Legend has it, if you stand in front of a mirror, shuffling an enchanted deck of cards, you can open a doorway between dimensions.
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Prince Teodric of Springport remembers the promise he made his father: to *not* try to reenact the legend of dimen...
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Whatever spell Ysac held over Tilda, or vice-versa, worked in our favor. After what felt like hours of listening to them rehash memory after memory, offering cute smiles at one another, Tilda slammed a fist on her throne's armrest and stood up.
"Fine," she said, her tone stern as she stormed off her dais and across the room, before swiveling to us with a hand on her hip. "I'll go to Acewood with you. It's my throne, and I'll take it."
I almost breathed out a sigh of relief, and sensed Ysac deflating with a similar feeling beside me.
Tilda narrowed her icy gaze on both of us and raised her plucked eyebrows upwards. "But not today. Today, tonight, we celebrate." She clapped, summoning servants to her. "Drinks, food, a party! It's my last night as Queen of Hartland!"
I opened my mouth to interject—even if she did win the vote, it wouldn't be for many weeks—and Ysac lifted a hand as if to stop her from talking, but she sauntered off before either of us could contradict her.
"Fuck," Ysac said under his breath—his first time cursing in front of me.
And of course, it turned me on. A foul mouth was always appreciated; I loved when my conquests let out a string of fucks when I thrust into them.
But Ysac wasn't a conquest, and likely never would be.
He released a lengthy sigh, then spun on his heels. "Come on. We have to go after her."
"To tell her what a stupid idea a party is?" I hurried to keep up with him as he patrolled out of the throne-room and down another coral-colored corridor. All these castles were mazes, and he knew every single one as if he'd lived there for decades.
"To ask her where our guest rooms are," he muttered, rounding a corner without warning, making it so that I walked several additional feet before I was able to steer myself into the right direction.
Our guest rooms turned out to be one room. Tilda claimed we needed to share, because for this extravagant party she was hosting tonight, she'd be inviting many from around the area, and they'd need somewhere to sleep.
The glint in her eye when she gestured us off told me she might have been lying. She wanted us to share the same room for other nefarious purposes...but it didn't make sense. If she was involved with Ysac, why would she imply that she wanted him and I to be alone in a bedroom together?
Ysac knew the way to the guest rooms, of course. I followed him with my chin lowered, trying to envision a situation where things didn't get blown out of proportion. How would we sleep in the same space? How would I sleep knowing he was nearby, on the floor, or possibly in the same bed, if there was nowhere else for him to lay? As a royal—undercover—I'd get my pick of where to sleep. Surely he'd respect that.
The room in fact had two beds, though they were quite close together. The walls were a light coral, with sprayed edges of leaves and flowers. The floors were a distracting, reflective gold, and our shoes clicked atop them as we entered.
