Of Spinning Gold and Song

| Twenty Four | The Dinner

I could feel Bradyn's gaze on me as I walked. I lifted my head high and maintained eye contact. I could tell he was trying to read me, and I tried my best to keep the whirlpool of emotions raging inside of me off my face. After all, I was a princess.

Or should be.

"Hi Jon," I said, trying hard to sound confident despite my embarrassing breakdown earlier. "Sorry for disappearing on you like that. I just needed some time to collect myself. I'm all good now." I flashed him a grin.

"You know these people, Miss Sparrow?" asked Prince Lawrence politely.

"I do," I said. "I'm going to stay here with them now. You don't need to walk me back."

"Are you sure?" I could tell that he was hesitant to just leave me, and I suspected he feared I would get in trouble since I was out here instead of wherever I was supposed to be. But at the same time, I knew he was just itching to get back to Aurore. She was the most important thing to him.

"Yes. Thank you, Highness."

His face was blank; I was certain that being prince, he had been schooled from an early age into keeping any emotions off his face. If anything he looked... amused? "I'll see you later then," he said curtly. "Perhaps at supper." He nodded, once to each of the three of us, before turning and walking back towards the palace. Walking briskly towards the palace. Towards his Aurore.

"Alright," I said, whirling on Bradyn, giving up any attempt to remain collected. "How did you even get in the castle? You didn't tell me that."

"The men and I—Augusten's men—were having drinks last night in a tavern," he said. "The men there are pretty friendly—Castor and I got to be talking to a couple of the local guys. It turned out that one of the men we were having drinks with last night actually works here. In the palace. He was taking a night off, and bless the skies for that happy coincidence that we met. And perhaps even happier coincidence that he had already had a couple of drinks and wasn't thinking too hard on what information he was giving out. With a little asking around, it wasn't hard to get to the servant's entrance. After I told him my plight, he was eager to help me out and fake that I was a servant. There's so many of them in this castle that none of the royals would notice one extra. And most of the servant don't care. It wasn't hard to avoid the people that actually did."

To my disdain, I realized that throughout his whole spiel my gaze had wandered down to his lips, remembering what it had felt like to have them on mine earlier. I had zoned out a bit, but I forced myself to snap back to it. A flush started creeping into my face and I willed it away hard as I could—how I wished that my pale complexion didn't turn quite so red!

Placing myself back in the conversation, I frowned. That sounded insanely oversimplified for breaking into a castle and being able to roam as though he belonged here. I was sure he was leaving out a lot of it, simplifying it, but I forced myself to move on. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he was here now. That he had come back for me against all odds and now we were face to face in a crazy situation.

"So I came looking for you, and I ran into Jon and... I'm not blind—I've seen your pap hundreds of times before. Jon filled me in on everything," said Bradyn. He sounded unbelievably nervous; suddenly he was the one avoiding my gaze. But he didn't have to because I wasn't even looking at him anymore. I had whipped back around to the latter.

"Are you serious?" I demanded of Jon. "How many people know? Do you go around telling everyone? Do you want the queen to kill me?"

"The queen," he remarked calmly, "surely already knows. I doubt hearing the news from me would do anything to her. Although I suppose she might kill me, I doubt it would change her opinion of you. And, no, I don't go around telling everyone. I finally told my wife who sent you to me because I was going crazy keeping a secret like that all to myself all those years. You were the second person I told. I wasn't going to tell Bradyn at first, but he knew that I looked like Conrad, and figured enough of it out himself. And then I only told him everything after he told me that he already knew about your flight."