Page 100 of Prince of Night and Storm
Kobold got your tongue?Darkan purrs as I take my time deciding what to say about age eighteen. Well, what not to say, as my father’s hearing has not done me the favor of getting lost for an hour or two.
Eighteen. . .was a wild year.
Though I feel dozens of avid gazes trained on me, I avoid even a casual look down the table at predatory Fae eyes, their mystical garb turned ghoulish by the shroud of night.
This is a pointless conversation,I say.He’s a liar and bully. He simply wants to torment me, like pulling wings off a butterfly, while maintaining the appearance of taking the honorable road.
Youdeciding what is and is not pointless or honorable is laughable.
Why are you being cruel?
What is cruelty, Aerinne? Could it be hoarding damning information from a father about his son for your own self-interestfrom one side of your mouth, but on the other side protesting the Prince is a liar and bully?
I’m thrown off.Whose side are you on?
It isn’t a matter of sides, Aerinne. It’s a matter of clarity. If you delude yourself into thinking you are good and he is evil, then you will soon begin to justify other atrocities you commit. How do you think the High Lords become tyrants? Do you believe theybeginthat way? Or do they begin with telling themselves, ‘but my evil is for the greater good?’
I’m utterly still in my seat, unable to defend myself against the blunt force of his truth. I’m a hypocrite for feeling attacked, and with numbing clarity I do understand I’m no better than Renaud. It doesn’t matter if the Prince has committed thousands of years of murders—his many doesn’t excuse my one.
I don’t want to keep the secret. I don’t know what to do. I don’t—I don’t know how badly he’ll react. How his reaction will hurt Faronne.I stare at my plate blindly, desperately, skin once again going clammy.Am I evil, Darkan?
Of course not, Nyawira.His voice gentles.You would bleed out on the street before you deliberately hurt an innocent. This is what I am telling you. No one is ever all of one thing, most people are shades of gray.If you continue to think of the Prince as simply an enemy, you will never learn to understand him. All or nothing thinking will not serve you in the long run.
“If age eighteen offers scant amusement,” the Prince says, “we can dispense with it.” Absently, he lifts his wineglass, fingers caressing the clear stem, and it fills with liquid. “There is always twenty-one.”
Close. Too close. I’d think it a threat if I didn’t know better.
“Or choose a year yourself, Lady of Faronne.”
Baba watches us, eating as if he enjoys the meal—not a care in the world.
In the dubious sanctum of my mind, I wrap my fingers in Renaud’s shirt and shake him like a rag doll, then fling him into one of the massive trees strung with the annoying twinkle bell lights. The white gold glow casts an ethereal light, highlighting the starkness of the Prince's cheekbones. His blood would shimmer like liquid jewels. If I don't know better—and I do—I'd think he’s luring me into a confession.
What does he think he knows?
And if he knows. . .why am I still alive?
Unless he's about to pull a Carrie on me. I watched that movie three times in New York, and decided the author was Fae.
Pressure increases another drip.
“When I was eighteen,” I say, the clink of dinnerware surrounding us, “Montague sent an operative to seduce me for the first time. Fun times. He was my first intimate partner.”
There’s a sudden clatter against my father’s plate. I suppress a wince.
At least I didn’t let that male stick his cock in my vagina, though we did plenty of everything else. I also didn’t betray any secrets, and I still nurse insult my enemy thinks me that dumb. As if I would betray my House over pillow talk. Either they’d wanted to humiliate me, or they hoped I'd be vulnerable while in New York for university with Juliette, outside the supervision of Faronne and in theory primed to make all sorts of poor decisions.
We had. Just not the poor decisions the enemy hoped to take advantage of.
“Bad breakup?” my nemesis has the gall to say.
“Oh, the worst. I slit his throat before he could slit mine.”
Baba drains his wineglass.
“The breakup could have been worse then.” Renaud’s light tone matches my own.
Drip.
