Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(116)

“How do you decide who is selling it?”

The prince throws up his hands and slaps his legs. “Quantity.”

“So if you caught me with too much, you’d kill me?”

“You wouldn’t do something so foolish, would you?”

I turn in the seat to face him. “Me. Look at me. Would you cut off my head for having too much drugs?”

He rather pointedly does not look at me.

“It’s not a problem. You wouldn’t find any here anyway.”

“That’s not an answer to my question, is it? What other dumb thing will you chop off my head for? Can I have a list, or do I have to guess?”

“Tell me about the cities in your country,” he says sharply. “I tire of this line of conversation.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’m just trying to figure out what’s with you.”

“With me?”

“Are you just an emotionless robot that can cut people’s heads off,” I snap, “or do you get off on it? Do you like it?”

“I take no pleasure in the task. Fortunately it’s an infrequent one. My people know their place.”

“Know their place. Cute.” I glare at him.

He looks at me sharply. “I asked you a question.”

“Okay, fine. Where I come from, there are street musicians, vendors selling food, artists painting, people walking with their kids. This place is dead. It looks like no one lives here.”

“I have been to New York,” he says, shrugging his big shoulders. “I walked in Manhattan. I saw men and women living on street corners, in crude shelters made of trash. The city spent more time trying to hide them than trying to help them. In my country no one goes hungry, no one sleeps out in the cold or the rain. I don’t make parents choose between a meal for themselves or for their children. Can you say the same?”

I fold my arms. “There are homeless people in my country. A lot of them have mental problems. I’m getting tired of you talking to me like I’m a child, by the way. You had me a little flustered at breakfast. You know, before you threatened to cut off my hand. I’m not stupid.”

“No, you are not. I think you are quite clever, and brave.”

“Brave?” I blink.

“Without you,” he says casually, gazing out the window, “your pretty little friend would be dead.”

“My pretty little friend?”

He glances over at me quickly, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Is that a hint of what, jealousy? Is that what I hear?”

“What? No, don’t be absurd. I’m not jealous of Melissa.”

“I did not say that you were. I suggested you are jealous of my attentions toward her.”

“Um,” I squeak. “I’m not, I…”

“In the USA it is said, ‘gentleman prefer blondes,’ yes?”

I nod. “I guess, there’s a movie by that name.”

“I know it. Marilyn Monroe. Very pretty woman.”

He reaches over and traps a loose lock of my hair between his fingers, twirling it into a tight little rope. I feel a weird urge to move closer to him but shake loose instead.

“Did you study the folklore of my people at all before you came here?”

“I didn’t know I was coming to Kosztyla before I—”

He sighs. “The Solkovians are mine as well.”

He looks at me and adds, “My people,” quickly.

“I know everyone here is closely related, culturally speaking. Your languages are almost the same. I can pick out bits and pieces enough to understand you if you speak slowly.”

He nods and shifts closer on the seat.

“Before I stamped out such ignorant superstitions, the people believed that women with hair like yours were witches. Did you know this?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Perhaps when you were across the border you saw old women making signs at you.”

“With their hands? Like this?”

I twist my fingers in imitation of the little gesture they used to make at me.

“Yes, that’s it. They were warding off your gaze. You’re lucky you were with your, what did you call it, church group? If you were there alone they might think you meant to slip into their daughters’ beds at night and steal their menstrual blood to use it in place of your own and whelp demons. When a woman is barren or has difficult conceiving, tradition says a witch has done this thing.”

I swallow. “Um. Okay.”

“That is the sort of thing I have eradicated in my country. Do you know what happens to a woman who is accused of this sort of witchcraft?”

“No, what?”

“They cut out her womanly parts while she’s still alive and make a preparation for the barren woman to drink.”

I shudder. “You made that up.”

“The old ways are strong in the countryside. Much of Solkovia has been torn apart, like a rope between two elephants pulling at each other, but other places are still in the fourteenth century. There is nothing there to claim, just barren soil and worthless rocks.”

“Is that your excuse to invade and and oppress them?”

He rolls his eyes. “Do you hear yourself? You sound like a bad movie. My excuse is to bring people who have never seen running water or electricity into the modern world. To feed and clothe them, free them from a miserable existence as subsistence farmers. Have you been to the capital?”