Page 35 of The Wild Prince's Favorite
Kassein frowned, thinking long and hard. What else could she possibly need?
“Call Tievin.”
A pair of soldiers who were just in the vicinity and pretending to walk by stopped in their tracks, surprised, and then realized they’d received a direct order.
“Yes, Commander in Chief! Immediately, sir!”
The two of them literally raced to wherever they believed the Grand Intendant to be. Meanwhile, Kassein sighed and crossed his arms.
He’d grown up with three older sisters, so one would think he would have been more knowledgeable about a woman’s needs, except that he had also grown up in the gigantic Imperial Palace, with dozens of servants taking care of him and his siblings.
Now, he felt like a fool for not realizing Alezya would have needed to go to the bathroom, probably much earlier. And they were in a camp, they had no proper bathroom either. The men were living among their peers and had gotten used to washing themselves using hot water basins in their tents and doing their business somewhere private. There had never been a situation where a woman came into the picture...
He and his siblings had lived in the north with their parents when they were younger, but that was ages ago, back when they still resided in the Onyx Castle, not so deep into the wild north.
When he had moved this army up north, to a wilder area, he’d never thought they’d one day welcome a woman...
He tried to think on his own what else she might need. Clothes could be arranged easily, they had no shortage of fabric within the camp.
His third older sister was a peculiar woman who needed a lot of things, but Alezya used to live in a mountain, not a palace, so there was no use comparing the two of them... He sighed.
“K-Kassein?”
He turned around, hearing Alezya call for him, probably meaning she was done. When he walked back inside the tent, she was back on the bed, hiding most of her body under the covers, and still red to the ears. Kassein did his best not to react and make her even more ashamed.
She’d left the bucket a few steps away from the bed, along with the little towel she’d used most likely to wash herself a bit. She could probably use a bath... It might be difficult with her injuries, but he knew no woman who would hate a bath, and she was probably closer to being fully healed now. He grabbed the bucket, ignoring the content, to throw it outside.
“Commander?” Tievin’s voice called him from the outside, sounding a bit out of breath.
Much to his bad luck, the Grand Intendant had appeared right when Kassein was walking out with that bucket and its content.
“Hold this.”
Without warning, Kassein pushed the bucket into Tievin’s arms and walked away. Confused, Tievin looked down, and for the second time that day, he hardly suppressed his vomit.
He dropped the bucket out of surprise, which, luckily, fell bottom down in the layers of snow without spillage.
“Commander?!” Tievin protested out loud.
Meanwhile, Kassein had found another pair of roaming soldiers and ordered them to bring a hot bath to his tent as wellas new warm clothes, the smallest size they could find in the camp.
Alezya wasn’t particularly small for a woman, but she was very slender, and as a woman, she was still shorter than most of his men. Any male attire would look big on her, but he figured they’d find a better solution later. With that done and the soldiers gone to do as he’d asked, Kassein walked back toward his tent, finding Tievin with his lips pinched and an extremely upset look.
“Did I do anything to offend you, sir?” Tievin asked, with a higher-pitched voice than usual.
“No.”
“Then. What. Is. This?” he emphasized each word, pointing at the bucket.
Kassein ignored him but grabbed the bucket, and stepped away from his tent to get rid of the contents a few steps away, washing it in snow. Luckily, his tent was isolated enough that he didn’t have to go far to get this out of the camp’s main alleys. When he came back, Tievin was still standing there, with his lips pinched in a thin line of disapproval.
“She made you wash...that?” he grunted.
Kassein didn’t answer, ignoring him, and he only heard a loud sigh as he walked back inside the tent. In there, Alezya glanced up at him, and then, her eyes went to Tievin. She frowned slightly, looking wary of the Grand Intendant. Kassein found that funny, considering Tievin was by far the most inoffensive man of the camp...
“Introduce yourself,” Kassein ordered him.
Once again, Tievin made a sound of protest, but after a while, he turned to the woman, back to his usual bored expression.
