Well, her life.
Which, in a faltering moment of my character, I was thanking the Fates was going to be a relatively short one.
Truth be told, I have no desire to flirt with someone with a list of bedmates behind him that could probably span the length of this table.
I couldn’t decide which was worse, the words or the crimson that had flushed my mother’s cheeks at the statement.
I’d told Ellie to sell it—her hatred for me. Not to humiliate my mother.
As if that weren’t enough, she’d failed to convince my father of much of anything except that she’d make a better ruler than me.
Well, that part was probably true. I wasn’t fit for the crown. I knew that. My father knew that. The entire kingdom knew that.
My feet found their way down the cold stone hallways without my help. Through the castle’s South Gate, where the night watch received a monthly bonus from my personal allowance, and had for at least a century. The gate I could pass through without question, without word making it back to my father.
By the time I reached the grungy pub on the south side of town, my anger had multiplied, swelling within my chest, threatening to explode.
I’d never been the type to take out my anger on inanimate objects. After all, they never did anything to cause my frustration. That was the point of being inanimate. As a child, I’d mostly noticed the practice in the more dull-witted of my father’s soldiers, and I’d had no desire to turn out like them.
I punched a city wall on my way to the pub.
It made my knuckles throb in a somewhat satisfying way, so I punched it again.
Perhaps the soldiers had been onto something.
When I finally reached my destination, a seedy pub run by an even seedier faerie, I pulled my hood over my face and slipped into the musty tavern.
The seat in the shadowed corner of the bar was empty. A tankard full of ale sloshed on the table before I even had the chance to sit down.
I may or may not have been a regular customer.
The bartender may or may not have figured out who I was a few decades back, and I may or may not have been paying his lease in exchange for his discretion.
Whatever. This place had been good to me.
Oh yes. It’s been real gracious, supplying you with cheap ale that has you in bed all day with women you can hardly get to leave it, was what Blaise would say if she could hear my thoughts.
Not half a drink in, and I was thinking of Cinderella. Six in, she could have been sitting right across from me, as far I as knew. Fates, she’d been pretty. I ran my fingers through my hair, as if she were there to see me do it. To be charmed by it.
I wondered where she’d disappeared to. Was there someone at home who hadn’t realized where she’d gone that night? Overprotective parents who held a grudge against the fae and wouldn’t allow their daughter near one, even if it meant saving themselves from squalor? A master, perhaps, less than thrilled about the idea of having to free his slave? A jealous lover? A husband?
My mind throbbed at the thought, and the ale churned in my uneasy stomach.
Surely not.
While my reputation among women was fairly accurate, my subjects seemed to be under the impression I’d sleep with anything with a set of breasts.
While I could see how they came to that conclusion, I did have rules.
I didn’t mess with married women. Not knowingly, at least.
The bartender sloshed another drink onto the table.
I chugged it and asked for another before he made it back behind the bar.
How many drinks before I could flush that souring thought from my mind—that Cinderella had a husband back home?
It would make some sense. Explain why she’d left so quickly, why she hadn’t made herself known.
My father’s voice rang in my head. Perhaps she had the good sense not to tie herself to a brother-killer. Perhaps she saw right through you.
I shook my head. The bartender must have been serving me the cheap stuff. Usually the drink drowned out my father’s voice.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. At least, not since Jerad.
Before my brother’s accident, alcohol had been a balm. Something that whisked away my worries, warmed my hands and feet and made my face buzz.
Now it just sort of numbed everything. It wasn’t a great feeling, but it was better than the pain.
Usually.
Despite myself, my mind wandered to Ellie.
Arrogant, better-than-me, life-ruined-because-of-me Ellie.
If I had to be chained to a self-righteous bore for the next five decades while the only woman I’d ever loved grew old and died, at least she was pleasant to look at.
Once she wiped that sneer off her face.
