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In the decades to come, I would congratulate myself for standing tall against such audacity. He’d been told about my aloofness and had decided to be impertinent about it.
Well. So what?
On the other hand, how dare he! Based on how the jester peered at me, the hurt I felt must have revealed itself to him, creeping out somewhere between my clenched fists and compressed mouth. What he saw wiped the mirth from his face.
“Your request was serious,” he said, bemused.
“Of course, it was serious,” I hissed. “It doesn’t matter how popular you are, or how many props you can juggle, or how many flips you can dizzy us with, or how mesmerized Eliot is by you, or that he’s aware of your licentious whims. You are a callous, arrogant scoundrel who thinks he can do whatever he wants, with whomever he wants, and believes he’s impenetrable because his words are covered in a gaudy layer of gilt.
“Eliot’s heart is priceless. He will not be privy to a meaningless seduction, or I will tell your sovereigns how you accosted me in this hallway. I will boot you to the dungeon myself, and for good measure, I will find my own candle and shove it down your throat. Mark my words.”
Poet stared at me, calm and contemplative. “Hmm. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Pardon?” I demanded.
“What an outburst from such a pinnacle of refinement. I scarcely expected a promise to hack off my balls, but still. Have you heard of laughter? ’Twas merely a lark, me excluding you from that trifling favor at the feast. If it insulted you—”
“I don’t care about that. I only care that you leave my friend alone.”
“Impossible, since we work together.”
“And that will be the extent of it. You shall work with him, not fondle him. Are we understood?”
“As you like,” he acknowledged. “Except for one thing. Tempting as it would be, I’ve not seduced the lovely Eliot.”
I balked. “I don’t believe you.”
“’Tis all the same to me, Sweet Thorn.”
“Stop calling me that. I forbid it.”
“We were scheduled to entertain eight monarchs, and our sorry minstrel was as nervous as a ripe cherry virgin on his wedding night. My banter wasn’t helping, so I kissed him to steady his nerves. I won’t lie; his tongue tasted delectable, but it was hardly sexual.”
Primly, I shook off the termsripe,virgin, andsexual. I considered doing the same withcherry.
“Nerves,” I repeated. “You must be jesting.”
Poet set his palm on his chest. “Who, me?”
“Eliot has been strumming for the Royals since his youth. He does not get nervous.”
“He does when he’s performing alongside Spring’s court jester in front of every Royal in The Dark Seasons. You’re all esteemed, and I’ve made quite the name for myself this past year. So many high expectations.” He mock-sighed. “Life is hard. But during the kiss, my cock was not.”
“Hold your tongue,” I said, my cheeks blazing. “Evidently, jesters don’t see everything, if you failed to notice Eliot’s response to you.”
“Evidently, you don’t know your friend. Not if you took whatever he’s told you to heart and then promptly assumed he’s been bending over for me. I could have told you he exaggerates, ever the walking love ballad.”
“Then you should have known that he would romanticize a kiss,” I parried, exasperated.
“A trivial kiss,” Poet corrected, then shrugged. “My mistake.”
That shrug. That flippant twitch of his body, like it was of no great consequence.
When I met Eliot in the hall before the feast, I thought Poet had done fatally intimate things to my friend, had used him for pleasure. Doubt wriggled its way into my head. Of course, Eliot had misinterpreted the kiss and let his feelings get the better of him. But the notion of him fretting about performing for the Royals alongside the famed Poet wasn’t far-fetched.
I knew my friend. His emotions overtook him in from one instant to the next. The episode with that knight and Eliot’s loss of virginity proved it.
But I did not know Poet. I did not know who he was, onlywhathe was—a jester—and what that made him capable of.
