“She could stand to be a little friendlier about it,” Dayen said. “That’s all I mean.”
“Oh! I see. She wasn’t immediately charmed by you and now you’re offended.”
Yes, Day thought.
“No!” He said quickly. “That’s absurd.”
“If you say so,” Cade replied, chuckling.
They had entered the banquet hall and now Dayen found himself in a dark mood as he sat at the head of the table near his uncle. He would be forced, he knew, to sit right next to Cara. He smiled warmly at the rest of the court and guests joining them for dinner as the court musicians began to play in the middle of the room. The guests were always visiting to “pay tribute” or just schmooze and that wasn’t to mention the regular court who populated the castle and also the whole of his extended family. He had aunts, uncles, cousins. Once Aela had children, he would have nieces or nephews. It was a beautiful assembly of fae too. Everyone was graceful and handsome and refined in their shimmering robes, their carefully coiffed hair, silky and soft around their shoulders or twisted up into ornate braids.
Dayen was used to beauty. It was hard to impress him with looks.
But then Cara walked in.
He told himself he had already become used to her everyday, almost shabby appearance. It was startling, that was all. She had changed for dinner in the end. She wore a long gown of layered sheer fabrics stitched with gold thread in curlicues and fleur de lis. His uncle had chosen her clothes well. The top layer of her gown was a deep wine color that set off her eyes (now a deep blue) and her jet black hair.
She was breathtaking.
Dayen found himself staring and frowned down into his goblet of wine. He took a long swallow as Cara came around to sit next to him. He wasn’t the only one struck by her beauty either. Everyone was staring at her and she nodded a hello at Dayen’s cousin sitting on her other side and then she waved at Cade who seemed to have met her already while Dayen was busy answering his correspondence.
“I see you dressed for dinner,” Dayen said, smirking as always.
“Your uncle convinced me,” Cara replied, and she threw a warm smile in Cade’s direction which caused a confusing stab of jealousy within Dayen. “He’s very persuasive.”
“He’s married and old,” Dayen blurted out. Cara raised her eyebrows at him and he shut his mouth, frowning down at his empty plate that was soon filled with a chunk of leg of lamb.
He should have been messing with her, he thought. He should have at least been flirting with her if only because he could. Instead his head was buzzing, racing with distracting thoughts and sensations like the smell of whatever perfume Cara was wearing.
“What scent are you wearing?” he asked finally.
She blinked at him. “Perfume? I don’t remember what it’s called. I picked it up in some shop in the Village last year and the label’s worn off. I don’t know if they still make it.”
“It smells…weird.” It did not smell weird. It made him want to gently turn her head aside and smell her throat up close. But he wasn’t about to say so.
“Thanks,” she said, casting him a dirty look. “You’re a real charmer, you know?”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” he retorted. She looked right at him then and with such fierceness that once again he thought: breathtaking. But all he said was, “Your eyes are...singular.”
“Thanks,” she replied, much more genuinely. He’d surprised her and the two of them sat staring at each other for so long that it took Dayen’s uncle Cade to get his attention again. Dayen asked for a goblet filled to the brim with wine and he loosened his collar, suddenly feeling too hot, as Cara guzzled from her own goblet.
It was going to be a long night.
Cara stopped after two glasses and even though Dayen was approaching his fourth, already more than a little tipsy. He didn’t miss how she sat at attention, her gaze roving over every single fae seated at dinner and all the servants too. He watched her scanning the banquet hall for threats. It was somehow compelling just to watch her do that and some small part of him felt guilty for so quickly dismissing her when she had questioned him about who might be a danger. Though he supposed, she could probably get the same information (and better) from Cade. Still. She had just been doing her job, as Cade had said.
“Day!” Dayen’s cousin spoke up, leaning over the table. His impressively erect ears perked in interest, his blue hair fluffed up about him in a style newly trendy among the royal court. Day grit his teeth. He couldn’t quite stand his cousins. They were all so dull and content to curry favor from him and whoever else would bestow it. Now he was gesturing toward Cara who even just sitting silently at the table and nibbling bread and even in her formal robes, stuck out like a sore thumb. She held herself like a fae warrior and not like a lady. She clearly had more muscle on her than the average fae and there was no mistaking the hard edge to her either, even in her finery.
But Day’s cousin ignored all that and said much louder, “Day! Who is this charming creature? I’ve asked her name and where she comes from and she’s been quite slippery.” He leered at Cara and said, “Albeit quite intriguing.”
Ugh, Dayen thought. The guy was just like Philip, his sister’s current boyfriend. The both of them were just so slimy. So many fae men around here were.
“This is my um…” Cara shot him a look and he knew immediately that she wanted to keep her true purpose in being at court a secret. That made sense. If somebody was out to get him, they should keep his brand new Brunswick Academy protection detail a secret.
They hadn’t discussed it and he couldn’t say how he was so sure, but as he looked at her, he was absolutely positive it was what she was thinking.
“She’s my new paramour!” he said brightly. He sat back and wrapped an arm around her shoulders which had seemed a little broader than the average fae woman’s but which now seemed slim as he held them. She looked at him as if she might murder him and inside he laughed. He winked at her and immediately he was having a very good time.
“Yes, she’s my new lady,” he said. “She’s singled herself out at court. She’s a peach, is she not? Beautiful and just as refined and demure as any fae woman should be.”
Cara’s eyes turned bright red and he grinned.
“Cara,” she said, her jaw clenched. She let his cousin kiss her hand. “Pleasure. I’ve been away at...in the terran world. That’s where I met Prince Dayen.”
“Day, my love,” Dayen said. He leaned over to kiss her cheek just as she turned her head toward him and her cool, smooth skin against his lips made his blood run hot. “Call me Day.”
Cara looked up at him and frowned. “Your eyes are sparkling.”
He broke away and cleared his throat, suddenly off his game again. “Anyhow,” he said again. “She’s a wonderful girl. Quite charming as you said. Even if she is apparently from the country.”
Now she looked angry again. But that was a lot easier, he thought, than the alternative.
Except that now as he saw his stupid cousin leaning over to talk to the second cousin on his other side, he realized that word of his new lady was about to spread all over the entire kingdom.
Shit.
It wasn’t a problem exactly. It would just be another in a series of aggravations. He watched as people lit up at the news, their ears quivering, their long-fingered and elegant hands clapping in delight as they drank their wine. Cara seemed completely oblivious, but now Dayen played into it, leaning over to whisper nonsense into her ear. He kept his arm around her so it would appear they were canoodling.
“What are you doing?” Cara whispered back.
“You’re my special lady now,” he said, putting a little sleaze into his tone just to be funny. “We’re canoodling.”
“Canoodling?”
“Yeah, canoodling,” he muttered. They were so close his lips were brushing her hair. “Haven’t you ever canoodled?”
“I’ve canoodled plenty.”
“Someh
ow, I doubt that.”
“Day!” Aela’s voice rang out and Day tensed up as she came up behind him to visit him in his seat, immediately realizing that he would now have to sell this phoney relationship to his sister, at least in front of everyone else. Later when they were alone, he could certainly tell her who Cara really was. “Who’s the new girlfriend?” Her tone was teasing. That was all the more dangerous. He immediately sussed out that Aela might like Cara and within the space of a second, he realized it was because the both of them were intelligent (he could admit that about Cara anyhow, even if he didn’t know what was so special about her...beyond her ability to calm him during interdimensional travel and her prismatic eyes and ability to infuriate him within a couple of seconds among other things) as well as strong fae women.
That would be painful. It would be so much easier if Aela didn’t like Cara.
“This is Cara,” Dayen said, unable to hide his irritation. “I met her in the terran world. Don’t make a fuss.”
“On Earth?” Aela’s beau, Philip, said. Dayen couldn’t help shooting him a dirty look. “You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t you, Your Highness?”
There was something about the way he insulted the lady while maintaining Dayen’s title that was especially infuriating to him.
“She’s from the country,” Dayen clarified, rolling his eyes.
Cara looked pained by that again and especially so when Philip guffawed. “Ooh, a quaint country girl. Well, I rest my case.”
Dayen felt hot under the collar but more than that, he sensed Cara’s disdain, though she only smiled tightly at Aela and took another swallow of wine.
“Philip,” Aela said, frowning. “Don’t be so rude. I’m terribly sorry. It’s lovely to meet you. Although what you see in my brother, I couldn’t possibly imagine.”
Cara laughed at that and Dayen just nodded. Of course, there it was. They definitely had the potential to be fast friends. That could easily be disastrous.
Before he waved them off, he said gravely to Philip, “If you ever insult my lady again, it will be the last time you draw breath. Aela, you can do better. Have a lovely evening.”
Even Aela seemed pleased by that and as she led her companion away, he heard her lecturing Philip on how he should keep his snobbery to himself.
But Cara was gawking at him. Her attention felt strange. He kept expecting her to thank him, but she didn’t. She closed her mouth and her lips were a tight line as she looked away.
“I still don’t like you,” she said quietly.
“But you will,” he replied, feeling suddenly and intensely confident.
He’d make sure of it.
“I hate your sister’s boyfriend,” she said under her breath. “He’s worse than you.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that anyway. They sat there in silence and she had her goblet refilled with wine again. Everyone around them was having a lovely time and the minstrels were playing lutes and there were fae dancing in the performance area between the tables. Cara watched them blankly and Dayen wondered if she had ever been impressed by anything.
“This mission could last a long time, you know,” she said sulkily. “There’s no telling. I could be here for...years. Years and years. We really don’t have any idea.”
He searched himself for some feeling of dread at that possibility. This pouty, humorless, stubborn girl stuck with him and looking like she did… And his annoying reactions to her that he couldn’t seem to control that had already manifested themselves in just the first day...
He found it was a rather pleasant idea, all things considered, and the thought plagued him.
“Drink up!” he said, holding out his goblet.
5
Cara
Dayen was hot and it sucked. She’d read him as conventionally attractive in the painfully beautiful manner that fae men had, but that startled and almost harsh kind of beauty she could take. She’d grown up around it after all. Even in the country, fae men were gorgeous. She herself was not bad to look at either, even if it had been apparent early on that she would be a warrior. But she hadn’t been attracted to him. Or rather, she had, right up until he’d laughed and admitted that he wasn’t any kind of assistant and was in fact, the prince. Then she’d decided she was not attracted to him, even if attraction really didn’t work that way.
He was smug and cocky and far too knowing and all the other things that young men could be that they tried to insist was so irresistible and which she found infuriating.
But the way he’d told off Philip for insulting her… She’d had too much wine clearly. But it had given her the good kind of tingles. So had his hand in hers and his arms around her shoulder. She put that down to generic horniness. She just needed to get laid. She wondered if she could pick up a soldier or a duke or something, just for a roll in the hay.
“Look out for that wine,” Dayen said in her ear. “It sneaks up on you.”
She shot him a dirty look if only because, by now, it had become a habit.
“How did you know I was from the country?” Cara asked, biting down on her words.
“Oh come on,” he said, laughing. “You’re definitely not from the city. You’re not that refined. Actually, it’s sort of hard to tell. I suppose it’s the warrior in you. Makes you...eh…”
“Watch it,” she muttered.
“No, it just makes you mysterious, I suppose,” he said. He looked thoughtful and bothered. It was sort of amusing to her to see him not be smug for a second.
“I suppose you think we’re all bumpkins,” she said huffily. “Your little peasant subjects out on their farms…”
“I like the countryside folk,” he said, shrugging. “I suppose in some ways they’re more fae than we are. Especially the ones who charm the land and dance in the flowers…”
“Every year,” Cara said quietly. “Dance of the Flower Maidens. We make ourselves no bigger than beetles and dance in the flowers for days at the beginning of spring. I know you royals think it’s silly-”
“It’s lovely,” he said. “I’ve heard others talk about how it’s a silly country tradition. But fae around the royal court are sometimes too changed by the terran world. Especially here with the City of Keene so close. I grew up closer to villages like yours back on Mare Beach. But there’s a charm to all that. The aristocratic sorts don’t understand it because they don’t remember all the traditions. But the thought is that becoming tiny like the stereotypical ‘fairies’ in stories and dancing in flowers is somehow demeaning. I don’t know… I’ve never thought so. I wanted to go to a Dance of the Flower Maidens when I was a boy. My father thought it would make us look silly.”
She looked at him funny. The banquet hall was emptying out finally and Dayen seemed to come back to himself. He’d been staring off into space and for a moment, she’d been taken in by him.
There was something very sweet about him wanting to go to a Dance of the Flower Maidens when he was a boy and there was something even sweeter about him admitting it to her, although she supposed it helped that he was tipsy. She got to her feet abruptly and the rush of blood through her body made her realize she was a bit tipsy as well.
Great job, Cara, she thought. You’re supposed to be guarding him.
That wasn’t to mention that at some point she needed to find out who had the wooden totem (presumably it was whoever was after Dayen) and guzzling wine was not going to solve that mystery any faster.
“Let’s go out to the gardens,” Dayen said loftily. He took her hand and she frowned, stumbling along after him as he made his way to the wide open double doors, as passersby bowed and knelt when he walked by. He waved them off. “You can see the enchanted roses and the orchids, orchids are very nice…”
“Are you drunk, Your Highness?” She said, rolling her eyes at the word.
“You can call me Day, you know,” he said. “I never said you should call me ‘Your Highness.’ And no, I’m not nearly drunk enough.” He nodded
at the half-full bottle on the table and said, “Take that, please.”
Cara grabbed the bottle off the table just as he swept her away.
“Can you glamour?” Dayen asked a few minutes later.
Cara suspected Dayen was just a little more tipsy than he wanted to admit. It had taken him ten minutes to find his way through the castle that he called home, to get her outside to the gardens behind it. But now they were strolling between two rows of orchids, the like of which Cara had never seen. The orchids were pink and purple and much larger than normal orchids and when the moonlight hit them just so, they swayed as if they were swooning.
Cara looked up at Dayen, her gown trailing in the lush green grass as they walked side by side. His hair looked more silver than blonde in the moonlight, she thought.
“Of course I can glamour,” she said. “Everyone can glamour.”
“I’m terrible at it,” he muttered. “I can teleport. I can cast. I’m a good fighter. I have excellent stamina, speed, strength…but beyond that...”
“What about when your eyes sparkle?” she asked. “I saw it happen-”
“That’s nothing,” he said quickly. “That was a trick of the light-”
“No it wasn’t.”
He walked a little faster and she jogged to catch up with him, still carrying the wine bottle. She took a swallow of wine, even though she already felt it making her brain hum. She was forgetting to hate Dayen now, she was feeling so good. And besides that, he really was being cute.
“Show me a glamour,” he said, stopping short so that she bumped into him. He stood in front of her and she looked him up and down. He was much more imposing in the fae realm than he was in the terran world. Though she supposed he would seem pretty considerable standing next to a bunch of fragile humans. “I want to see you glamour. My protector.” He smirked and suddenly she remembered why she hated him.
“Alright, fine.” She was happy to show off this power. It was a simple one and not scary like the interdimensional powers she tried so hard to ignore.
Royal Fae Bodyguard (Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls Book 1) Page 5