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“We need someone with the Touch. Is the Martinezes’ healer here?”
“No, Your Highness.” Abril’s eyes flickered from me to Mathias, and the undisguised droop of her lips suggested she was disappointed not to find him gravely injured. Clearly picking up on the same, he threw her a rude gesture. “He’s still atla Cortina,but my lady could have him called back by sun-up on the pretence of concerns with her own health?”
“Do you think she would help us?” The question Ihadn’tasked lingered in the air, thickening the tension between us as I questioned her loyalty with that of her mistress, but Abril met my gaze steadily as she answered them both.
“We will.”
She gathered the last of the linens and stuffed them haphazardly in her basket. “Please stay here, my prince. I will come for you after dark.” The servant rose to her feet, wandered to a nearby bush, and in a spectacular display of improvisation to justify her presence in this area, unhurriedly gathered a handful of flowers before returning in the direction of the house.
Mat hummed out a thoughtful noise. “Do you think we can trust her?” he asked, although it was rather telling that he hadn’t tried to immediately drag us away in fear of the guards that could converge on our position at any moment.
“I think we can,” I declared. Yet I kept a cautious eye out and didn’t evensuggestthat we jerk each other off to pass the time, which probably told him everything he needed to know in turn.
*
Chapter Thirteen
“Boys,” Lady Martinez said, folding us both into her arms after delivering all the cooing and fretting I’d come to associate with mothers of toddlers. Yet the hug was welcome, and I allowed myself to sink against her as she held us tight, petting our hair and murmuring soft platitudes without a single wince at the state of us.
We smelled fucking terrible, I was sure, and our clothes were layered with so much dirt and blood that we probably looked like we’d crawled from our own graves…but here she was, greeting us in a small chamber off the main hall as if we were her own children. It was nice. It was something I’d never had from my birth mother: sending me off to a foreign country to play political hostage at age two didn’t exactly feature among my best memories of Queen Zora Velichkova.
“I have sent for the healer,” Lady Martinez declared, finally releasing us with a sad sniff as she looked us over once more with sympathetic eyes. “One of you is unwell?”
“Sí,” Ren said, but when he didn’t elaborate, neither did I. “Thank you, señora.”
She waved the gratitude away. “Of course. You are not the first fugitives this house has sheltered this month.”
“My lady?”
“That little girl you had with you last time…Consuela?”
I remembered Consuela Sanz all too well. Her father had attempted to sell her off as a child bride, only to drag her before the prince when the deal soured. Not knowing Ren as I did now, I’d tried to help, fearing he’d leave her in the hands of such monsters. But while my loud protests and attempts to rearrange the prince’s face hadn’t done shit, he’d been acting in the shadows much more effectively, and Jiron had been sent to quietly buy her from her asshole father and provide her with independence and a job inla Cortina’skitchens.
“She turned up on the doorstep with a bread knife, a scowl that could melt steel, and a string of palace servants she’d convinced to flee before the false king could have them flogged or executed for their loyalties,” Lady Martinez told us, and Ren let out a surprised laugh.
“She’syou,Nat,” he accused fondly, flicking my ear. I batted him away only for him to do it again, harder.
“What happened to her? To them?” I asked, feeling the lead weight of worry in my chest that ached more than my stinging ear.
But the woman’s answering smile was reassuring. “They’re safe. We managed to get them settled in a village a few miles away, although one of them – the tall, helpful one who’s infatuated with the loud dark-haired girl – refuses to stay hidden and returns here every couple of days for any word on you, Prince Ren.”
He exhaled with relief. “Camila. I feared for her.”
“I don’t think you need to. It appears she orchestrated some sabotage before they all fled, and nowla Cortinahas found itself short on servants, unbroken windows, andtableclothsof all things.”
“She always did hate having to iron them,” Ren said, cackling at some memory or another that evidently involved his personal servant. “When you next see Camila, tell her we’re well. Donottell her how terribly matted and oily my hair has become, unless you enjoy watching people spontaneously drop dead of horror.”
Lady Martinez eyed his locks with a similar level of dismay. “You shall eat, bathe, and rest while you wait for our healer, and I shall have saddlebags packed with everything you need for your travels. Two of my husband’s fastest horses will be ready for you in the morning. Oh, you poor things.”
“We can’t stay.”
“Nonsense, my prince,” she chided, looking uncharacteristically fierce. “You boys, out in the dark and the cold all night? No. I will not hear another word of it.”
I shared an amused glance with Ren. We’d suffered far worse, but I wasn’t brave enough to argue further with her and fuck, all of that sounded wonderful. Being able to travel north with more provisions than the scraps of food, bandages, and waterskins left in Jiron’s bag that we’d buried in the bushes outside was a relief I couldn’t begin to describe.
I bowed my thanks. “Please wake us as soon as the healer arrives, my lady. We must leave before the sun rises.”
“Very well.” The woman, whose first name I still didn’t know, hesitated. There was a tear running down her cheek that she quickly brushed away, and I felt guilty when I noticed the smudge of filth on her perfect skin that had clearly come from touching one of us. “Is there…anything else I can do? I have little usefulness here and most of the staff answer to my husband, but if there’s anything you need, just say the word, Your Highnesses.”
