Page 29 of Spearcrest Prince

“Oh, thank you.” I drop him a mocking curtsey. “Thank you ever so much, milord.”

I move to get into the car, but Séverin puts his hand on my shoulder and pushes me away. I look up at him in surprise. Holding my gaze, he slams the passenger door shut.

“Open your own door, then,Jeanne d’Arc.” He walks around the car. “My manners are wasted on you.”

If it wasn’t for the number of times he’s thrown insults to my face, I might have felt a little bad. But I know better. Séverin, like any privately educated rich kid, isn’t a nice person; he just knows how to appear polite and courteous to disguise his disdain for anybody other than himself.

We both get into the car. The interior is just as sleek and polished as the exterior, and even I have to admit that travelling like this must be much more comfortable than travelling by coach. As soon as I get in, I kick off my shoes and curl up in my seat. Séverin shoots me a look but says nothing.

We set off, the car driving so smoothly the engine is barely more than a soft hum.

I sit with my cheek on my fist, staring out of the window. The sky is still dark, the sun a mist of grey pallor low in the sky. The silhouette of Spearcrest, with its turrets and chimneys and spiky trees, slowly disappears from view, replaced by narrow country roads framed with bushes. Instead of rain, dead leaves flutter sadly from their branches as they tremble in the wind. They gather in piles by the sides of the road and swirl in swathes when we drive past them.

“You can go to sleep if you want,” Séverin says after a while. “I don’t mind.”

“I can’t sleep if there’s another person there,” I mumble against my wrist.

He frowns. “What do you mean? Have you never had a sleepover before? Shared a bed with a boyfriend?”

“I’ve had sleepovers before. But I don’t sleep. Usually, I’ll just stay up and doodle or lie there with my eyes wide open.”

He glances at me. “That’s so weird. What are you afraid of? That someone’s going to stab you while you’re asleep?”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

Even as I speak, I suddenly remember being very young, asleep on the couch, and waking up to my parents’ voices. Nowadays, they don’t argue so much—they barely talk—but when I was younger, they argued all the time.

Maybe Séverin is right after all.

“Everybody’s afraid of something,” he says, oblivious to my inner revelations.

I lift my head from my hand to look at him. “Really? Even you?”

“Of course.”

“What are you afraid of, then?”

I wonder what this information might be worth if I sold it to a gossip blog. I half-expect him to come up with a pretentious, secretly self-congratulatory answer. Something like the fear of failure or the fear of fear itself.

But he doesn’t.

“Eels,” he blurts out.

“Eels?”

He shudders. “Anguilles.”

“I know what eels are. Why eels? Did you have an incident with an eel?”

He shakes his head. His handsome face is twisted in a grimace of disgust and dread. “No. I’ve never even seen an eel. And I’ll do everything I can to avoid ever having to see one.”

“Should you be telling me this?” I ask, doing my best to suppress a smile.

“Why, what are you going to do? Dump a bucket of eels in my bed?”

I laugh but say nothing. He turns to glare at me. “That’s not even funny. You twisted little bitch. You know, my parents described you as this sweet, arty girl. Either they were lying through their teeth or you’ve got everybody fooled.”

I try to think about how my parents described Séverin, but they never did. They just told me I was getting engaged to him and that it was just what I had to do for the family.

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