Page 31 of Heartbreak Prince

“I beg your forgiveness.”

“No.” The sheets rustle as he sits up. “I don’t require your forgiveness—I demand your authentic self. You are unique in that you are neither afraid of me nor enamored by me. Keep being cruel and caustic whenever I deserve it. Give me orders. Push me around. And in return, let me be myself. Naughty at times, yes, but always in jest. Let me tease you and taunt you. It keeps the pain at bay.”

“Very well. Whatever you need. Asshole.”

He chuckles. “Perfect.”

Before today, the idea of being in bed with the youngest prince would have given me heart palpitations, more frantic than delighted. But I’m too tired to feel anything of that nature, so exhausted that before I know it, I’m waking up again, resurfacing from a dead sleep, muzzily ignorant of where I am and what I’m doing.

At first, I’m only conscious of coarse sheets, gloom, and quiet, heavy sobs.

The daylight sifting through the cracks of curtains falls over the tray and the dishes, providing me with essential clues.

I’m at the inn. The prince and I had a meal and a bath. We went to bed. And now he’s weeping. The kind of devastated, rasping, bone-wrenching sobs that only come from a grown man with a destroyed heart.

I could pretend I don’t hear him. Lie still and wait until it’s over.

Or I could try to comfort him. Shit, I don’t even know him, certainly not well enough to guess how he’ll react to any comfort I might offer. To comfort him, I’d have to touch him. Will he interpret a touch as a sexual advance?

Men have misinterpreted my friendship and camaraderie as something else, many times. Occasionally, I gave in and fucked them to avoid a confrontation or to avoid jeopardizing my position at the Academy. I saw what happened to the women who reported the lewd behavior of peers or superiors. They were always praised for coming forward, and then quietly pushed out of the preferred positions while misbehaving males advanced.

It’s those experiences that keep me still and silent while the prince muffles his grief with his pillow. I let him cry alone, but I do not rest until the sobs finally stop and his breathing eases.

Only when I’m sure he’s sleeping do I close my eyes again.

7

I’m washing my hands the next morning when I realize the sickening truth.

My glyphs are gone.

The false black nails loosened during the night, and they lie on the sheets and the floor like tiny dark petals. But they’re not the reason my glyph set has been destroyed. The fake nails are designed to cling to the varnish without damaging it.

The hot spring must have ruined them. The minerals in the water softened my skin beautifully, but they also dissolved both the remaining varnish and the glyph paint. The process must have begun in the bath, when the water seeped beneath the false nails, and then it continued overnight. All that’s left of my investment is a bit of dark goop that slides off easily when I dip my fingers into the washbasin after taking my morning piss.

Devastation floods over me like a cold, dark tide. How am I supposed to guide the prince safely to his destination with no magic? The forests in this region are safe, but once we pass the Farrow Foothills, there are fewer patrols. Wolves and panthers roam the woods, along with the occasional pair of wild unicorns, which can be as vicious as they are beautiful. Not to mention the other beasts I learned about in my “Animals of the Upper Continent” class—like the spidermaws and wimmets that infest the Red Mountains.

If I do manage to get the prince to the Lord and Lady Kaenan at Anyssir Castle, my job will be over at that point. I’ll be glyphless, without employment, stranded in the Grey Province. I’ll have to travel all the way back to Kyr on the magic carpet and go back to working at the Pink Lycan, because no decent employer will hire a guard without a glyph set. For someone of my size and gender, even a basic job as security for a local pub would require a pair of strength glyphs, at the very least.

I suppose I could try to sell the carpet… but I don’t have the owner’s registration and the provenance documents required for a legal sale of such a complex magical item. Besides, I rather like him. As the prince said, he’s more than an object.

I sit down limply on the bed, glancing over at Vawn. He’s flushed with sleep, breathing slowly, his lashes lying in black semicircles against his cheekbones. Goddamn his beauty.

One of his hands is tucked halfway under the pillow. I ease it out and flick aside the detached false nails. His glyphs have dissolved too.

Could it have been the landlady? Did she add something to the bath? She had a very negative attitude about glyphs. Maybe she’s part of an anti-magic cult, or maybe she’s simply a crotchety bitch who doesn’t like anyone having advantages she can’t possess. Maybe she has magic-related trauma. Whatever the reason, she could have added a caustic substance like wyvern piss to the hot spring. Unlikely, though. Anything she put in would have eventually drained out through the lower aperture in the rocky wall of the pool.

Sighing, I run my thumb over the back of the prince’s hand. Such exquisitely soft skin.

My gaze drifts back to his face, and a jolt of thrilling horror bursts in my chest when I realize that his eyes are open. They’re liquid silver, shadowed and mocking.

“Warming up to me, are you, sweetheart?”

“No.” I drop his hand. “Checking your glyphs. They’re gone, yours and mine. Probably the minerals in that hot spring.”

“What?” He sits up, inspecting his fingertips. “Most hot springs wouldn’t do that.”

“Apparently this one does. Something leaching from the bones into the water, maybe.”