Page 5 of The Royal Curse

“Yes, he does know all that, and it doesn’t seem to stop him, and if our hypothetical assassins had sense or good taste, they’d go after you and save us all some annoyance.”

Amara kicked my ankle and stuck out her tongue. Well, she could get away with it. She’d only just turned seventeen, and our mother, bless her, didn’t feel the need to force young ladyship on her daughters before they grew out of their childishness on their own. It made my chest ache anyway, that she’d gotten so big—both she and Franco, our brother, who at fifteen had started growing a dreadful little mustache and writing poetry, gods help us all. I missed the toddlers who’d followed me around and squeaked at me when I was an adolescent myself. I missed my father, who’d died when Amara was only four, with a deep ache that hadn’t faded much in the thirteen years since.

Perhaps I mostly missed being uncomplicatedly happy.

“Ishe unfriendly?” Amara pressed, her mature and thoughtful tone very much at odds with the evidence of my bruised foot. “Or did you do something to make him that way? Mama didn’t give him any choice in the matter, either. If he could choose his own assignment, I doubt he’d choose you. This isn’t precisely an exciting job, walking around the garden all night and watching you read all day.”

She sounded so much like Philippa. Superficially, with her lighter brown hair, softer features, and more buxom figure, she didn’t resemble her much—except in her expressions, the way she glared when chastising an idiot brother. In that, they were clearly sisters.

I quickly turned back to the garden, lifting my goblet for a deep swig of wine. Even in the limited light of a half-moon and the balcony’s brazier, she’d see my irritation and hurt if I gave her the chance—because also like Philippa, young or not, she was too damn perceptive.

No, he wouldn’t have chosen to guard me, the most boring duty he could possibly have been given. I did read most of the day. How else would I find another solution to the problem of my magic than through research? And given that my dull, constricted life stemmed from my misfortune, would it have killed him to be at least a little sympathetic, rather than laughing at me in his sleeve? Even his intense devotion to his very undemanding duty read as backhanded rather than sincere. Either he meant to demonstrate his dedication to my mother and get a promotion to something else, or he wanted to rub it in that I was stuck with him, like it or not.

“You’re not answering my question, which is as good as an answer,” Amara said. “You were rude, weren’t you?”

No, I didn’t think I’d been rude, but a twinge of guilt at my brusque treatment of him didn’t improve my mood.

“He was the rude one! He was—Amara, he was laughing at me. Not enough for me to chastise him for it, but—enough. He obviously knows what I am. What I have to do to live.” Another gulp of wine emptied the goblet, and I scowled down at it. If I’d been able to use my own thrice-damned fucking magic, I’d have been able to summon the wine right into my glass from the bottle I’d left inside in my sitting room. My power felt like a faint itch just beyond my fingertips, almost tangible but totally inaccessible. A teasing torment. “And he thinks it’s funny, apparently. Half of what he said to me when we met had a double meaning. He—you would’ve had to be there. And he’s so gods-damned young!”

“He doesn’t look that young to me,” Amara said dubiously. “And I’m not sure why that matters, anyway. If he really did speak to you that way, then you should tell Mama and have him removed, no matter how old he is. Nothing about your situation is funny, Niko. You probably were rude, though,” she added.

Ah, little sisters. No one could be so loyal or so bitchy at the same damn time.

Before I could snap at her, she took my empty goblet out of my hand and replaced it with hers, still half full.

“Of course he doesn’t look that young to you,” I said, a little bit mollified. “But I think he can’t be more than twenty-five, now that I’ve had the chance to observe him a bit. And it does matter. It matters a lot.”

I’d given this quite a bit of thought in the week since I’d acquired my very own looming shadow. His youth had immediately rubbed me the wrong way. It’d taken some introspection to get to the bottom of it—and, in the process, the bottom of several bottles of a very fine southern red.

“He’s his own master, don’t you understand? And probably has been for—gods, nearly a decade. Yes, he answers to his officers or to our mother, but not to his own mother, the way I have to. What do you think he thinks of me for that? And if I had someone older watching me, at least he’d be naturally expected to have more experience. But having someone allowed to constrain what I do, where I go, when he’s both younger than I am and also so much more experienced, in every possible way? It’s humiliating, Amara. Can’t you see?”

Amara sighed and tapped her fingers on the parapet thoughtfully. “I suppose if Franco were to tell me what it was and wasn’t safe for me to do, I’d be annoyed,” she said at last. “Not that he doesn’t. But he doesn’t know anything, and I don’t have to listen to him, either.”

“No, you don’t. Lucky you.” I polished off the wine in her goblet, letting it flow freely down my tight throat and go, contrary to all the laws of nature, straight up to my head. Everything had started going a bit fuzzy around the edges, thank the gods. “I’m not much of a man to begin with,” I muttered. “Having someone who’s practically a boy chiding me for trying to ride my own horse doesn’t help.”

“Oh, shut up,” Amara said, and kicked me again.

“Cut it out! I’m tired of—no, hitting me isn’t better than kicking me!”

“Then stop talking nonsense, Niko. First of all, you’re not that much older, and you sound stupid calling him a boy. And second, I don’t know why all men are so obsessed with the function of their cocks—oh, don’t look at me like that, do you really think I’m a little child anymore? You’re as much of a man as anyone else. You’re a prince, and you have a guard, and you ought to be grateful that he’s all young and tall and—and—you know the way he walks.”

I peered at her through the gloom. She’d turned her head down to stare at where she was picking at a bit of moss on the stone parapet. And was sheblushing? Oh, by the fucking gods’ fucking balls.Thatwas what I needed in my life: a lovestruck little sister causing a scandal by pursuing my completely unsuitable personal guard.

“I haven’t paid the slightest attention to the way he walks, and neither should you,” I gritted out. The way hewalked? Yes, he had a way of moving that resembled a big cat, and he did have a certain kind of…fluidity in his hips that made me wonder how he’d look using his sword. But he had such a plain face. Too angular, too rawboned and strongly made. No elegance at all in him. “I’m not grateful for having a guard who walks some certain way, Amara. For fuck’s sake.”

“Well, at least you’re not stuck with Tommaso,” she said, sounding less like Phil now and more like a sulky little girl who shouldn’t know what a cock was. “He’s not at all appealing to look at, and he only talks about the way his husband’s still looking for a physician who can help with his back pain.”

My chest clenched, and I had to close my eyes against a wave of teeth-gritting nausea and regret. Such a small and offhand remark, but it underlined my uselessness in a way that no mockery ever could. Reminded me of my own selfishness. Healing was more complicated than other uses of magic, because the structure and function of a living thing was so much more complex than anything else in existence. A rock? You could duplicate the pattern of a rock. Any inanimate object, really, because it didn’t keep moving around and constantly changing itself. Twilight mages, who often had more strength and control than other mages, frequently made the best healers.

When and if we could use our powers at all, of course.

“If I had my magic, I might be able to help.”

“And if you had your magic, it’d kill you,” she said, patting my hand. Back to practical and mature in the blink of an eye. Fuck, I did not miss being her age, halfway between childhood and adulthood and wearing both awkwardly.

“I could take a—a lover, and then I’d be able to use my birthright to do some good in the world.” Except that then I’d have to be a needy, dependent slut, a burden on any man who took me on, if I was lucky, and begging to be fucked and filled, entirely at his mercy, if I wasn’t. “Damn it, Amara, I don’t want to talk to you about this!”

“No!” Her ferocity took me by surprise, so much that I jerked back. She didn’t want to talk to me about it either? What— “You don’t owe anyone anything! If you don’t want to be—to be—” Even in the faint light I could see her blush had deepened. I couldn’t blame her. Talking to your much older brother about how he did or didn’t want to get fucked had to be embarrassing—for me, too, which was why I hadn’t wanted to talk about it in the first place. But she looked me in the eyes, her own blazing. “If you don’t want to give yourself to someone that way, and there’s no one you trust enough, then you shouldn’t. I don’t care if every husband in Surbino has a broken back!”

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