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Granted, I was picky about sex. I fancied myself cautious. I rarely traversed from one bed to the next without foresight and a keen understanding of my playmates.
I’d learned my lesson there once already. It wouldn’t happen again.
And I liked Eliot. However, I never mixed professionalism with pleasure, and I knew enough about the minstrel’s tendencies to overreact. Even more reason why I should have noticed the change after taking his lips for a jaunt.
Instead, I had walked away from him too fast last afternoon. I’d behaved as if he were one of my conquests, letting him take a flying leap to conclusions.
Cursed kiss. The meddling princess had been right.
I tossed the pillow from my head, whipped back around to face the ceiling, and feathered my knuckles over my abdomen.
Princess Briar. Now there was a more intricate puzzle.
Briar—a brisk, no-nonsense name. Despite its lack of flair, it was confident without trying hard. ’Twas the sort of lasting name that held its head high and withstood the elements. Indeed, it suited her.
If a man groaned that name, the sound would be guttural—a husky eruption of noise.
“Poet?” the guard repeated. “Be aware, I’ve been instructed to ‘throw your naked ass’over my shoulder if you delay.”
The coverlet puddled around my waist as I sat up. “Is that right?”
The poor, intimidated sod continued, “Or if you, ‘so much as pause to tidy your hair.’”
Come now. That was uncalled for, to threaten my grooming habits.
I sighed loudly, dramatically, and inconveniently. Sliding out of bed, I rotated my shoulders, then stretched my arms overhead to loosen the kinks. In general, I loathed tension in the body.
The fur rug inside my wardrobe brushed my feet as I stepped inside and debated what to wear. For another twenty minutes, the throne room could piss off. No way did I plan on showing myself without looking halfway primped.
Being graced with standards, I shunned the traditional jester’s costume. Unfortunately, the other trained fools in this land preferred that absurdity of an outfit, claiming it distinguished their office. Well, whatever they fancied. And I did enjoy looking the best of them all, as the Court Jester should.
I dressed attentively, scrutinizing whether my jacket hung off my frame to its greatest effect. Whilst inspecting the sleeves, my gaze strayed to the ribbons hugging my wrist.
My lips crooked, even whilst a knife speared my chest. Daily, I lived and breathed for this pain, which covered me like a second skin. I needed the hurt, needed to keep it close like a weapon.
A vision from last night assaulted my mind, a flash of the princess reaching out to grab the bracelets, her fingers straining toward me. Her attempt had thrown me off balance, the air had grown static, and I’d felt her impending touch like a vice—a threat that could easily become a bad habit.
Pathetically, my reflexes had faltered. I should have retreated faster. That part of my life would be touched by no one, especially not by a Royal.
Oh, I knew when I was being watched. The feast hadn’t been the first time she had laid eyes on me. Even before then, she’d been shielded by her window and surrounded by the queen’s ladies, spying on me in the orchid garden.
I’d repaid the chit for her nosiness later, observing her from the shadows as she stalled at great hall’s threshold. For an heiress, she was a prickly thing with barbed diction, not a smooth edge to her tongue, and a perennial frown. She seemed to have that expression prepared in advance, as if everything and everyone would inevitably make her scowl—or make her uncomfortable.
What a shame to squander rapturous red hair on a shrewish personality. Whatever the hell they put in the Royal bathwater in Autumn, it had rinsed the levity from her pores.
I’d heard enough about Briar from the gossiping tongues in this castle. In fact, her reputation as a bramble had been cooed into my ears up until the day before she arrived.
That was why I’d targeted her.
Accepting secondhand information was a disservice to one’s own point of view. I believed in heeding rumors and then figuring shit out for myself. But thus far, everything that had happened proved I’d been right in my choice.
I remembered her primly made bed, with its dainty linens and neat corners, all prepared for its upright, upstanding guest. The scarlet ribbon I’d left on the princess’s pillow had unfurled like a tendril of blood—a blemish in the pristine sheets.
The band hadn’t come from my wrist, for those were too important to use. On the contrary, I stocked a cache for my recipients, for whom the strips of fabric became markers. I picked those who could be made an example of.
Sometimes it was a dark and direct cut intended for social ridicule or political criticism.
Other times, it was a mirthful tease meant to sway a person’s perspective or mood.
