Page 49 of Underground Prince

Apparently he witnessed battle shields like this every day.

He led me through a small thicket of people standing around. Not too much was being said, except in whispers. Some were women, dressed expensively in their finest cocktail dresses and jewels, and the rest were men in tailored suits like Theo.

I bypassed a woman with a silver tray with tiny pieces of toasty bread and caviar, spinning to the side once again when another woman went by carrying a tray of champagne flutes.

“Those ladies with the trays…” I said and sidled closer to Theo. “They’re in my outfit.”

“Precisely.”

He let go of my hand and I gave an involuntary twinge at the lack of connection. He put a hand to my back, leading me into a small galley kitchen where two other women were setting up trays.

“Delia,” Theo said to one. She stopped what she was doing, greeting Theo with a wide smile. Her face was bony, but fine in the way that chinaware was delicate.

“Sax, I wasn't expecting you until much later,” she said.

“Change of plans,” he said. “I’d like her to spectate tonight. Scarlet’s in training.”

“Certainly,” Delia said, smile still in place. I wondered if those naturally rosy lips would go slack as soon as Theo exited and she was stuck with me.

“Delia’s one of the top girls,” Theo said to me, a rare explanation. “You’ll learn a lot from her.”

I glanced at the tray beside Delia and back at her. How hard could this be? “Sure. Okay.”

“Good.” He squeezed my shoulder and departed. I hoped I wasn’t imagining his fingers lingering on me before he left.

“You any good at carrying?” Delia asked. She’d gone back to setting up with exquisite, supple movements. Her dark hair was pulled into a tight, low bun.

I moved beside her. “I waitress part-time during the day.”

If she was embarrassed for me, she was polite enough not to show it. Instead, she handed me a dish of caviar. “Follow behind me, quietly, no greetings, no curtsies, nothing like that. Only closed-mouth smiles, and that’s only if someone looks at you.”

“Curtsies?” I asked, but took the platter and tested it out by splaying my hand underneath and holding it up.

“You’d be shocked what some new girls do,” she said, smoothly balancing the champagne tray.

“That I can avoid.” I followed behind her in a slow, careful arc as we made our way to the other room. “Silence, however…” I grimaced. “I’ll do my best.”

We took a sharp left into a side room and entered familiarity. A green felt table was set up with eight men seated. I spotted the dealer, unfortunately not Kai, dressed suavely in a tux, but there was also a small black machine beside him I’d never seen before.

A few players wore large headphones and listened to their own musical world, and others were in fedoras with the brims pulled low. One raised his head the moment I entered and I almost tripped, nearly dropping the tray with what would’ve been the loudest sound ever to sully this crowd. Now I understood Theo’s predilection for ballet flats.

But I knew that face, and not because I’d run into it before. He’d been on television many times. In two series that I could think of that I was obsessed with in high school, one relationship with a pop star that I was semi-okay with despite popular opinion, and two well-publicized DUIs.

I scuttled up behind Delia. “That’s—”

“Yes,” she hissed, her perfect features hardening. “Now go walk a circle, say nothing, people will take what they want, and come back to me the instant you do one lap around the table.”

I nodded, swallowing the well of saliva that had built up in my mouth. Good thing I was holding toast and fish eggs because my hand was shaking and would have rattled anything else. I mimicked Delia’s stance, holding my left hand behind my back and the tray at waist-level with my right, pausing once or twice for the rare individual spectator who decided to snack.

The celebrity—Austin Dean was his name—didn’t do anything as I walked by, sadly wanting nothing. I would’ve killed to look into those pale blue eyes of his in real life, just once.

With a placid countenance, I made it back to Delia in one piece, no clank, bang or boom left in my wake. She nodded in approval then gestured over to another girl, who took the still-full platter from me.

Good job, she mouthed, then inclined her head to the wall beside us. “Stay here,” she whispered. “And watch.”

I did as was told. Fascinated, I took note of the girls and their barely-there presence, becoming mere filaments of the room, gliding with tranquil ease and disappearing when the game went into play—completely, utterly unlike the shifts I was taking these past two weeks involving latex and boobs.

It turned out, the black machine I noticed when I first entered was a shuffling device, and the dealer used a freshly shuffled deck of cards every hand. More than once, I searched for Theo but didn’t see him anywhere. Soft murmurs flowed throughout the room, with nothing but the snick of the cards being laid out on the table interrupting the mellow sounds. I felt an itch in the back of my throat and prayed I wasn’t about to cough. One thing I couldn’t help was fidgeting, but I did it as unobtrusively as possible, wringing my hands behind my back, chewing on my lip, but my gaze stayed steady. Unfortunately, Austin Dean folded almost every time.

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