a moonstruck teenager. How had she put it; trying to catch a snog from the library apprentice behind the stacks?
The things he would do to those lips if he got ahold of them.
It was a dangerous thought indeed, one which made him particularly throbby in an area which was this time, not his side. It was...lower and far more agonizing.
“I didn’t realize you had an interest in the birds of the Southern Wildlands,” came a sardonic voice from the end of the row.
He looked up and froze.
She hadn’t done anything special and the dark smudges beneath her eyes grew worse and worse each day, but she was radiant. She was wearing a pair of tight, striped trousers and a thick, cream sweater for the chilly evening sure to follow the hot spring day, beneath a collared shirt, lapels pressed down at the neckline of her jumper. Her hair had been combed and twisted back and still, unruly strands were escaping. There was a pleasant pink to her cheeks, though he had the suspicion it may have been a bit of a burn from her sitting in the sun, staring at him.
Like he was staring now.
He coughed and pushed the book back in its home. “I spend all my day reading about the avian populations of all the lands. I’m surprised you haven’t seen me in here before.”
“Trust me, I’m surprised you even know how to read.” He snorted, walking up to her. “Well, I must be here all the time, because there is a steadily growing pile of books beside my bed from these very shelves. And since they must be mine, I must be here very often and have never seen you here once. I’m beginning to guess you aren’t really a library apprentice.” “An Apprentice Librarian,” she said through tight lips, less enraged but in an effort not to smile. Her eyes were sparkling, especially in the low burning alchemical lights doting the walls of the library.
Roland briefly wondered the merits of actually propositioning her. She might not have cared for having a go in the barracks, and he would hate for the first time to be that way too...but she did love this library and they were quite alone.
He opened his mouth to likely say something that would either get him slapped or get her in his arms, when she said, “We better get going. I have to be somewhere this evening.” And his ideas snapped shut.
That was right, she had somewhere to be. There was always somewhere she had to be in the evenings. It was why a nurse turned up like clockwork the past couple of weeks to attend to him in the night if he woke up.
He tried not to let the disappointment show on his face, nor the little bit of anger blistering at the idea of her going to meet someone else. Which was, of course, ridiculous. She had never flirted with him, not directly. Her sharp tongue was hardly a cause for him to think she was throwing herself at his feet. She’d never once for a moment been impressed by his status or his title of prince.
Hell, she’d rejected the idea vehemently the night, rattled by the mere idea of being with him—not that it was what he meant when he’d been speaking to her, but all the same...Perhaps he’d been a bit too obvious in his appreciative gaze and now she was on edge.
Which, quite frankly, was the worst thing he could think of; making her feel uncomfortable. Or saints forbid, frightened of him. She was a woman making the best of perhaps an undesirable situation. Marius had all but forced her to stay with him and while she was sarcastic and exasperated, she’d never let true annoyance show. She might not have any designs to him at all, just was trying to be friendly and nothing more.
Roland cleared his throat and stepped back, looking away quickly from her face and trying to forget the intoxicating scent of flowers floating from her hair.
“We should get going.”
He only saw the tail end of her frown as he stepped around her, determined to think it was nothing at all.
* * *
Tiana knew she shouldn’t let the silence trailing along with them up the stairs bother her, but it was there all the same, it winced at her shoulder and twinged at her heart.
The damnable thing.
Roland hadn’t said one word to her since they’d left the library, nor had he spared her once glance since. And here she was, having dabbed a bit of perfumed water on her neck and tied her hair back as intricately as she knew how, for shit all. Meanwhile, the man she’d spend the evening nervously anticipating seeing, was stomping up the stairs, fist white around his cane, as if he couldn’t wait for this to be over.
And there was still seven more flights to go and then time on the rooftop, and then the long march down...and. No. No way. Her dignity could not take that. Not tonight. She had too much shit to do, too much swagger to pretend to have. And her pride, quite frankly, felt a little strained with how little sleep she was getting. Because whenever she should have been sleeping, she was worrying about the Red League, or thinking about the man before her; daydreaming with rather little inclination to stop about the feel of his body on hers. She thought endlessly about her head in the crook of his shoulder, his arm slung around her, curled up in bed with only themselves and whispers and life. None of which, helped her sleep. And she was tired.
So, she abruptly stopped walking.
It didn’t take him very long to notice him and his cane were the only tread going up the stairs. He made it about five steps above her before he turned to look back.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, the question hanging heavy in the space.
Tiana longed to wrap her arms around herself, fee
ling chilly and foolish and stupid in ways she was not used to.
Her sleep deprivation was getting to her.
“Nothings wrong, I just realized I shouldn’t have suggested this. You aren’t fully healed yet and as your temporary physician.”
“Entirely replaceable,” he said, trying for a small smile which she didn’t return.
She looked away and didn’t answer
“You’re just realizing this now?” he asked suspiciously. Eyes narrowing.
“It was a stupid suggestion anyways. Maybe we’ll try again when you’re recovered. I got a little cocky with how well you were healing. We could bring Nik next time, make it a celebration.”
She heard his feet thud down the steps and tensed when his shadow darkened her space. She glanced up and he was only a foot away, brows furrowed.
“Alright, what’s wrong with you? Who in their right mind would want to hang out with Nik?”
Her old anger bristled at the tone. “Nothing’s wrong.”
His mouth twitched and she looked away. “Now, why don’t I believe you?”
“I don’t know, you’re head is full of fucking rocks?” After she said it, she wished she could take it back. She knew she toed a careful line with what she said to royalty and she knew he allowed it, but most of the time, he was prompting it. This time, he was not.
“You are aware I’m your prince, right?” he asked quietly.
She felt warm, minty breath on her face, and was startled to find his eyes an inch away from her face.
“Tell me what’s wrong.” Tiana made a strangled noise in her throat, and less of her own volition, threw her arms around his neck, and pushed down the voices saying no, and gave in utterly to the voices saying yes.
It took very little time for the cane to clatter to the floor, and arms to wrap around her waist. He kissed her back with a ferocity she’d never once experienced in all her years. One hand stayed about her waist, the other cupped her cheek and pulled her as close as he could, tongue on the seam of her lip. Which, of course, she opened. He was a prince after all.
Deception: Rogues of the Red League, Book 1 Page 7