Page 10 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

I ended up on the balcony level of the palace’s three-floor library first and spent an hour whizzing between the shelves on each floor. I gasped when I found four sets of bookcases tucked at the back of the second floor with romance books and vowed to come back and explore it when I had time.

My hunt for the palace kitchen next ended in success. I peeked inside, but I didn’t grab anything to eat. I wanted to get permission from the head chef first before sneaking any food.

At some point, the giddy feeling consuming my belly settled, leaving space for tiredness that turned my yawns frequent and long. I took a confused, almost-got-lost route back up to my assigned bedroom, only recognising the correct corridor by the painting of a forest hanging on the wall.

Except the moment my fingers brushed the round, metal handle, a viciously tight latch wrapped around my upper arm, stuttering the beat of my heart. My shock hadn’t quite reached its peak when another hand gripped the back of my hood and tore it off my head.

By that point, I was already being yanked around and slammed back against the door.

The impact knocked a gasp out of me, but my body reacted instantly, recalibrating and planning, working on muscle memory to use everything I’d practised with Shehryar on self-defence.

My hands shot out and pressed against the huge, grey torso of the man—I might not have seen his face, but I knew it was a man—gripping onto hot, shifting muscle as I readied myself to force my knee up into his groin with as much strength as I could manage.

Then my gaze flew up. And I froze solid.

My mind in survival mode might not have recognised the obsidian black eyes looking down at me through square-rimmed glasses, but my heart could have recognised them anytime, anywhere.

That—he—Orange… It was fucking Kai.

The shock ringing through me reflected back in Kai’s glaring eyes as they widened. He suddenly let go of me and flew a step back, leaving me to slump against the door, shaky and baffled.

Why—he—what—what? What was freaking happening?

“Princess Esmeralda,” he rasped, his voice deep and rich but quick and breathless. “What are you…what are you doing here?”

I’d heard his question, but my mind was reeling so hard from the sight before me, struggling to figure out whether it was a figment of my desperate imagination or not.

Because my crush—Orange, the prince—who had been present at dinner was nowhere to be seen.

Kai was wearing a hoodie. With navy-blue pyjama bottoms—and a hoodie!

Grey and fitted around his huge shoulders and biceps in a way that threatened drool to spill out the corners of my gaping mouth, before trimming down and sitting loose around his waist.

Maybe it was the fit of the fabric, or maybe it was because he’d never been up in my personal space before, but he was so much bigger than he’d ever looked from a distance. Taller and bulkier.

He towered over me. My eyes were pretty much level with his sternum, which had to put him nearly a whole foot taller than me. And his size. Fuck. He wasn’t built like an ancient warrior in the same way Shehryar was, but Kai was still built. His shoulders, chest, and arms hard, wide, and strong.

He was definitely not the lean, athletic prince he looked in his uniform or a three-piece suit.

He was a cross between those college rugby players they called jocks in the State of Raven and a…a hot nerd—glasses, tight-jaw, his raven-black hair poking out from underneath the pulled-up hood.

Glasses. He wore fucking glasses.

And a frown too, I belatedly noticed, so intense as he studied me to the point his thick, straight brows practically merged into the rim of his glasses.

“Princess Esmeralda. I asked you a question.” His voice was lower, darker, and damn if it didn’t shake through my chest in the most perfect, delicious way.

Yet the stern edge in his tone had me straightening, snapping out of my trance and really seeing the man before me. And shit. He didn’t look like my quietly charming Orange one bit.

“I, uh…I was just heading back to my room.” I tried to smile but my face muscles refused to comply as I awkwardly pointed my thumb behind me.

His eyes and frown only hardened more, piercing into me in a way that made me want to squirm uncomfortably—who was this man glaring at me and where was my Orange?

“This is not your room. It is mine.”

My blood ran cold.

Actually, it turned to ice like a frozen lake in the northern parts of Shah. Before a volcano suddenly erupted beneath it, shattering the ice, and sending a torrent of molten lava sizzling through me.

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