Page 74 of Downfall of a Princess

The men who sold their affections for money were weak, wanton creatures who’d fallen victims to their base instincts, unable to control their physical urges.

They had to work in those places because they had willfully ruined their chances for anything better.

They took their pants off and spilled their seed for every fun-loving playgirl who came along, so no decent woman would marry them now.

They were unintelligent and irresponsible, good-for-nothing drunkards and therefore unable to secure any other form of employment to begin with.

In other words, they were nothing like Salas.

“It’s not true.” I frowned, waiting for an explanation.

“I wish it wasn’t.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned with his shoulder against the frame of the patio doors, not leaving but not entering the room either.

“You’re an intelligent man,” I argued, folding down a finger for every point I made. “I could tell from the very first words you said to me that you’re educated, even though you try to hide it sometimes. You have a stellar self-control. I can personally attest to that. I’ve had you in my bed more than once, but I’m still very much a virgin. You’ve kept your clothes on every night we spent together. You’re nothing like the men who work in those places.”

The look in his eyes hardened.

“How many of the men from ‘those places’ have you met,Your Highness?”

I hated when he used the formal honorific to address me. Right now, he made the respectful “Your Highness’ sound like a mockery. It made my blood boil, knocking me off-kilter, which undoubtedly was his intent all along.

“Well, I haven’t—”

“Of course, you have not. Princesses don’t visit dirty bawdy houses, do they?”

Princesses stay in their pretty palace bedrooms, having men delivered directly to them.

He didn’t say that last part out loud. But he probably thought it. Which riled me up even more. Instead of lashing out, however, I did what I normally would during a heated debate in the council. I slowed down my breath and started counting to ten in my mind.

I’d only made it to five before Salas spoke again.

“No boy is born to do what I did.” His voice was somber. “I had a good family, born as a son of a blacksmith. My mother owned the shop of course, but my father did most of the work in it. That sword over there,” he tipped his chin at my father’s present hanging over the fireplace, “it’s his work.”

“It is?” I spun around to look at the weapon.

“My mother’s guild crest is on the blade. But I’d recognize Father’s work even without it.”

He didn’t have to tell me any of it. He didn’t need to come here at all tonight, and he could leave anytime. But he stayed, though still not entering the room, just leaning against the doorframe in the threshold.

Maybe Salas needed his story to be heard, and he wantedmeto be the one to hear it.

“What happened to your parents?” I asked.

He shot me a look from under his thick eyebrows, as if trying to guess the reasons for my asking. I waited, giving him the chance to walk away and take his secrets with him if he wished.

Once again, he stayed.

“Mother died from a sickness when I was twelve,” he said. “Her sister inherited the shop and kicked us out.”

“Why did she do that?”

“She and Father never got along. She didn’t want to have two extra mouths to feed and another dowry to pay in addition to her own sons. Her husband also hated the idea of having another man his age in the house.”

“We have charity houses for widowers,” I said. “Your father had options.”

My father was especially proud of the widower houses in Egami. He said no honorable husband or his children should fall into poverty because of his wife’s passing. The crown paid to maintain the houses, and Father personally visited quite a few of them.

Salas gave me a skeptical look.

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