Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(124)

“Is our food so bad?”

“No, I like the food here. I just miss my home.”

We walk in silence for a while as he contemplates my answer.

For some reason we’re going to eat in a different room than breakfast. I guess that makes sense. He could probably eat in a different room every day of the year and not run out of new places.

I gasp when we walk inside.

“This is the great hall,” he says, a touch of pride in his voice, like a few grains of salt on chocolate.

Great hall is an understatement. The vaulted ceiling is fifty feet up, and it’s wider from one side to the other. Huge hearths, tall enough to walk into upright, line the walls, though they’re not lit. At the far end is a dais with a throne behind a huge table, but there’s a smaller one in the open middle of the room, sized for two.

I move to pull out my own damn chair, but again the prince beats me to it, and pushes it in for me as well.

When he sits he looks tired, and stares at the table for a moment.

“I want to ask you something.”

He looks up and nods ever so slightly.

“I was in the library.”

“I see.”

I shift in my seat. “The books on the top shelf. Way up at the top of the tower. What are they bound in?”

“Why do you ask?”

I swallow, hard.

“They look like they’re bound in skin. People skin. I mean human skin.”

“They are.”

My stomach drops and I grab the arms of my chair. Oh my God. He’s going to turn me into a book.

Very funny. That’s about the most ironic way for an English teacher to die.

“When the crown prince of Kosztyla dies, his deeds are recorded in a book, which is in turn bound in his own skin. The practice is called anthropodermic bibliopegy.”

I relax. A little. Not much.

“Are you going to kill me and turn me into a book?”

“Not unless you ask nicely.”

I swallow, hard. “I have to tell you something.”

“Go on.”

“That is incredibly f*cking creepy.”

He looks at me blankly for a second, as if he’s trying to parse what the word f*cking means in that context, and then bursts out laughing. Real laughing that echoes through the hall. I just sit there wide eyed.

“You think it’s creepy? I have to look at that shelf knowing one day I’ll be added to the collection.”

“It’s just weird. Do you think you can, like, not do that?”

I laugh. Nervously. I sort of force it.

“I know it seems strange to you. At times it seems strange to me. My ancestors were odd men. My father once told me…” He trails off.

“Told you what?”

“He told me my forebears didn’t build a castle to keep the world out. They built it to keep us in.”

I shift in my seat.

Dinner!

It’s fowl, whatever it is. I think it’s goose. It’s not chicken or turkey. Maybe duck. There’s a thick slab on my plate with some kind of plum relish, I think? It tastes like prune juice, but sweeter. Also a little pile of pearl onions, carrots, and peas, which I kind of push around the plate. There are hot crusty rolls and butter, too, and a bowl of barley in cream sauce with chopped up broccoli.

The prince is quiet while we eat.

“What happened to you this afternoon?” I finally ask.

“I was dealing with the resistance,” he says, twisting the word into a curse.

“You looked really torn up when you got back. Or your armor did.”

“This is not a suitable dinner topic. You are a teacher?”

“I am. I was. I don’t know.”

“Please don’t start berating me.”

“I won’t. I’m tired of it. For now, anyway. Yeah, I went to school to teach. I majored in history and after that I was working on a certification and a master’s so I could teach, but I quit to come out here and work with the church teaching English in Solkovia.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to get away from home.”

“You were trying to sell it to me earlier.”

“I thought you didn’t want to fight about whose country is better.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “True, I have had enough of fighting for one day. Why did you want to leave?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it because of the man you were to marry?”

I bite my lip, not wanting to slip any information about that subject at all, and yet I say, “Yes, that’s why.”

“Did he reject you?”

“No.”

“Then you, him.”

“No.”

“I see.”

“You really don’t. What about you? I saw a painting when I was walking the castle. Was she important to you?”

He bites his lip. It’s a weirdly cute gesture.

“Yes, she was.”

“Was.”

“Was,” he agrees.

“The final kind of was.”

He nods. “That kind, yes.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died. Most people do. As yours did.”

I flinch. “I don’t like talking about that. It hurt me a lot.”