Page 123 of The Thirteenth Child
Leopold’s eyes flickered from the path before us up to mine. “You never take dessert.”
“I take dessert,” I protested, a strange fluttering starting in my chest.
“You poke at it. You also never add sugar to your coffee. I don’t think I’ve so much as seen you take a sweetened mint to cleanse your palate between courses.”
I stopped in my tracks, floored that the prince had not only noticed this about me but had also filed it away. An entire war had been waged since I’d last seen him, but he remembered that?
“I…” I felt as though I ought to deny it, not because it was anything particularly important, but just for the sake of disagreeing with him. Instead, I found my shoulders relaxing, and I droppedthe rigid pretense I’d armored myself with since moving to court. “I actually don’t like most sweets,” I heard myself say.
Leopold raised his eyebrows as if the honesty surprised him as much as it did me. “Not even on your birthday?”
I laughed. “Especially then.”
“What’s funny?” Leopold asked, starting down the path again.
“My godfather…” I stopped, wondering why I was about to tell him any of this, wondering why he cared. “He loves to celebrate my birthday. I think he’s trying to make up for missing so many ofthem.”
Before I could continue, Leopold held up a finger. “He missed your birthday?”
“A few of them,” I allowed, feeling as if the admission was a betrayal of Merrick. “He’s the Dreaded End. He’s quite busy.”
I wondered if I would see him today. Since that terrible day in the cavern, he’d remained away, and the silence between us felt charged and ominous.
“Doing what?”
“You know, I’m not actually sure,” I admitted, feeling the need to laugh. “He’s my godfather and I don’t have the slightest idea what he spends his time doing.”
Leopold looked amused. “You’ve never asked him?”
I shrugged. “I honestly was never sure I could.”
“He must be terrifying,” he offered, giving me a gentle allowance.
“Sometimes, but not usually. He always makes these overly elaborate cakes. There’s filling and sweetened cream and colored sugar or candied fruits or…whatever. One year he used five different kinds of chocolate.”
“Sounds delicious,” Leopold said, swatting at a stalk of oleander growing into the path.
“Merrick always gobbles them down with relish.”
He blinked in surprise. “Is that what you call him? Merrick?”
I nodded.
“It makes him sound so…normal.”
“Heisnormal, most of the time. To me, at least,” I added hastily.
He paused, reflecting. “I suppose it would be odd calling him the Great Darkness, the Dreaded End. So why don’t you tellMerrickyou don’t like all the fuss?”
I shrugged. “He enjoys making them, and it feels easier to just let him do it.” Leopold snorted. “A slice of cake is not a hardship.”
“No,” he agreed. “But going through life allowing others to impose their will upon you, simply because it gives them pleasure to do so, could be. Not could be,” he corrected himself. “It is.”
Leopold’s observation struck me more deeply than I wanted to admit. No one, not even Kieron, had ever seen me so thoroughly. It galled me that of all the people in the world, it was Leopold who’d bothered to look.
But it also was a bit flattering.
“Who are you and what have you done with the crown prince?” I demanded, causing him to smile. “The one who, only an hour ago, compared me to a prostitute?”
