The Misplaced Prince[COMPLETE]

Ventus

Agreeing to let her guard him had obviously been a mistaken.

She was too uptight to let herself loose now. Obviously it mattered to her to be taken seriously.

Joshua was sent the directive from the King that if he wanted to explore, today would be the day because from tomorrow, he would be thrown in his own personal hell of training to control the hellish fire, of all things, and to learn to fight like a fucking warrior. Those weren't the exact words the King used, but Joshua got the gist.

Despite himself, he found himself wondering about this place. Considering that his biological mother had been born and raised here, and he--if everything he was told was to be believed--had been birthed here--he felt absolutely no connection to it.

Kasey was waiting outside this door when he left after taking a quick dip in a bath that had been set up for him--and scaring away the servant waiting to wipe him down with a glare. She refused to acknowledge him, and he was coming to the realization that pressing her wasn't going to get him anywhere, so he set off on his own.

And of course, she followed.

She followed him as he idled around the royal tower, observed how everyone snapped to attention and stared at him avidly. She tagged with him as he walked over the bridge separating the tower from the rest of the castle, and when he entered the tunnels and stairways leading to various parts of the castle.

She was there with him when he got lost, and spent hours walking circles with no idea where the hell he was.

She was there when he ventured far enough in the castle where people didn't even know he was the Prince, and he was subjected to sneers and snide eyes going over him as men judged his potential and found him lacking just because of the way he looked. It wasn't anything new, but infinitely preferable to undeserved awe.

And then they came upon the library.

A soft breath left him in inadvertent admiration. The sky was darkening outside, and countless candles had already been lit in preparation, casting an almost magical glow over the enormous, sprawling rooms. A gaze up revealed that the library extended up to the tip of the tower they were in, staircases climbing up towards dizzying heights that in the darkness did not even seem to have an end.

Books had always been his refuge. Once on a picnic on the Earl's land with the family, the games keeper had seen a neglected Joshua kicking stones near a pond, and had pressed a dusty little volume on crop rotation in his hands. Sitting in a little rock, he had found his own world within the droning words. Later, Joshua had snuck into the Earl's study to find more, from books on maintaining estates to toe curling books the Earl had probably never meant to be revealed to the light of the day. It was a vice no one took away from him, because it was something no one noticed. He wasn't getting in any ones way reading books, and if he busied himself for hours at a time, all the better for people who wouldn't have to deal with him.

His long fingers slid over the volumes, and he took one out at random, ignoring the chairs awaiting readers, and lowered himself on crossed legs, getting lost in a ridiculously whimsical tale of a faery that loved a human.

He was jerked to reality by a soft sound. His eyes hurt, and he blinked around. The candle lights weren't enough anymore to illuminate the massive columns of books, and the windows displayed the inky darkness outside. He must have been reading for hours.

His gaze fell to his side, following the dress spread over the ground, up thin limbs arranged in what had been a tense stance, to a slim column of throat, a delicately projecting chin, plump rosy lips slightly opened, and long lashes resting over tired eyes.