“Precisely,” he says.
“Tricky,” I say. “You Svelorians are fucking crafty.”
I shut my mouth, because I probably shouldn’t call the crown prince fucking crafty.
“Times have changed,” he says. “Now it’s also considered polite for guests to sip their vodka. We can’t even put heads on spikes any more, even when we wish we could.”
I lean my elbows on my knees, take a breath in, and then look at him. He’s not smiling, but for the first time, he’s not exactly glaring, either.
“That was a joke,” he explains, and looks at the windows. “I don’t wish to put heads on spikes at all.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb and start laughing. I’m still drunk, so it seems extra ridiculous that the heir to the throne is here, feeding me bread and trying to be funny.
I’m sure his father sent him to check on me, but I have a feeling his father didn’t ask him to try to make me laugh.
“I think you may not be laughing at my joke,” he says, and stands.
I take a deep breath, trying to get control of myself, and look up at him.
“I think I may not be,” I say.
He offers his hand. I take it. It’s warm and strong and rough, and even though I wobble a little getting to my feet, he’s got me.
“Thank you for the bread,” I say.
“It was my pleasure,” he says, and offers me his arm.
It’s a formality, Hazel, I tell myself.
I take it, and he escorts me back to the dining room. As the doorman starts opening the heavy doors, we look at each other. I slide my hand out of his arm, and we walk back into the dining room.
As I sit, my dad leans over to me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I whisper back.
I’m just in time for the main course, a heavily spiced lamb dish with some sort of thick red sauce. I inhale, and my mouth starts watering.
The bread worked, I think, even though I know perfectly well that it shouldn’t have.
I glance across the table. Even though I’m pretty sure Kostya was sent as damage control, and even though he just gave me bread and tried to be friendly, I have the strange urge to keep what just happened a secret.
My stomach squirms again. I tell myself it’s the vodka.
Yelena, Kostya’s pretty, blond, blue-eyed date, is speaking to him softly. He leans toward her, nodding intently, focused on whatever she’s saying.
He was being polite to you, I think, and a sliver of disappointment slices through me, even though I don’t know why. It’s not like I thought I was going to date a foreign prince. For starters, I’m the ambassador’s daughter, and I can only imagine that’s frowned upon.
For the thing that comes after starters, he’s a prince. He lives in a palace and stuff, and someday he’s going to be in charge of a whole country. A country where I don’t even speak the language.
Yelena smiles and touches his hand, her big blue eyes exploring his face. Kostya nods, not smiling, but I’m not sure he can smile.
Just appreciate the hot prince from afar and spend your month reading books and really finding yourself or some shit, I tell myself.
Then, as Yelena’s still talking, Kostya raises his head a fraction of an inch and looks at me.
I get that pinned bug feeling again. For a split second, I forget to breathe.
Kostya’s mouth twitches, just a little, for just a moment. I look back at my plate.
I think he just smiled at me.
Chapter Six
Kostya
For the rest of the dinner, the vodka level in Hazel’s glass doesn’t change. At every toast, the waiter pours a few more drops in, but she’s only pretending to drink now.
Good. I’m glad she can learn.
As soon as the main course is over, Yelena wraps her hand around my forearm and gazes up at me, fluttering her long black lashes.
“What did you think of the lamb, Kostya?” she asks.
I hardly thought anything of it. I was busy keeping my eyes down, on the table or on my food and not looking at Hazel.
It feels like we have a secret, but I’m at a loss. I’ve got nothing to hide. There was no impropriety. She’s our guest, and I was hospitable.
“The lamb was excellent,” I tell Yelena.
“It was my mother’s recipe,” she says. She tilts her head just a little, looking almost like a pretty bird. “The chef asked her for it last week.”
“Your mother is an excellent cook,” I say, but my half of this conversation is on auto-pilot.
I’m just agreeing with whatever she says because my mind is back on the bench. I’m thinking of Hazel saying I’m a barbarian, of the strange electric jolt that passed through me when she took my hand.
“She’s taught me everything she knows,” Yelena says. “I could make you that lamb dish in my sleep.”
I’m so distracted that it takes me a moment to realize that Yelena is flirting with me. Or, if not flirting, trying to sell herself as my wife. She’s telling me that she’s a good cook, and if I’m not careful, she might move on to listing the number of children all her foremothers have had.
“What did you think of the soup course?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation.
She blinks, and I can almost see the gears turning in her blond head as she thinks back to the soup course. I missed it, of course, because I was taking a bread roll from the kitchen and finding Hazel in the hallway.
“I think it had a bit too much kidney in it,” she says, after a long pause. “It was very well spiced, though.”
“How would you have made it?” I ask as dessert comes around. It’s baklava and ice cream, and Yelena hardly touches it as she gives a long explanation of how she would have made the soup.
My father gives another toast. I drink again, finally starting to feel the effects of the vodka.
I glance over at Hazel, but she doesn’t look at me, instead carefully eating the baklava, doing her best not to get pastry flakes everywhere. Next to me, Yelena is eating neatly, delicately, with small bites.
I keep my eyes down and finish dessert.
After dinner, Yelena suddenly wants to take a stroll through the rose garden. It’s a beautiful, warm August night, and she takes my arm as the two of us walk around and she talks about which flowers are the loveliest.
How does someone who thinks so little say so much? I wonder, then feel bad immediately.
Thinking bad thoughts about Yelena is like being annoyed at a puppy.
Besides, she’s not the first girl who’s tried to win my interest. She’s not even the most aggressive. When you’re the crown prince, women just throw themselves at you in the most unattractive ways. Half the time I feel like a trophy to be won, like I’d simply be these women’s ultimate accessory.
Yelena, at least, is here at her father’s urging, and probably my father’s too. She’s genuinely pleasant and kind, even if there isn’t much going on upstairs.
“Don’t you ever wish it was the olden days?” she says, gazing up at a tower. “When ladies wore those beautiful dresses and men were so dapper, and the whole castle would have been lit by candlelight? There would be fancy dinners every night and balls each week, and everything would be lovely.”