Page 39 of Somber Prince

“Are you okay?” Elaine asked her, leaning over the railing.

“Yeah, fine.” Lucia stretched on the cushion.

A few other women gathered around her, eager to hear what she had to say. Elaine and I exchanged looks, then headed downstairs and into the courtyard, too, both curious to hear her.

“What did they do to you?” a woman asked Lucia.

“Fed us, played music for us. The prince gave me this.” She stretched her arm, displaying a wide bangle made from filigree honeycomb with a golden bumblebee in the middle.

Elaine touched the bee. “It’s pretty.”

“Prince Rha gave it to you?” I asked.

“Yes. They say that honey represents the sweetness of Joy Vessels.”

Elaine eyed the bracelet. “How does it represent us?”

Lucia shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because the shadow people can’t really taste honey without us?”

I believed they could taste it, they just couldn’t enjoy it, just like they couldn’t enjoy anything else on their own. Only now had I started to understand all the implications of that—a life without joy, when even the smallest pleasures are out of reach.

“That’s probably why they call us the Sweet Ones,” Elaine stipulated.

“As long as they don’t decide to eat us at some point,” Melanie noted.

“What else did they do?” another woman, Lin, asked. “How did they get your joy?”

Lucia winced, glancing aside for a moment. “They… Well, they used their hose thingies.”

Elaine paled. “How?”

Melanie stilled. I stared at Lucia, waiting for her to elaborate.

“Here.” She tapped one of the golden rosettes on her arm. “They call these leilathas. They attached to us here while we ate.”

“Did they eat something too?” I asked.

“Yes. They did. There was the prince at the table, the Head Councilor, that general woman who brought us all here… Then, there was some old woman too. I didn’t get a good look at her because she was wearing a cloak that covered her head-to-toe. And two others, I forgot who they were, some important people from the Royal Court, I guess. They all sat on floor cushions at a long table. We sat behind them, each with a tray of food in our laps. Then, they used our leilathas to plug in their hoses, or ropes, or whatever they call them?—”

“Tendrils,” I offered quietly.

Everyone’s eyes turned to me, but I had nothing to tell them other than what they already knew.

I cleared my throat and, for some crazy reason, asked, “Did the prince have his tendrils on you?”

Why did it matter?

Why would I even care?

I didn’t know. But Rha connecting with Lucia, combined with him giving her a bracelet, felt like something more than I wanted to happen between them.

I felt an odd wave of relief when Lucia shook her head.

“No. The Head Councilor did. The prince had Kostya, I think.”

“How did it feel to have them attached to you?” Elaine asked Lucia.

She winced again. “It’s weird at first. But not painful or anything. Then, after a while, I even forgot the Councilor was there at all.”

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