Mortal Fantasy

✴｜chapter seventeen

The king.

The finest pearls of perspiration line the back of my neck.

The queen.

A chill falls down my spine.

"I lied," I blurt.

Stephen casts me a skeptical smirk. "You dare lie to a prince? About what?"

A petrified smile is plastered onto my lips. "I'm not ready. Not at all."

The slightest of grins edges his mouth. He seems strangely unbothered, for all of his concern in the morning about attending the banquet. "That doesn't count as a lie. I could tell that from the moment you stepped out of the room."

"If not from the moment you saw me, then at least I've succeeded at something," I counter, suddenly embarrassed at admitting it to him. I might be worried about guards seeing us conversing so casually, but if Stephen takes it in stride, then there must not be too much reason to worry about it.

"Barely," he remarks, as we turn another corridor. I surmise that we are still walking the prince's suite—I have heard that an entire level of the palace was dedicated to the royals only, so it only makes sense for it to be colossal. "It was rather amusing to see you so flustered."

I manage a laugh of disbelief, looking at him sideways. He doesn't turn my way, but I can still see the smirk on his mouth. "For all that you may think, I am not easily flustered. It just so happens that the events that have taken place since I stepped foot in the palace have been quite disorienting."

Stephen scoffs and glances down at me. Our height difference isn't much, yet he carries an air of superiority that at times makes me feel miles below him. "What events, hm?"

I fall silent, only able to remember my mouth under his fervid kiss and waking up next to him half-naked. He might be remembering himself, because when I dare to regard him from the edge of my peripheral vision, he has raised a fist to his mouth.

Stephen coughs quietly. "All of that can be disregarded, Ithena."

"It is not easily forgotten," I point out. "I will forever have memory of what you did in front of the queen."

"And I will forever have memory of you stumbling into my bed," Stephen fires back, lifting his brows.

"I wasn't in my senses," I snap, not noticing where we are walking. "You knew perfectly well what you were doing."

"I find no need to explain to you when I have already deigned to do so," Stephen mutters, his voice suddenly dropping into a low undertone. "Or breach the topic of what you were doing on said day..."

I freeze. Damn it, Ithena. Of all things, I bring up escaping the palace as if it were a casual day trip.

"... but now is no time to talk of such things. I hope you've prepared one hell of an act, Ithena."

"Wh—" I cut off abruptly, my chest swelling with breath as I catch sight of the hall in front of me. We have arrived at a wide room with a high, arching ceiling, in which nobility of every rank mills, flitting between conversation and greetings. As Stephen wears the pins of a combatant, so, it seems, do they—is this what formality is to them? I am able to gage the bright red-dressed figures as other concubines—young men and women accompanying each noble. They are all extraordinarily beautiful. Yet at second glance, there is a sort of dead submission that hangs about them like a disease, in the slight downward tilt of their heads and the blank emptiness in their crusted shells of eyes. It is as if they are dead and yet living.

Closest to us, a young female general passes. She might have been beautiful if for a scar marring her brow to the edge of her lip; otherwise, her sand-colored hair is drawn high on her head, and her mauve gaze is piercingly cavalier. Flanking her is a tall, golden-skinned young man who carries his bearing almost as haughtily as she. She halts promptly in front of Stephen and gives him a deep bow, to which he says, rather curiously, "I didn't know you'd be here today, Rein."