The Ostler's Boy (The Ostler's Boy Book 1)

Chapter Four

TWELVE YEARS AGO. . .

"She won't eat. She won't sleep. She won't speak," the King said to Elías just beyond my bedroom door. The knight shifted, filling the hallway with his armor's noise. "All over a stable buck," my father spat.

"The boy was her friend," Elías said in my defense.

"She'll make more."

"Perhaps if you would speak to her? An apology, Your Majesty?"

"And what would I apologize for? Saving her honor?" he buzzed. "Miss Hellveig is the best governess in this empire. We hired her to provide the Princess with the tools necessary to reign when I fall. Which may be sooner than we wish, or have you forgotten we are at war?"

"How could I forget?"

"I have a strategy to plan, Ser. Battles to win. They take precedence over silly adolescence and apologies. Tell her to eat. Find a way to make her, I don't care. She is the heir whether she likes it or not. And if she gets worse, I will take it out on you."

With that, he was off onto whatever bed he would find himself in tonight, and I drifted deeper into the sheets of mine. Into the mood of the castle after dark.

A moment later, a forceful knock rapped off my chamber door. "Your Highness?" Elías tried, different than he usually was out commanding the Guard. "Permission to enter?"

I didn't answer, so he waited, obediently. And perhaps because he was not the one I was angry with, I uttered the first word I'd spoken in a week, "Granted."

With that, he stepped in and appeared at my side. I was strung stomach-down, across the mattress, staring, rather derangedly into the wall. My shaky fingers traced the tiny lines of rock in front of them. He knelt and sighed. "Princess. You cannot do this."

"Cannot? I can do what I want. You do not order me, Knight."

"You'll wither away if you starve yourself."

"I don't care."

"You might. If you'd seen the truth behind that death. As far as suffering goes, there's not much worse."

"...I don't care."

"I think you do."

"I think," I struggled to sit up. "You aren't paid to think."

He didn't react, much to my irritation. "His Majesty bears remorse for-"

"I have ears, you're aware? I may be a child in your eyes, but I am anything but stupid. My father is not sorry for anything. He thinks-" I steadied myself against one of the bedposts ignoring the pang in my gut.

Elías added, "...The ostler and his son are gone. His Majesty has sent them away," and sat down on the floor. "If you're worried to cross his path."