Page 78 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

After all the hurtful things he’d said, after he’d shut down my attempt to tell him the full story and told me to end it with Kai, what was the point of asking anymore?

“Why?” I spat out bitterly before I could put a lid on the words boiling in my throat. “So you can determine how big of a scandal I’ve caused and how badly it will hurt your name?”

The silence that followed was loud, ringing, and cold. It was a knife through my anger. I fisted my jacket hard to the point my fingers ached as panic leaked through the cut.

What was I doing snapping at Kareem and making the situation worse? I didn’t need to give him another reason to get angry, nor did I want to have another argument. I was already tired as it was.

“I apologise, Your Majesty. I shouldn’t have said that. Please forgive me.”

No answer came from him, so I kept my back to him and forced myself to search the workbench for the answer to the riddle.

“Kareem.” His soft voice stopped me in my tracks again, and his greenish-brown gaze pinned me where I was. But I couldn’t figure out what the little notch between his furrowed brows meant.

“Don’t—don’t call me Your Majesty when it’s just us,” he said, the rough lilt to his words sounding…pained?

My mind was an empty space of whirling numbness that couldn’t understand why he was looking at me or speaking like that. This wasn’t the Kareem I had spent so many years of my life trying not to infuriate. I didn’t know who he was.

It became hard to hold his stare, so I let my lashes shield me from him as I tried to get a grip on my thoughts. Then lifted them again. Then flicked them to my right and stilled. I blinked and blinked again, my lips coming apart. “I—I found it,” I said quietly.

Tucked against a big plant pot along the back wall, sitting two shelves above my gaze was the face of a ceramic giraffe sitting atop stubby spotted legs. Its shiny pink tongue was licking the corner of its mouth, its eyes were wide and animated, and a semi-circle handle curved up behind 3D ears. Tucked against the tail-shaped waterspout were two red envelopes like the one in Kareem’s hands. One labelled “ten” and the other “five.”

Kareem huffed a breath that could have passed as a laugh, but I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t heard him laugh properly in forever. “Damn on Neves, that is creepy. How did we miss it?”

The flicker of tentative amusement that darted through my chest almost made me smile, and that shocked the fuck out of me. Me? Smiling at Kareem? What the fuck?

He swiped our fifth envelope off the shelf, being careful not to knock over the empty plant pot next to it. He held it up to show me, a bright look in his eyes. Then he flipped it over to open it. But before he pulled the paper with the riddle out, he stopped and found my gaze again.

“I want to win this year,” he said firmly.

I searched the confidence steeling his face. But I ended up getting distracted by the little ache in my chest as I studied him.

My brother had aged a lot in the last eight years. Not that he looked much older than his thirty-one years, but he looked…tired. Like he’d seen and experienced too much too quickly, and it had turned him a little rough and worn on the outside. His square jaw was always set a little too firm. Shadows that spoke of late nights working sat under his eyes. His warm golden skin, a few shades darker than mine, lacked its childhood glow. And his once full cheeks were now hollowed, showing chiselled cheekbones that bordered on harsh, softened only by his short, loosely styled hair.

Maybe it was realising that or something else, but the knot of wariness in my belly loosened.

“Me too,” I mumbled, flicking at my nails.

He shifted on his feet with a hesitant bounce then turned his hand to look at his silver wristwatch. “We have thirty-five minutes to solve seven riddles, including the last one.”

I gave a small shrug. “We’ll probably need ten minutes for the last one.”

“That leaves twenty-five for the rest.”

“Four minutes per riddle.”

He winced a little. “It’s a big palace.”

“We might have to run.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“It’s not.”

A weird silence stepped into the conversation as something wary but warm painted on Kareem’s expression. My cheeks smarted and I quickly dropped my lashes. With the way Kareem cleared his throat, I was sure I wasn’t the only one freaking out at how civil that conversation was.

“We should probably get started then,” Kareem said and fiddled with the envelope. He read, “One: two: three: four I declare a titles war. Five, six, seven, eight—shh!—find me—shh!—before—shh!”

The riddle sent us rushing to the library but figuring out what the “one: two: three: four” meant took us past our four-minute limit. It was Kareem who said it might be a reference for a location, and with a bit of guess work we realised it was first floor, second row, third shelf, fourth book.

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