Prince of the Stable

5. Teritha Checks In

That night, his thighs sore for the unaccustomed riding, Aiden took himself in hand with an image of the young prince's pretty face in mind. But it was soon replaced with the raw sensual beauty of the whore, Ro. And it was Ro's name on his lips as he came into the worn washcloth.

"Who is Ro?" 

Aiden near jumped out of his skin at the feminine voice, and cursed that his privacy had been so thoroughly violated. Hovering before him in a soft blue glow of her own light, was Teritha. "What are you doing here?" He demanded, his face burning with embarrassment as he yanked his blanket over his lap.

She said nothing a moment, just gave him an inscrutable look. "Your twenty-first birthday approaches, and yet you seem no closer to winning a heart of royal blood. Have you come to like the stink of the stable?"

All manner of rude replies occurred to him, but it was his rudeness to a fairy got him into this situation to begin with, so he marshaled his tongue and said as civilly as he could, "Had you bothered to check on me sooner, god-mother, you might have learned that the good King of Morwich has two sons, both comely in appearance, one arrogant, one naive, and both with impending marriages. Advise me, god-mother - which of the two princes should I try to win?"

"Oh! Oh dear."  Her glowed faded considerably, so he could scarce see her as she sat gingerly on the rough made chair in his loft. He'd fixed it himself to be quite sturdy but it still looked like it might fall apart if the door closed to hard. "That cursed Orina, she surely knew."

"Surely," he agreed shortly. 

Her glow brightened a little. "Which one is Ro?"

"Neither," he snarled. He drew a breath to calm himself. "Edmund is the Crown Prince and far more arrogant than ever I was. The other is Jordan."  He heard his voice soften slightly as he spoke the prince's name. "He's eighteen, and pretty as a girl in the face. He seems good-natured, but has a ridiculously simple view of the world. People like me barely register. For what it's worth, in the year I've been here, this is the first time I've met him face to face."

 "A year? but you've been gone nearly four?"

"I arrived in the stables of the Royal Watch, it was only last year I proved sufficiently skilled with horses to be promoted to the family stable." Once he might have sneered at that, seeing no difference between one pile of shit and another, but after all this time, he knew it was significant promotion, and one he appreciated. 

"Oh dear, oh that awful Orina, skewing the odds so against you."

He felt a wash of self-pity and shoved it aside. "I suppose you can tell my parents that I'm not coming back. Perhaps...someone might visit me."

"Visit you? Absurd. No, no. There must be a way," she said, tapping the crooked arm of the chair with her wand. "I promised your great-great-grandfather ...but old stories. Curses are very literal, you know."

"So I've discovered. I can say Clearhaven in certain contexts, but when Orina said I couldn't tell anyone the truth, she wasn't exaggerating."

She tilted her head. "You could write it down?"

He pushed his fingers through his hair. "I tried that, before I knew most of the people around me couldn't read anyway. My hands lost all feeling for hours. Not good when mucking out horseshit is my job."

"Indeed. Even if anyone believed you, I doubt such a confession would help break the curse. You need to be loved for who you are, not your position."

"if it's not about my position, then why does your amendment specify that my true love needs to be of royal blood?"

"True love of royal blood, that's what I said. Rather poetic, isn't it? So tell me, Aiden - who is Ro?"

"Nobody," he said sullenly. Ro smiled at him, Ro talked to him. Ro would occasionally kiss him. But he always sent him away with a sad smile. Ro might be only a whore, but he was as far out of Aiden's reach as Prince Jordan. He could, however, protect him from Teritha. 

"A laundress? A milk maid? 'Fess up, dear boy, or you'll make things very difficult for your Kingdom. There's a woman, who is she?"

"No," he growled. "There's no woman. No one."

Her glow brightened a little and he clutched his thin blanket as if that could protect him from fairy magic. She tapped the chair arm again. "Perhaps a friendship with the less offensive prince? A deep, abiding friendship, intimate...well," she laughed, "not that intimate. Perhaps that would work?"

He frowned in the dark, wondering if he dared hope for a return to his former life. "You mean such a friendship as I had with Anthony? Lord Auden?" He had known Anthony since they were boys together. Could one forge a friendship like that in six months? Aiden doubted he'd have liked the prince had they met as equals. Into those doubts came a fuller comprehension of what Teritha had actually said. "Perhaps? You don't know?"

"It's a chance, Aiden Greyrose." She rose from the chair with standing. "But if you like the stables so much you'd rather stay..."  The light vanished and he blinked in the sudden darkness.

He lay back, exhausted by the conversation. His idea of true love was a relationship where he could be himself with no secrets and so too, his loved one. Depth of trust, moreso than passion. But he hadn't even had that with Anthony, unable to confess his unnatural - no, uncommon - desires for fear of rejection. He sighed.

He wasn't even sure he'd have liked Jordan had they met as equals.