Page 34 of Bride of the Midnight Prince

Chapter 11

Kat

Theprincewatchesme.His body language is deceptively relaxed, the wrist resting on his knee loose, but there is a focus in his gaze that makes me think he is just waiting for the moment I slip so that hand can shoot forward and choke me.

I can hardly think under his study. My attention shifts away from his scandalously bare chest to the half-eaten biscuit on his plate. He didn’t cut it open and butter it. Instead, he took a large bite right into the side of it. I might find it amusing in other circumstances. “My sister—her name is Mary—she has been taking care of me much of my life.”

“What happened to your parents?”

I hesitate. Best to tell the truth whenever I can so I can keep my stories straight. “My mother was lost to the Long Lost Wood when I was a child—”

A glint comes into his black eyes. “You still are a child.”

I’m so going to get myself killed.“When I was ayoungerchild,” I correct, hoping that’s enough to cover my mistake. “My father waited over a year in hopes she would return.”Then he married Agatha.“She finally did return.”And my father nearly went wild when he realized his love had finally returned to him—but he was already remarried.“She wasn’t the same person, and she died not even a week after her return. His heart gave out shortly after that. Mary and I have been on our own ever since.”

There is no sign of pity in his hardened jaw. He eats the rest of his biscuit in one bite. “How old were you?”

“Nine.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Twelve, my lord.”

“So you’ve been an orphan these last three years.”

Those words startle me more than I expect.Three years. Would that I had seen my mother and father only three years ago! Would that I hadn’t been carrying their loss for eleven years instead.

He takes my silence as assent. “And tell me about Mary. She is how much older than you?”

Mary is several years older than me, and I run the calculations in my mind to see how implausible it would be that she would have a twelve-year-old brother. I decide it’s safe to be honest—and I could hardly lie since her age is easily verifiable.

“She is twenty-five.”

“She has been working as a maid for some time, then?”

I don’t like these questions. Why is he prodding? Is he suspicious of me because I am not a skilled servant? Or does he simply wish to build rapport with his attendant? I don’t like it at all. Especially while he’s shirtless and only a foot away.

“Yes, Master,” I answer. “She began working when she was fourteen.”

That was when she began working in earnest as a servant—when my stepfamily entered the mix—but before that, when my parents were still alive, she’d been hired as a companion for me.

“Did any of your family ever go to the Long Lost Wood to look for your mother?” the prince asks, taking a deliberate bite after the question.

My world freezes. Memory flashes across my mind of that dark forest, and how terrifying it was when I first stepped foot into it as a child. Wailing my mother’s name at the top of my lungs. I find my answer with difficulty. “My father looked into it. He was told that no one entered the Long Lost Wood and returned. Mama was gone and dead, they said.”

“But she wasn’t.”

Curse it all!My throat thickens, my heartbeat turning to a painful pulse. I clamp down hard on the rising emotion with gritted teeth and look away.

“I’ve upset you,” declares the prince.

If my job wasn’t on the line, I would have scowled at him.

He pushes away his plate, empty of every last crumb. “This problem of the Long Lost Wood and the border between our peoples is why I am here. Your loss must have been hard on you. And your sister.”

Did he just offer me consolation? A fae of the Nothril Court? I didn’t think such a thing was even remotely possible. I steal a hesitant glance up at him.

He taps one finger on the table. “Did you or your sister ever go after your mother?”

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