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“You are a messy eater,” he tells me as a few droplets of apple juice escapes the corner of my mouth like drool, and makes a trail down to the pillow.
Before I can lick it up, he leans closer and does it for me, his tongue moving slow against my skin, as if to savour it.
“Thanks,” I mumble through a mouthful of apple. I swallow hard before I ask, “Why do you never eat the apples?”
“I like the tastes of my world better,” he says, unwinding and winding the curl around his finger, over and over. “And of your honey,” he adds with a wicked grin.
I snort. That’s what he calls it, my ‘honey’, because apparently that’s my flavour.
“Are you content with your dresses?” Prince Daein asks, slipping his hand from my curls to my face. He cups my cheek, brushing his thumb over my skin.
The seamstress delivered most of the dresses some Warmths ago. I haven’t yet had the chance to wear them all.
“I would like them better if they weren’t all beige,” I tell him honestly.
His smile is small in answer. “What colour would you like?”
I know he doesn’t mean to provide the colours I want. I can only wear beige or some murky version of it, like a mud-brown or dirtied-cream.
“White,” I tell him. “Or black. Or ... a nice light blue, or even pink. Pink is nice.”
“Like your cheeks,” he says, running the pad of this thumb over my blush.
He leans in, brushing a kiss over my sweaty temple.
My blush turns hotter. “I can’t again,” I whisper, knowing where he’s headed with that kiss. “The bones in my legs feel too soft.”
He grins against my temple before he draws back and studies me, a twinkle in his usually frosty eyes.
He parts his mouth as if to speak, but before he can—
The doors burst open.
Dropping the apple, I have just a second to scramble for the sheets and cling them to my body. I jolt upright, startled eyes swinging towards the looming figure storming into the bedchamber.
Elden.
He marches around the foot of the bed, his blazing white eyes fixed on me.
I pale, curling up into myself. I have the urge to lean into Daein, as though he’ll protect me from his wild brother, but he’s already slipping off of the bed.
“Must you always be with your whore?” spits Elden, seething with a simmering rage.
I want to shrink, be smaller, scurry away.
Daein, not bothering to pull on his cotton trousers, throws a grin my way. “I find her much too tempting to deny for the time being.”
“Well let us hope that time ends soon,” Elden snaps, then swings his furious gaze to Daein. “Tell me it is a rumour that you have ended all negotiations with Princess Dalla. Tell me that, brother.”
Daein throws up his hands, still wearing his grin. “It is a rumour.”
My heart twists in my chest, my grip on the sheets tightening and my jaw quick to clench.
“Now tell me the truth,” Elden speaks carefully, as if to contain his anger. But with him, there’s no containing it. That anger will simmer and boil over, then he’ll fix it on the nearest human slave he has in his fortress.
A shudder runs up my spine. I sink back into the pillows, hoping to disappear.
“I might have written her,” Daein says, scooping up his cotton trousers from the floor. He steps into them. “I merely suggested Rowlyn for marriage instead.”
