“Nothing’s going on,” I mutter, tucking my attention back to the plates.
“Oh, nothing is going on,” she echoes, mimicking me.
My sour face turns on her.
She adds, jabbing her finger my way, “And yet you know exactly what and who I’m talking about.”
Damn.
Ok, I shouldn’t have been so quick to defend myself or hide my secrets. I muddied the waters with that one.
With a loosened sigh, I shrug my shoulders in a pitiful manner. “He doesn’t like me,” I say. “My family gave him poor bounty, and since then, he’s ... I don’t know. He’s simply not liked me.”
“We’re slaves,” she says. “He doesn’t like any of us.”
“Ok, well then heactively dislikesme.” I throw my hands up like an unspoken question. “What can I do about that?”
Terry’s mouth falls into a flat line. She studies me for a long moment.
Then she decides not to buy what I’m selling.
Shaking her head, she points out, “You’re blushing.”
“I’m embarrassed,” I answer without shame.
“Of what?” Her eyebrow arches above her twinkling deep-blue eye, as though she’s already won this round.
“Of this,” I whine, flapping my hand between us. “You, suggesting that something is going on between me andthe dokkalf prince that we serve,” I emphasise. “If anyone heard what you were saying ...”
I let the implications hang between us.
And it seems to work. Sort of.
It’s enough to have Terry nodding her grim face at me, but not enough to erase the suspicion from her narrowed eyes. She doesn't trust what lies I’m telling her, but she knows well enough that these accusations could spawn into rumours far too dangerous for me to survive.
So she says no more of it. We clean the Hall in silence for a while longer before she breaks the quiet—
“I hope he does marry the litalf princess,” she tells me, and I’m certain she’s testing me. “It could bring a little light into this castle.”
I’m quiet as I brush off the crumbs from the tablecloth.
I can feel Terry’s gaze on me, distracted from her sweeping. “A litalf is nowhere near as terrible as a dokkalf,” she goes on. “And already, since he met her, his mood is starting to lighten a bit. He hasn’t hurt any of the humans in the castle.”
“Funny word,” I mumble. “Lighten.”
Nothing can be lighter in this part of the realm.
“Does he take lovers?” I ask. At Terry’s smirk, I add, “I mean, if he’s married—will he have some? He doesn't have any now.”
Her smirk is stuck in place. “He takes a lover sometimes. They don’t last very long, though.”
“Why not?”
“Playing with the royals is a dangerous game,” she says darkly.
It’s the line that shuts down the conversation before we pack up the last of the trolley then, working together, cart it down to the kitchens.
6