Page 30 of Settle Down, Princess

I’d thought Silas was the moon to Arik’s sun, and that was never more apparent than now. In the hot haze of roseblood, I hadn’t remembered seeing him shirtless, because I was sure I would have recalled this. Pale, pale skin stretched over taut muscles—there wasn’t an inch of softness in his body, but when he moved, I could glimpse long, spiralling scars. Pale, silvery, and almost invisible until he twisted his torso and the firelight exposed them all. Almost decorative, they seemed to cover him. Whether this was some kind of primal scarification Kheanians indulged in, I didn’t know. My staring obviously caught his attention, and those green eyes met mine across the fire. His lips thinned and his jaw muscles twitched as he stared, every line of his body daring me to make comment.

About what?

My ignorance of the male body knew no bounds. Perhaps this was a commonplace thing or…? My thoughts trailed away as his eyes narrowed before he stomped away from the fire to keep watch.

“This is your bedroll, lass,” Creed said, unwrapping a tightly wound bundle and then laying it down on the ground. “Brand new and purchased at market the other day. Plenty of new blankets as well.”

“So, we sleep here?” I looked around me. The sun had set, and the long shadows of evening had emerged in its place, threatening to swallow us all. “In the open?”

“Between the two of us,” Roan explained, setting his sword down beside him. “We’ll keep you safe. I’ve shown myself proficient with the sword and Creed sleeps with one eye open.”

The other man shot him a dark look, but that softened when his focus came back to me.

“No one and nothing will touch you, not without my say so,” Creed assured me. His fist went to his chest. “My beast and I are at your service, Your Majesty.”

I blinked, then smiled faintly, not entirely sure what to say. I was sitting there, dressed only in a man’s shirt that still smelled somewhat of Silas’ crisp scent, with no skirts, no nightdress, not even any blasted underwear on. So I did the only thing I could think of, which was to scramble under the covers, wrapping the blankets tightly around me, much as I used to when a child. Somehow the ghosts and monsters my mind would conjure could never touch me if I was beneath the covers. Roan lay down in the bedroll beside me and smiled, his eyes heavy lidded.

“Creed makes sure to burn bitterleaf wood in any fire he makes,” he explained, then yawned. “Keeps the nasal passages clear and the catamounts away. They hate the bloody smell and won’t enter a camp for even the most delicious morsel.”

I nodded, having to trust his words because I had no means of verifying them, though when his eyes fell closed, sleep eluded me. I was outside, without four walls to make me feel contained and safe. The fact remained that even if I was to sleep within a room, there was nowhere safe for me in this world. That message had been rammed home hard as I was growing up, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it. And now I couldn’t ignore it. I pressed my face into the soft cotton of the blankets and focusing on my breathing, keeping the breaths long and slow as I considered what the hell that might mean for me going forward.

Chapter 18

Arik

“So, what the hell are you going to do about this situation?”

Silas asked the question with all his usual insolence, but there was something else in his eyes as he intercepted me on my way back from the waterhole. No one had offered to come with me in case another catamount lurked in the grasses. We all knew it wasn’t likely—the bastards were so big they couldn’t tolerate another cat within their territory, not until the mating heat hit them—but still.

“What the hell am I going to do about what?” I asked. “Stacking Creed’s precious bowls so they don’t crack on the journey?”

“Don’t play the fucking fool with me,” he snapped, his eyes searching mine. “You can pull that shit with the others, but we don’t do that with each other. The girl…”

“Our king’s betrothed, you mean.” I stared at him meaningfully, watching the moment he remembered our purpose. “There’s nothing to be done, Silas, nothing we haven’t done six times before. Each girl has been brought safely to the Kheanian capital, set on her feet in the grand nave, and forced to recite her vows. We’ll do what we’ve done each time, get the girl there in one piece, take care that no harm comes to her before he…” My throat bobbed because I had to swallow hard to keep the bile down. “Before the king does what he always does.”

And not for the first time did I mourn the circumstances of my birth that led me to this, to becoming the king’s procurer. But if the simple act of lamenting my mother’s decisions, or my father’s, had the power to change my fate, I’d be ruler of the known world right now, with my own princess sprawled across my knees.

And in my mind, she wore the face of Jessalyn.

I shook my head to dislodge that thought as Silas stepped forward.

“You never led any of the princesses down to the docks and fed them roseblood-laced beer before.”

It took me a moment to identify the shift in his voice. Hope, that’s what it was, just a fragile thread of it. I marvelled at his ability to summon that feeling, right as I knew I needed to crush it.

“I didn’t lead her anywhere,” I said, the bowls shifting in my grip. “And I didn’t feed her roseblood. The little wench was determined to down that herself, moved by some kind of reckless impulse.” I smiled, despite myself, remembering her determined expression and the way her eyes had flashed as she regarded me before drinking her beer down. “I figured she could get that out of her system while—”

“Bullshit.” Silas was the only one who could talk to me like this and when he did, I was forced to pay attention. My teeth ground together as I fought against ordering him to stand down and step away, but I kept the words back. “What happened last night was more than that.”

“Going all mawkish on me, Silas? The son and heir to The Guild is surely hardened enough to not see sentiment where there was none. We didn’t fuck her, you made sure of that. And even if we had, we’d have shown the girl how to nick herself to let the blood flow, so that the king would think he was her first.”

I watched his pupils blow wide at the thought of the girl cutting her own skin, my brother’s kinks so very obviously riding him: something Jessalyn had somehow detected and was using to her advantage. I’d seen her fumble her grip on the knife over and over, just so he’d correct her. I knew that for him, holding her hand around the knife had been akin to her shoving her hands down the front of his breeches and tugging his cock, given that Silas was just as stupid for one as for the other.

“A little roseblood,” I said, watching his reaction closely as my lips twisted into a smile. “We could do just that if she was amenable. Could be a grand way to spend the trip back to Khean.”

“Don’t.” That protective instinct flaring hot and hard in his eyes and driving away his usual cool was not what I expected to see. My heart sank at its appearance. “Don’t talk about her like she’s some doxy—”

“Every whore we tarry with was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, at one point,” I said. “Don’t ever see you worrying about their finer feelings when you pay them good gold to cut your flesh, paint their fingers in your blood, and then use that to jerk your cock until you spill all over your guts.”

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