Page 3 of The Royal Curse
He propped his folded arms on the top of the stall door and favored me with a bland, neutral smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Prince Nikola,” he said. “I’m Andreas, your personal guard. I thought I might find you here. If you’d like to go for a ride, I’m at your service.”
Chapter Two
Well, fuck. My heart, which had barely recovered from the stuttering shock of this man—my guard’s—appearance, dropped all the way down to my toes.
I would’ve preferred an assassin, honestly. At least I could’ve gotten away with hitting one of those.
It took me a moment to catch up to the rest of what he’d said along with announcing himself as my nursemaid for the foreseeable future:If you’d like to go for a ride, I’m at your service.
Could he be mocking me? Those words, and that smile, and the fact that everyone in Surbino knew perfectly well that I had to take a potion to suppress my twilight magic—and the potion’s side effects were common knowledge too. He’d be well aware of my limitations, including…going for a ride. My cock hadn’t so much as stirred in six years, since the last time I missed a dose of my potion.
Of course, if that had been mockery, I had to give him points for keeping his tone as bland as his smile. He’d ruffled my feathers, but he’d given me no grounds to demandhow dare he?
We stared at each other in silence for a long moment. His stupid smile didn’t falter—even under the scrutiny of a prince, damn him.
“I don’t have a personal guard,” I finally managed. Of course, that wasn’t up to me, but perhaps I could bluff him into believing otherwise. “You have no right to be in Fluffy’s stall without my permission. Go at once.”
“Fluffy,” he said, sounding a little choked, eyes widening. What color were his eyes? Muddy. Maybe some variety of dark hazel. “Your, ah, royal stallion is named Fluffy?”
“My royal sister named him,” I snapped, lifting my chin. “Out! If I have to repeat myself again, I’ll have words with your superior officer.”
“Ah,” he said, and removed his arms from the top of the door in order to push it open. I had to step back so it didn’t whack into me. “I’m afraid I was appointed directly by the queen, Your Highness. I don’t have a commanding officer at present, unless you count Her Majesty.”
The door creaked the rest of the way open, revealing…the rest of Andreas, which matched what I’d seen so far. Black tunic. Black trousers. Black boots. And a very long sword at his hip, with a muscular, long-fingered hand resting on the hilt. The fact that the scabbard didn’t drag on the ground was a testament to how tall he was.
With incredibly long legs. Like tree trunks. And even the layers of tunic and trousers couldn’t quite conceal the hint of another very long sword between them.
“Your Highness?”
I tore my gaze up to his face, feeling my own flood with heat. He raised an eyebrow at me and took a step closer. A little too close, so that I had to tip my head back. I really was tall. Taller than at least half of the men of Surbino, anyway. Mathematically tall.
He made me feel small.
“If you wish to have words with the queen, then I certainly won’t come anywhere near,” he went on, grimacing in an expressive way that almost,almostmade me laugh despite myself. “But otherwise, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. The queen was very specific about my duties.”
Of course she had been. Of course.
And he clearly knew as well as I did how confronting Mama about appointing a personal guard for me would go.
“Where did you even come from?” I asked without thinking. “And how did you—I didn’t tell anyone I meant to go to the stables. Fluffy doesn’t like anyone getting so close to him. You ought to have waited to be presented!”
Andreas’s smile did light up his eyes this time, and they gleamed in a way mud decidedly didn’t. He wasn’t a handsome man. Not at all. But that wicked grin…
“To you, or to Fluffy?”
“What—you—” I sputtered, at a loss for words.
“I was joking, Your Highness. I absolutely did present myself to Fluffy. But I didn’t think you’d be won over by a sugared apple.”
Oh, for the love of the gods. At least that explained Fluffy’s acceptance of him, because the beast might be a bitey asshole but he rolled over like a whore for a bit of sugar.
“Yes, obviously,” I gritted out. Damn it, couldn’t my mother have at least chosen someone dull and stolid and quiet, someone I could ignore? “How stupid do you think I am? Answer my questions, if you please. I don’t have patience for nonsense today.”
The grin faded away, his brows drawing together, and he straightened himself from his casual, hip-slung stance, hands clasped behind him, suddenly the picture of a soldier at parade rest.
“Forgive me, Your Highness,” he said crisply. “In order of how you asked me: I transferred from Bossale last week.” That explained why I didn’t think I recognized him. We had quite a few troops stationed at the mountain fortresses on our eastern border, including Bossale. Those soldiers tended to rotate through the city now and again so that all of them had the opportunity for lighter duty and a bit of pleasure. I’d visited Bossale once a couple of years ago, but it’d been brief. “I presume ‘how did you’ refers to finding you here. Her Majesty mentioned that you enjoyed riding out. I extrapolated.”
That made my jaw tighten into a painful clench. Extrapolated? He meant he’d taken my mother’s hint that I’d probably try to sneak out. And he’d come here to catch me like a naughty schoolboy, the utter bastard. And succeeded. More than that, complaining about it would makemelook the fool, not him.
