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“Well, I have nothing to say.”
“Really?” Mikol looked amused as he leaned back against the wall behind him. “Nothing at all? You don’t think you owe me any explanations or want to explain to me how my soon-to-be betrothed came to be running around a notorious brothel in Belline?”
“You were there too, so explain yourself to me, sir.”
“Indeed, I was. I wasn’t, however, running from large groups of men, or knocking on random doors in the brothel, begging to be let in.”
Kalen’s only response was a cold, haughty glare. He honestly wasn’t able to do much more.
“How did you get away from them in the end, by the way? After that man came to the door? Did you outrun them or find another room to duck into? Or were you just making your way down the hall, fucking and fondling other men from one room to another?”
Kalen was too hot—his skin was burning, and he was sweating. All the liquor he’d drunk on Belline, along with whatever he’d eaten lay in his stomach like lead. He leaned back against the cold glass covering the porthole and closed his eyes for one blessed moment of relief, hoping this was all some kind of horrible nightmare. But when he opened his eyes again, the Tygerian prince was still there.
“Those men were my guards, if you must know. It was all a-an unfortunate misunderstanding. A mistake. I came to your room completely by accident.”
“I see. And making love to me? Was that an ‘accident’ too or was it all planned?”
“What do you mean?’ I have no idea what you’re talking about. Coming to your room was an accident. As for the rest, well…. I don’t even like men that way.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes—I mean, no I don’t. I-I’ve never ever been with a man before you.”
“And there was just something about me that changed your mind? Do you really expect me to believe that? Or were you hoping to change your luck? Maybe you’d like to get naked for me again now, and we can see if you feel the same way? Overpowered by my charms, that is. I won’t object. Maybe you’ll be a bit more truthful when you’re naked.”
Kalen felt bile and bitter repentance rising in his throat, and he felt suddenly so ill he didn’t think he could stay on his feet. “I-I can’t talk about any of this now. And you know what? I don’t have to. I-I’m leaving now. The wedding is off and you never have to see me again.”
He tried to walk past the Tygerian prince to get to the door, but Mikol grabbed his arm as he passed and held on, looking down at him. His grip wasn’t harsh, but it was firm.
“I don’t remember telling you that you could leave. We still have things to talk about.”
Kalen wrenched his arm away and glared up at Mikol. “I didn’t ask for your permission.”
A wave of sudden dizziness came over him and he swayed dangerously toward Mikol, who put out a hand to steady him. “What’s the matter with you? Have you been drinking?”
“No. And I…I’m sorry, but I need to…I think I-I need to use the-the…oh gods,” he managed to choke out, and it was then that his body chose to register its disapproval of all the drinking and the jostling and greasy food and shouting and being generally humiliated. He felt wretchedly ill, in a helpless, hopeless way, his body shaking and heaving and sobbing as he bent over at the waist and spilled all of the poison and the bile onto the floor at Mikol’s feet. He fell to the floor himself, racked by painful, disgusting spasms of misery and regret.
****
Most of the excitement was thankfully over. The floor had been cleaned up and the physician called for. Prince Kalen was slumped in a chair across from Mikol, his head thrown back and his eyes tightly shut, with a cold cloth over his forehead. His face was flushed and miserable. His oddly solicitous captain of the guards was sitting in a chair beside him. He looked upset and worried, and Mikol had been forced to dismiss the other guards outside the door when the squat, swarthy one had tried to force his way inside Mikol’s room again to check on the young prince, despite Florin’s orders to stand down.
Or at least, he would dismiss the man as soon as he woke up. Florin had knocked him unconscious to the floor when he tried to come in, and he was currently stretched out where he’d fallen in the corridor, with the other guard in attendance. The presumptuous fool was lucky he got off so easily.
A knock came on the door and Florin let in the doctor, who came right over to the young prince and took out a small scanner, passing it over his forehead. After a few more moments, he turned back to Mikol.
“I need a place to examine him properly, Your Highness,” the physician said, looking over at Mikol. “He’ll need to disrobe.”
“Of course.” He went over to Kalen and bent to pick him up in his arms to carry him to his own bed in the far corner of the room.
“Oh, no,” Kalen said, sounding alarmed and flailing a bit. “I’m sure this isn’t necessary.”
Mikol ignored him and took him to the bed, and then bent over the prince to begin taking off his shirt.
“No, wait!” Kalen cried out, pushing at Mikol’s hands. “I can undress myself if everyone will just give me some privacy.”
The doctor looked at Mikol like he wasn’t sure what that word meant, and Mikol’s lips twitched up slightly at the corners. “Wait outside a moment, sir, if you please. Florin, you and this friend of the prince’s too, please. I’ll come for you when the prince has been examined.”
The man bowed and left the room and Kalen sat up, looking at Mikol expectantly. “Well? You too, please. Leave and go out in the hallway. I don’t need you in here during an exam.”
