by Natalie Mae
Prince Kasta clearly does not. He’s tall and fit, his arms toned and strong, his black hair curling at his ears in the preferred style of soldiers. Kohl lines his eyes, enhancing their blue. A garnet-red sash drapes the shoulder of his white tunic, and a belt of golden rattlesnakes twists about his waist, their eyes glittering black jewels. The serpents of Valen, god of fate and fortune. More of the snakes crown his hair.
I worry I’ll answer any question he asks with “yes,” and remind myself I absolutely cannot survive the desert, even if he’d be at my side, even if I could watch him protect me with those arms . . . even if we’d be sharing a tent.
Gods, please let me answer his questions normally.
“Lia, daughter of Rai,” says the announcer.
Murmuring resumes in the room. I at least have the sense to bow, though the prince barely inclines his chin in response.
“You’re dismissed,” he says, and looks past me. “Is that everyone?”
That’s it. When I tell this story to people, and they hungrily ask what sparkling wisdom the prince imparted, I’ll have two words for them. Obviously this is what I wanted, but I suddenly feel insulted.
“Yes, aera,” the announcer says.
Without another word, the prince leaves for the rosewood table, where of course Gallus is sitting with three others. I have half a mind to loudly explain it doesn’t matter because that was the reaction I wanted anyway, and I’m only here for the chocolate, but the man at the curtain must see the storm brewing in my face, because his hand locks around my arm.
“He didn’t even ask me a question,” I say.
“It is best to leave the prince to his methods,” he hisses, towing me toward the fountain. I puff my bangs out of my eyes and let him take me, reminding myself it doesn’t matter what Prince Kasta thinks, and that truly was the best-case scenario, in which I didn’t even have a chance to reveal myself. I glance up at the balconies, hoping to see Hen’s approving face, but spectators crowd the marble railings and jostle the grim-faced guards, a constant shuffle of bright dresses and glimmering headpieces. There are just too many people. I’m going to have to trust she’s there and move on before someone asks why I’m gawking like a commoner.
Luckily there is plenty else to move on to. Now that I’ve survived the first prince, my tension drains as I take in walls embedded with gemstones and giant white pillars carved like palm trees. There is so much color. In everyone’s dresses and tunics, of course, vibrant shades of red and orange and green, but also in the real sapphires rimming the fountain and the elegant crane curled around the cascade of water, its feathers painted all hues of purple and blue. Flecks of crystal shine in the floor, and torches hang like stars from the ceiling, bathing everyone in a warm, vibrant glow.
Oh yes. This will be a proper story yet, judgmental princes aside.
And the food. I don’t know if it’s more impressive because there’s so much of it or because I don’t know what half of it is. Two long golden tables are cluttered with platters of steaming meats, white cauldrons of soup, trays of puffed breads, cups brimming with butterscotch candies, and chocolate cakes topped in fruit. I need to find someone to identify it all. Hen will want details.
“Did you get asked a question?” I ask a boy who’s twisting a slice of melon through a creamy dip. He looks at me like I asked if he’d like to contract an embarrassing rash and scuttles away.
I guess I know why he isn’t sitting at the rosewood table.
A brunette in a peach jole, thumbing a gold bracelet around her bicep, approaches the cakes. I decide the rare dye of her dress and the sapphires in her hair mean she knows something about palace food.
“Do you know what those are?” I ask.
“Strawberries, raspberries, lemon,” she says, pointing to the different cake toppings. She selects a raspberry slice and turns away.
“Wait!” I say. “What about the rest?”
“The rest of what?”
It dawns on me that my next request is slightly unreasonable. “Um. Everything.”
She looks down the tables—which stretch the entire side of the room—and smiles.
“Ask a servant. That’s what they’re here for.”
She leaves for the couches on the other side. Everyone else has collected into groups now, laughing and talking with the familiarity of people who know one another. A girl in purple toasts her friends by the fountain; a group on a couch roars in laughter at a story a huge young man is telling. Gallus is still sitting at the rosewood table, now holding a bright flame in his palm, and for a moment I wish he didn’t have to be so important or overbearing, because he probably knows what all this food is. But Prince Kasta is watching him in his regal princely fashion, and I concede that asking a servant really would be best and grab a strawberry-topped cake on my way to find one.
I’ve only had chocolate one other time in my life, when one of Fara’s richest clients traded it as payment for boarding his stallion. This is something else. This is like drifting through delicious, bittersweet clouds and being kissed by a god who has sugary strawberry lips while someone else massages your shoulders and whispers how perfect you are in your ear. I could die right now and have no regrets.
I swallow the rest of the cake in two bites, smiling at myself, and approach a guard.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Can you explain all of this food to me?”
The guard gives me a very condescending look, considering that, for the night, I outrank him as the heirs’ guest. His black hair is shaved close, and his armor reflects slips of torchlight along his dark brown skin, one hand resting atop the curved sword at his hip. Its ivory scabbard seems a strange treasure for a guard who looks my age. I thought only officers carried such swords, but maybe he just looks younger than he is.
“Shouldn’t you be more worried about looking like you have any interest in the prince?” he asks.
“Oh, I’m not here to be an escort,” I explain.
He scoffs. “What, you’re just here for the cake?”
It does sound bad when he puts it like that. I bite my lip, trying to think of another way to phrase it.
“That was a joke,” he says. “But now I’m concerned it’s true.”
“It’s halfway true. I’m also here to see the palace.”
“But not the prince.”
“Right.”
A smile slides onto his face, and though I usually prefer boys of Kasta’s height to the guard’s stockier build, there’s something magnetic in the warmth he radiates.
“You want me to tell you about the food,” he says.
“Yes, please.”
He scrutinizes me, opens his mouth in what I fear will be a no, then shrugs and starts for the tables. “All right.”
I shoot another glance at the rosewood table to check on Gallus. He’s now one of two sitting with the prince, though his smile is gone, and the room looks emptier in general. I thought there were six people playing cards and crystals on the couches—now there are three. Both girls who’d been sitting on the fountain when I walked in are gone. A few still wander the food, and a short boy sways before the harp.
“I thought we were allowed to enjoy the party until he chose someone,” I say. “Is he sending people out?”
The guard sneers. “Well, since you’ve already declared you’re not here for him . . . you should know His Illustriousness doesn’t like crowds, remembering names, or treating others with basic human decency. Kindness is hard for him. So yes, about five minutes ago, he started clearing out everyone he’s deemed useless.”
My jaw drops as we pass a white-robed servant. I would worry this means the prince still thinks I could be useful, but after our first meeting, I’m fairly confident I can be dismissed again with little effort. “You can say that? Aren’t you afraid someone will hear?”
“On the contrary,” he says,
giving me a smile I’m growing fonder of by the minute. “I hope they do.”
Hen will be in Paradise when I tell her about the unrest between the eldest prince and his guards. At the table, a new girl in sunrise yellow sits with Gallus, one of the three who was playing cards a moment ago. The prince looks over her shoulder.
Right at me.
And like I was the one who spoke ill of him, my face grows hot.
“So, the food,” I say, turning away.
“The food.” The guard pauses at the end of the first table. “Kryderi soup. Rune soup. Manne and lentil soups.”
The last two I’m familiar with, having made them with Fara. “Rune soup?”
“A recipe from our sister country Nadessa. It’s made with something called ‘cucumbers.’ The Mestrah imports them.”
“I’ve heard of Nadessa,” I say, grabbing a shallow bowl and scooping some of the green liquid into it. “They have palaces made of ice and birds that grant wishes.”
The guard snickers. “You don’t know what rune soup is, but you know all about another country?”
He’s certainly cheeky for a palace guard. I decide his mouth is what landed him a night guarding a party instead of watching the north desert for threats.
“I don’t know all about Nadessa,” I say. “But I know some things, yes.”
“How? Have you been there?”
His expression is disturbingly close to what I must look like when a traveler stops in from a new place. Hungry for the story, hungry for details. Hungry for a world that’s not my own.
“No,” I say. “But I hear the travelers speak of it at my—er, my friend’s stable.”
“What do they say? Tell me one of their stories.”
I suppose palace guards don’t have the chance to get out in the world any more than I do. I lift the spoon to my lips, pondering which story to tell him, and am entirely unprepared for the frigid, sweet liquid that follows. “Ugh, is it supposed to be cold?”
A laugh. “Yes.”
“This is terrible!”
I say this louder than I should in a room that’s rapidly declining in population. And of course Prince Kasta is looking at me when I glance over. I fake a smile and force myself to take another spoonful of gross, cold slime, hoping he’ll think I was reacting to something other than the soup. I’m finding I don’t want to be sent out just yet. I still have fifty food names to memorize, and I’d love to figure out what issue this guard has with his potential king.
The guard sees the prince watching, and his smile fades.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I’m getting distracted. Behind the soups we have citron”—he points to a platter of fish and lemon slices—“freya bread”—a loaf covered in tiny seeds—“and osta-fel. It’s a soft cheese made of buffalo milk. You eat it with crackers or the bread.”
“Cheese?” I haven’t heard of buffalo, either, and after the cold soup, am less eager to try something new.
“You’ve never had cheese?” The guard’s gaze flickers to the jewel dangling by my eye, and then—rather boldly—down the red of my dress. “You said your friend owns a stable? Surely cheese and milk would be one of their most profitable trades?”
He assumes “my friend” owns livestock, as true nobles would. I’m wondering how I’m going to dig myself out of this one when a shriek sounds from the rosewood table. The spectators go silent. The guard’s hand snaps to his sword, but two of the bigger, shirtless guards are already on the scene, each clasping an arm of the girl in yellow. Everything within a short radius of her trembles, cups and plates lifting into the air.
“No!” she yells. “I was made for this. I’ve studied war, I know how to survive the desert! You cannot possibly be so set on Atera trash.” She jerks her head at Gallus, whose eyebrows rise. I admit I feel a pang of satisfaction at this—at someone considering him to be beneath them. “You need someone with true power. Who can do more than conjure what the Forsaken could with two sticks!” The guards tug her closer to the room we entered from, and the girl thrashes in their arms. Cups crack and shatter, spilling wine onto the tile. “I was born to be remembered! I was born to be yours!”
The guards pull the girl from the room. The curtain smashes to the floor behind them and a crack splits up the wall, but the vibrations soften as her angry sobs drift farther away. The spectators burst into conversation, and this time I catch a flash of bronze from the balcony. Hen! She’s moving a serving tray to catch the torches, and clasps a fist in victory when I see her. Followed by the quick motion of her hand across her neck and a gesture toward the door. I nod. It is time to see about getting dismissed, before the prince sends out so many I’m the only option left.
“Well,” I say, setting my plate aside. “Safe to say he dodged an arrow with that one.”
The guard grunts. “That would be assuming he wasn’t the arrow.” He glances at me. “Will you think me overly cruel if I say those he dismisses are the lucky ones?”
I pause in moving toward the table, a shiver running up my spine as I consider that the guard isn’t talking about the contest and its challenges. In the travelers’ tales, the mysterious prince isn’t always quiet because he’s shy. Sometimes he’s quiet because he’s hiding a side of himself that he doesn’t want others to see.
“Is he really so bad?” I ask as the prince turns back to Gallus. “He’s a little curt, I guess, but I would be, too, if my future rested on the shoulders of whoever I picked tonight. He handled that outburst quite well, I think.”
“Handled it well?” The guard chuckles. “That would be the first time my brother handled—”
He covers his mouth and closes his eyes. My heart jerks into my throat. Brother?
Brother?
I search the room for the other guards, but none of them are dressed nearly as fine; they wear the traditional servants’ garb of white tunics or tergus kilts, many shirtless, none in armor. Of all the people I could have asked for help, why did I choose the one with the ivory scabbard? I look in shock toward the balcony, where Hen is shaking her head. She wasn’t telling me to get dismissed. She was telling me to stop flirting with the second prince.
Specifically Prince Jet: middle heir, Soundbender, and master swordsman of Orkena.
“Oh gods,” I say. “I am so sorry, aera, to have wasted your time—”
“Please, don’t,” Jet says. “Leave that title for him. I wouldn’t even be a part of this contest, except—”
A hush falls over the room. Prince Kasta has risen from his seat, his eyes locked on his brother’s. And whether it’s Jet’s warnings or the strained quiet that simmers between them, the smile on his face looks suddenly predatory.
His blue eyes shift to me, and he starts toward us.
“My apologies,” Jet says. “I should have been forthright with who I was. I should have directed you to a servant. He’s going to disqualify you for talking to me out of turn.”
It takes everything I have to keep from exhaling in relief. Thank the gods. Now I can join Hen and we can laugh at how close I was to sabotaging myself and enjoy the rest of the night without another care.
Though I can’t deny part of me wishes this conversation didn’t have to end—a dangerous thought indeed.
“It’s no matter,” I say, forcing a smile. “I wasn’t here for that anyway. Thank you for your help.”
“It was my pleasure . . . sorry, did you ever say your name?”
“It’s—Lia,” I say, bowing.
“Lia. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow before you head home. You can tell me what you know of Nadessa.”
He bows in turn, which I find so strange and flattering that I bow again, my heart soaring at his words. Maybe I chose poorly in who I talked to, but I spoke with a prince, for more than two words this time, who also wants to speak with me again. And there’s still an entire night to come.
/> “Well,” says a quiet voice behind me. “Isn’t this a surprise.” I feel the heat of Prince Kasta on my shoulder before I turn to look at him. “Remind me, Jet: weren’t your exact words for tonight ‘a gaggling group of desperate, power-crazed street rats’ you had no interest taking part in?”
Jet straightens, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “It was an exaggeration to avoid attending.”
“Yet here you are. You must have found someone who’s changed your mind.” Kasta’s gaze shifts to me, his eyes calm and beautiful and unnerving. “Interesting.”
“Don’t take this out on her,” Jet says. “Name your First and be done with it. Save your vengence for the race.”
Kasta sighs. “I suppose you’re right. I’ve delayed long enough.”
He asks for my hand and I give it, again wondering if being royal will mean his skin feels like warm silk, but . . . it’s cold. Cold and rough. I may have to exaggerate some of these details when I tell this story. Kasta squeezes my fingers in dismissal, and I’m dipping my head to thank him when he steps to my side, raises our hands, and announces, “I have chosen my escort.”
V
THE crowd waits in rapt silence. Hen’s serving tray clatters to the ground, shock and confusion warring on her face, and Jet looks much the same, though the ghost of something darker flickers in his eyes. The announcer gives my mother’s name and title. The spectators clap in recognition, and then they’re a bundle of noise again, chattering and heading for the exits to refresh themselves before the next Choosing.
Kasta turns to Jet with a smile.