Page 70 of The Royal Curse

A loud throat-clearing behind us had me sitting stiffly upright in the saddle again, biting my lip and red-faced.

Andreas grinned and shook his head.

Fine. I didn’t like it, but I could wait until we stopped for the night.

“That won’t happen,” I said. “I won’t let her. She’s going to lose her mind when she hears what happened, but she can hardly blame you.” And it was true: at least her fury at my kidnapping would distract her from thinking Andreas might have taken advantage of me. A silver lining, I supposed. “She won’t blame any of you,” I added a little more loudly, because I knew they were all listening anyway. I got a murmur of what sounded like thanks for my trouble. “Leave my mother the queen to me.”

“Gladly,” Andreas said with force, and behind me, Salvius laughed. “Let’s go, Your Highness. We’re burning daylight. If we ride hard for a bit, we can reach that inn we stopped at before. With the bathing room?”

Oh, gods, my eyes rolled back in my head at the thought of sharing that enormous bathtub with Andreas, and my face must’ve been a sight. Andreas laughed and nudged his horse into a trot.

We all followed, with Surbino glimmering up ahead to show us the way home.

The last two days of the journey were easy, especially compared to what had come before. It didn’t stay sunny, but a bit of rain and a muddy road felt like the minor inconveniences they were rather than misery-inducing obstacles.

My standards had changed.

And I was ready to face my mother, too. I didn’t care if she threw a truly royal fit, tried to punish Andreas, tried to confine me to the palace until I was old and gray, or even ordered us all shackled to a wall. Maybe I’d grown up a bit, having faced the first real hardships of my entire life. Maybe knowing Andreas’s future rested on my ability to have a spine had given me courage. And maybe simply wanting something, needing something, more than I craved Mama’s approval had finally given me a sense of proportion.

After all, what did it matter if she raged at me? Granted, I was one of four people in the kingdom who could face the queen’s potential fury without much fear for the consequences, but…Iwasone of them. And I was a grown man, with my magic finally at my fingertips. I’d even used it to spark our campfire the other day when we stopped on the road for lunch. Just like that, without setting my pants aflame, or making them fly off my body, or anything.

Of course, it all depended on whether or not Enzo’s men reached Surbino before we did. I’d written her a letter, to which Andreas had appended his official report, and we’d entrusted the packet to the leader of the party.

She might have had a bit of time to digest what had happened before we arrived, if they got there first.

Or it might be better for us to explain events in person.

Either way, I expected my very first look at her would tell me one way or the other.

As it happened, I didn’t even need to see her to know. We approached the city gates in the middle of a steady downpour, with visibility limited to a few feet in front of our faces—which were half hidden by the way we all had our hats pulled down as much as possible.

But the gate guards swarmed out to peer at us despite the rain, and they let out a shout of recognition, everyone running around like a kicked anthill.

My heart sank. Clearly Enzo’s men had arrived before us, and my mother was not in a calm frame of mind about it.

Half the city guard, it felt like, escorted us through the bustling lower city and up the hill to the palace gates, marching in a formation around us. Typically we would’ve ridden around the side of the palace to the stables, dismounted there, and used a smaller entrance.

But not today.

As we approached, there were far more of the palace guard than usual lining the front steps, clearly forewarned by a messenger sent from the city gates.

And heedless of the rain, my mother the queen strode out of the main doors, Philippa beside her. Beneath the trappings of her royalty—the golden circlet nestled in the elegant coif of her light-brown hair, the sweeping green silk of her gown, all spotted with rain already, her jeweled rings and the array of royal guards around her—she was my beloved mother, her eyes shining with love and worry and relief.

All at once, I wasn’t so much a grown man with a mage’s powers and a soldier lover, who meant to stand on his dignity and assert his rights to independence. I hadn’t even realized how much I missed her.

I didn’t wait for anyone to take Fluffy’s reins. I simply leapt down from his back and raced across the graveled carriage drive, running up the marble steps and flinging myself into Mama’s arms.

“Niko,” she said, “oh, thank the gods.”

She held me tightly, stroking my back and kissing my cheeks, and I had to bend down and press my face to her shoulder to hide the tears. My mother felt small in my embrace; I’d grown used, of late, to having my arms around someone much larger than me. But Phil had come up from the other side and flung her arms around us both, laughing and crying, and the sensation of oddness vanished in pure happiness.

Mama kissed me one more time and pulled back, slipping her arm around me and pulling me toward the doors. The guards arrayed on the steps were grinning, and she waved a hand at them and said, “Get in out of the rain, gentlemen, and have a drink to toast Prince Nikola’s safe return. And make sure his escort has the good stuff,” as we passed, earning herself a flurry of bows. Phil had better be taking notes for when she became queen.

My escort. Andreas. Where the hell had he gone? I craned my neck over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of him standing by the horses, gazing after me. He nodded, smiled, and turned away, giving orders.

Gods, I had said I’d handle the queen, but…an odd shudder went through me, a terrible dread that somehow everything that had happened between us had vanished now that I was home and we were in our proper places.

But I didn’t have time to stop, to call out to him, because my younger siblings were running toward me in the main hall, both laughing and crying. Even the usually sullen, mustachioed Franco hugged me and whooped and ruffled my hair.

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