Ladies, Lords, & Liars

Chapter Thirty-One: The Midnight Spy

   When he woke up, he almost managed to convince himself that it had all been a dream. He wasn't going home and Odette probably didn't even exist in the waking world.

   Then his fingers brushed a soft sheet of paper on the bedside table. The letter.

   He opened his eyes and realized then that he shouldn't be awake yet.

   Had he heard something? No. It was hardly possible that light had shone on his eyes in the dead of night...

   He was nearly ready to chalk it up to a case of severe excitement for what would happen in the morning when he heard a soft thump from somewhere in another room. That must have been the origin of his wakefulness...

   He got up and followed the memory of the sound to the balcony door. Was it possible that someone had thrown another shoe onto the balcony? He still had the last one that had shown up, somewhere in his bedroom.

   Come to think of it, he should have gotten rid of it long ago... if someone happened to find it, they would no doubt get the wrong idea.

   When he opened the door and pushed out into the open air, he was met with a sight far more surprising than a shoe.

   The moonlight gleaming against hair and casting a pale silver glow onto fine skin... a woman, her back to him as she contemplated something he couldn't see on the wall in front of her.

   However, her concentration was broken at the sound of the door opening, and she spun to face him.

   Kyra. Her eyes were pools of shadows, but even in the haze of darkness, he recognized the curve of her face, the slope of her shoulders.

   "Kellen?" she hissed, then groaned. "Of course, this is your balcony. Can the fates be any crueler?" she heaved a tremendous sigh and kicked at the coarse stone of the balcony. "Celestials strikes me down." She hissed.

   Why was she so upset?

  "What are you doing out here?" he peered closer and took another step. "It's... I don't even want to think of how late it is." And to add to the shock of seeing her, he received a different kind of shock.

   Seeing her again brought back his regret for leaving things the way they were between them with a force even greater than before.

   "It's none of your business what I'm doing out here," she snapped.

   "Of course it's my business when the Princess shows up on my balcony in the middle of the night!" he exclaimed quietly, taking another step closer and shivering at the icy touch of night-cool stone on his bare feet.

   "I'm..." she sighed again. "I'm spying, okay? Are you happy now?" she crossed her arms with a scowl that added another form of darkness to the shadows that cloaked her eyes.

   "On who?" his throat constricted briefly, thinking for a moment that he was the victim of her spying, but then he remembered that she hadn't even known this was his room until just minutes before. There had to be someone else she would spy on...

   But he couldn't think of anyone else she was suspicious of in the—

   Lord Faust. She had to be spying on him...

   "Now that is for sure none of your business." She shook her head.

   "Why do you keep saying it's none of my business? It clearly concerns me, at least in part, if you're so reluctant to share." He crossed his arms to mirror her stance.

   "Because for all I know, you could be part of this! I won't let you ruin my chances of getting to the bottom of things. You've managed to stay well enough away thus far, and I would thank you to continue doing so."

   He realized as he watched her, silver in the moonlight, that she was wearing the same strange nightgown that she'd been wearing during their encounter in the hall.

   "I have just as much right to know as you do!"

   "What does that mean?" Her frown deepened, and he realized just a second before she finished that he'd messed up again for the second time in only a day. The accent was flawless, but... "You're a foreign prince, how could you have any right to know anything at all about the inner workings of another country's palace?" her tone was hot, suspicious.

   "I... nevermind. I wasn't thinking." His heart skipped a beat. She was definitely smart enough to see that his statement was rather out of place.

   "I believe you were thinking just fine." She took a step closer. "So what did you mean?"

   He shook his head. "Don't try to shift the conversation. You accuse me of spying then turn around and do it yourself?"

   "This is completely different." She straightened up, though she was still a good head shorter than he was.

   "Right..." he sighed and looked up at the stars, shining down indifferently.

   "Don't use that tone! You know perfectly well how different this is!" she flung her arm out wildly, and he flinched back, afraid for a moment that she was attacking him. However, it was a simple gesture of annoyance, nothing more.

   "I just find it hard to understand why you get so mad at me when you do the same things that you accuse me of. You're spying, you lied about being a gardener for months." He tried to rein in his frustration, but it was starting to get out of hand.

   The last time he'd lashed out at her, she'd started crying. He should stop while he was ahead...

   "You don't have the right to say that!" she hissed savagely. "This is your fault! Everything is all because of you!" she took a menacing step forward, and now he really did believe that she would hit him.

   He took another step back, anger welling up in his chest. Something small in the back of his mind told him to rise to the challenge, and he tried desperately to beat it down as he glowered at her.

   "And don't you dare try to lie to me again! I saw you talking with Faust, and I know he has something to do with all of this. You two are in cahoots and I don't know what you have planned but it can't be anything good and I will not sit idly by and allow it!" she stepped right up to him and placed a harsh finger square against his chest.

   He backed up, but she followed him until he was pressed right up against the balcony. Empty, empty air brushed against his back. A subdued thrill of fear ghosted through him.

   She was breathing harshly, her face a mask of rage and so many other emotions that he couldn't even begin to sort through them.

   "I—"

   "NO!" she cut him off before he could even form a single sentence. "Don't spew your nonsense at me! I already told you to keep your foreigner yap shut. I don't want to hear any of your defenses." She snarled.

   "Just—" he spoke louder, but she cut him off with another loud exclamation, her other hand snapping up to hold out a warning finger.

   Frustration built up like water behind a damn. He huffed angrily and pushed against her hand, taking a step forward. For the first time, he used his extra height to stand over her.

   "You have no idea what you're talking about! And I don't either! Nothing you say makes sense! I'm not plotting anything and I probably hate Lord Faust just as much as you do!" the words left his mouth in a rush of breath and he was suddenly gasping to breathe afterward.

   He never should have risen to the challenge in her accusing words. He'd known he would do something he would regret, and now he just did. That cursed accent... always slipping out of his grasp no matter how hard he tried to keep it.

   The look on the princess's face told him without one doubt that she hadn't missed the change. Her eyes were wide, but as he watched her, dread dawning in his chest, they narrowed until they were nearly slits.

   His mind stalled briefly, blinded and stunned by panic, then it began a frantic race to find some way out of this. The princess wouldn't be nearly as forgiving as Odette had been. His ruse was up, and it hadn't been shattered by a letter, skillfully delivered to the royal family before breakfast.

   He might just end up in prison after all.