The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(16)
Kellan grinned. “You’re only a bit older than me, Jacques. I walk around feeling like I have a hollow canyon for a stomach most days. We’ve been at this for hours. Are you hungry?”
Jacques smiled slowly. “I could eat.”
“Say no more.” Kellan leaned over the desk, shifting parchment until he found what he was looking for. “This list of dishes my mother wants me to approve for the ball seems very fancy.”
“Quite fancy, sir.”
“I’ve been eating academy food for so long, I’m not sure I remember exactly how each of these tastes.” Kellan raised an eyebrow at Jacques.
“It would be a shame to approve a dish and then have it be a disaster on the day of the ball.” Jacques spoke gravely, though there was a twinkle in his eyes.
“Exactly.” Kellan handed the list to Jacques and stepped back. “Which is why I’d like you to go down to the kitchens and order a sample of each.”
“Me, sir?” Jacques looked askance at the pile of work still waiting on his desk.
“Something like this requires a personal touch. Tell the staff you’ll wait. No, tell them I’m up here waiting. That will get them moving.”
And if there was any luck left in the world for him, cooking samples of each of the twenty-six dishes on the list would take at least two hours. Plenty of time for him to sneak out of the castle, figure out a way to feel truly alive, at least for a little bit, and then sneak back in with no one the wiser.
“But, sir—”
“I’ll look over these while you’re gone.” Kellan took the pile of requests from Jacques’s hand.
“But this could take hours.”
Kellan was counting on it.
“My good man, do you have any idea just how many girls have been introduced to me in the past week? And just how fast my betrothal ball is coming? I have a lot of thinking to do.” Kellan gave Jacques a meaningful look, and the man shook his head, a resigned smile playing at his lips.
“Very well, sir.”
Kellan held his careless smile in place until the door closed behind Jacques, and then he whirled toward his bedchamber. It had been years since he’d last used his balcony to escape the castle, but the process couldn’t be that different from the many times he’d done something similar to leave his third-floor dorm room at the academy after hours.
Several harrowing moments later, after nearly missing his leap from the balcony to the solid old oak tree whose branches painted shadows on his bedroom wall at night, and after almost being caught on the south lawn by a pair of representatives from the Faure family, Kellan slipped through the hedges that bordered the southern edge of the castle’s estate.
He’d had no real plan other than escape, but he found his feet hurrying toward the path he’d often taken as a child beside his father when they would go south, skirting the city, to visit his father’s old tutor and friend Pierre de la Cour at his little farmhouse beside the sea.
Not that Kellan wanted to see Pierre today. Or, luck forbid, Pierre’s interfering, know-it-all daughter, Blue, the tiny ruiner of many of Kellan’s best adventures when he was younger. But there was a comfort in walking the familiar trail through wild seagrass and scattered groves, the city sprawling to his left. He could breathe in the delicate scent of salt and sun-warmed dirt and pretend he was eight again, his hand swallowed up by his father’s, his world still beautiful and perfect.
He could pretend he’d made different choices. That he’d recognized the risks in swimming so far out that day. That Blue had seen him and tattled like she always had. Anything that would change the fact that he’d thrown himself into dangerous waters and that his father had thrown himself in after, desperate to save his son.
Kellan had been saved, but he’d felt lost ever since.
The thick, damp heat of the summer’s day lay on Kellan’s skin like a wet blanket as he neared the de la Cour farmhouse. Skirting the edges of the property, he took the well-worn path down to the cliff that overlooked the glittering expanse of the golden Chrysós Sea.
The waves hurled themselves at the strip of white sand that lay between the cliff and the sea. Beyond their foamy caps, a dark shadow threaded its way beneath the water, changing the color from light gold to a deep bronze.
That was the shadow that had taken his father from him. The current that ran through the channel deep beneath the surface had snatched him. Flung him away from the prince and then sucked him under.
Kellan had been throwing himself into danger ever since. Daring the world to take the life it should’ve taken in the first place.
Ignoring the steps carved into the side of the cliff, Kellan stripped off his shirt and pants, and stood poised for a moment at the edge of the precipice.
It was a long, treacherous drop. He’d have to pull up out of the dive fast, or he’d slam into the sea floor and break every bone in his body. He’d have to fight the current that would want to drag him beneath the waves and into the channel. If he got hurt, there was no one to rescue him. If he was caught in the current, no one would ever know where he’d gone or what had become of him.
There were a hundred ways it could all go wrong, and for the first time since Kellan had set foot in Balavata again, he felt wonderfully, gloriously alive.
Spreading his arms wide, he drew in a deep breath of the salt-tinged air, and dove. The wind rushed past his ears, and then he plunged below the surface, the shock of barely warm water slapping at his skin and sharpening his senses.