The Lady of the Hive has Arrived

Chapter 3: The Bastard Prince

The prince led me to the king's study, which was located in the King's Tower. We climbed the stairs in silence, accompanied by four guards that boxed us in. It was suffocating. The more steps we ascended the more self aware I became. I had been in the dress too long. I felt naked and vulnerable to everything; to the breeze, to the candlelight, to the knights' watchful gazes. The anxiety had been enough to take my breath away.

Nothing was making any sense. This tower was the most poorly designed structure of the palace, King Jean Ricard the I told me that he never actually used the king's study. He had said that there were too many steps for him to climb and that he had never been a strong enough man for the tower to be useful. The king had also said that the stairwell was far too narrow for torches or any sort of fire so that it made it dangerous to enter or exit the tower at night.

Unfortunately the sun had set a while ago, and the only light we had to maneuver the narrow stairway were the candelabras the guards were carrying, and the candlelight did little to keep frigid air at bay as we ascended higher. Chills seeped into my body like a poison, and whether they came from the cold air or the icy tension, I could not tell.

It was odd enough that he asked me to wear such a slim fitting dress, then to have to wear my hair a certain way, then he surprised me with that strange man, and now... He's taking me to the king's study when the prince's was much closer? Could he be intending to wed me off to the King of the Seas? But if its just that then why would he have to bring me all the way to the king's study for something simple like that? My life belong to the crown, and that crown belongs to Byron. All he had to do was say the word and I would be that man's wife.

It's so cold... I began to rub my bare arms with my hands while hugging myself.

Just look forward, move your feet, and be quiet.

And that is what I did, but with nowhere else to look, I found myself watching the back of Prince Byron, which had been adorned with a black velvet cape with white fur lining. The boy before me bared only a vague resemblance to the man I knew to be his father. Judging from the early portraits of King Jean Ricard the I, he was always depicted with beautiful, short blonde hair and the same hazel green-brown eyes I remembered from my own memories. Prince Byron, on the other hand had black hair, and he kept it clean and brushed, but it was longer and seemed almost feathery on his head. He had his father's hazel eyes as well as similarly high cheek bones.

He was a handsome man, a princely one at that. But due to his fondness for dressing in black and his black, shadow-like hair, it was difficult to imagine him as anything other than a dark prince I might read in a fable.

Byron and the guards slowed to a stop, and the prince turn to look down at me with a twisted smile.

"That is far enough, we will be fine on our own from here on. Nobody comes up until I come down," he said, taking one of the candelabras from a guard. The guards nodded in unison and pressed their backs against the walls of the stairway and readily placed their hands on their sword's hilts.

I swallowed involuntarily, and followed after Prince Byron as he resumed climbing.

Shortly, we reached the door to the study and he pulled out a ring of keys and selected a long silver one from it and inserted it into the lock. The door opened with a click and we entered the room.

It was nothing like I had expected it to be, or how I would expect a study to look at all.

"What? You thought they would allow the bastard to sleep in the guest quarters?" Byron sat at the desk, looking at the bed that had been placed in the middle of the room.

I swallowed, my heart hurt for the boy I remembered meeting in the garden five years ago. Climbing those stairs, presumably all by himself, because he was always by himself. What if he had fell? Thank the gods he didn't. But he had to have felt so isolated... So alone. My eyes began to burn, and before I knew it, the salty tears had spilled out of the corners of my eyes and streaked down my cheeks.