Page 10 of The Royal Curse

No conclave.

My mother had sent my valet to fetch me rather than waiting for me to run into her sometime during the course of the day, which probably meant a lecture, most likely an expansion on her reasons for keeping me home.

And I’d asked Andreas if his cock got hard.

Fuck, at least I’d given most of the morning a miss. What the bastard gods would’ve done with a few more hours to torment me, I didn’t even want to know.

“Your Highness?” Benetto said. “I have coffee for you.”

I yielded to the inevitable and rolled out of bed, groaning.

It took twenty minutes of sipping coffee, Benetto fussing around me and getting my clothes in order, and splashing cold water on my face and neck before I managed to leave my rooms and make my wobbly way to my mother’s study.

I tapped lightly, opened the door without waiting for her to answer—one advantage of being the queen’s royal son—and walked in to find her dictating a letter to Marko while she paced in front of the hearth, a cup of tea in one hand and the other holding her skirts, red damask today, away from the fire.

“…forward to greeting your representative in the spring. Niko, there you are at last.” She fixed her sharp blue eyes on me—and then narrowed them. “Which hedge did you go through backwards, and what kind of bottle were you holding?”

Indignation nearly choked me. Did she really expect me to stay sober after our conversation yesterday? I glanced at Marko, who’d bent over the desk in an apparent effort to make himself invisible. His ears would be flapping, though, damn it.

“Wine,” I said succinctly, not trusting myself to say more.

She shook her head and sighed in a way only mothers could, the gesture and the sound enough to send shame for every one of my past misdeeds, real and imagined, slithering down my spine.

“I hope you don’t make me regret what I’m about to say to you,” she said in a tone that suggested she already did. “I have,” and she drew a deep breath, nose in the air as if she smelled something sour, “changed my mind. I will allow you to attend this conclave of yours under certain conditions, which will be enforced without any room for argument or disobedience.”

For a long moment, that didn’t even penetrate my aching head.

She’d allow me to attend? She’d…changed her mind? What could possibly have…?

“Do you mean it? What chan—I mean, you’ll truly allow me to go?” I knew I sounded like a child being offered an unexpected treat. But I couldn’t help it. Disbelief and tentative hope and joy trickled down all my nerves like some kind of hangover-destroying magic, my fingers and toes tingling.

My mother offered me a quick smile, though it didn’t quite get to her eyes. “I will. But Niko—you have to understand. You will not be in command of your expedition. Andreas will. You will obey him as you would me, and he will have the final say over whether you proceed or return home if travel becomes unwise. If you don’t agree to this, you won’t go at all. And he’ll have my leave to tie you over a horse and drag you home if he must. Don’t think you’ll overawe him with your rank if it comes to it. He’s accustomed to command and he’s not easily swayed, young as he is.”

That I believed. He certainly hadn’t seemed overawed by me in any way so far, not that I’d given him much of a reason to be.

A week ago I’d have been horrified and furious if my mother appointed Andreas not only my nursemaid but my commanding officer on this journey of mine.

Today, after yesterday’s despair? It came as such a reprieve I could hardly believe it.

Only what the hell had brought this about? I opened my mouth to ask and then immediately snapped my jaw shut.

No, I needed to get the fuck out of the queen’s presence before she changed her royal mind yet again.

“Thank you, Mama,” I said. “You know how important this is to me.”

“I do,” she replied, with a slight softening around the edges of her expression. Gods. She loved me so much. That didn’t make her overbearing mothering any less difficult, but I supposed that was what you got when you were born to a queen. “That’s why I’m letting you go. Don’t disappoint me.”

And with that, she turned back to Marko.

I scurried out as she started to dictate again. As soon as I’d shut the door behind me, I slumped against the wall beside it, closing my eyes and sucking in air.

I could go. She was letting me go.

Of course, that meant weeks of being in the closest possible quarters with Andreas…whose cock I’d voiced an entirely inappropriate interest in last night. Not that I’d been actually interested, obviously, but I’d probably made him think so. I’d be lucky if he agreed to go and didn’t request a reassignment.

Ugh, I couldn’t think about that right now, not with my stomach already churning.

Coffee. I needed much, much more coffee, and something to eat in a bit, and a bath—and to organize my notes! We’d be leaving within a week, gods, I still had so much to do that it made my head spin.

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