A Sting shoved me, but Absalom had heard me, and his head tilted up behind the cage’s bars. His green eyes radiated in a glare in between the pale strands hanging in his bruised and dirty face.
“Looks like she knows her prince, even without his crown,” reported one of the Stings, dully, but to whom they spoke couldn’t be viewed, until …
“I see,” said an icy voice that belonged to a brusque man around forty who just walked in a door that was across the room from where we had entered. I only just remembered not to look at his eyes, for of course looking into the eyes of a Sting of opposite gender is like Pinocchio handing the end of his strings to some random madman.
So instead, I looked at the rest of him. He was unnaturally white, as if he’d once been dark but stayed out of real light for too long. His face was jarringly uneven and haughty. His chin, nose, and cheekbones jutted into the air while his cheeks were sunken back into his head. There were bags under his eyes. His arms bore tattoos all over them, and his hair was black and as long as Joy’s, though thicker and wavy. “Well, all the better. Put her in the cage.”
A woman cut my wrists apart, unlocked the coop, and threw me unceremoniously in. The man thrust his face close to mine and studied my face carefully, then said, as if proving something to his self, “I see I’m not missing much,” then circled around and left the room. What did he mean by that? The Stings locked our cage and followed suit. I could feel tears streaming down my face from the anguish of my wrists. I hid my expression from the monarch in front of me.
“So, who are you?” he asked. His eyes took me in and studied my frame; I blushed under the mask of my hair.
I watched him from behind my curtain of tresses a second more, and said, “I’m Aigneis.”
“And I assume you’re from my father’s kingdom?”
“Yes sir.”
Silence.
“And you don’t talk much,” he stated.
“I do with people I know.”
“Well you don’t get to know people unless you actually say more than a three-worded sentence,” he said, not unkindly.
“Okay.”
“I’m guessing you’re not one of my fans.”
“Oh, poor you,” I said, my face pulled into a mock-pout and my hair swung back.
“I’m glad,” he said, leaning back on the wall, and letting out the smallest of sighs.
“What?!” I exclaimed. He became more outlandish in my mind with every detail I learned of him.
“You heard me. I don’t like people who think I’m someone to be worshipped just because I’m a prince. It makes it to where I don’t know whether people are befriending me for my wealth, my status, or for me being me.” I looked at Absalom, his face exhausted from more than the bruises that littered his face.
“Is that why you looked like you did not wish to speak in our town?” I asked, curious.
“Yes. When was that? Time goes really slow down here,” he said.
“About three days ago. But wait-you make everyone worried because you’re too busy getting caught by Stings, and then you don’t like the attention? How shellfish,” I said, imitating Joy’s snooty nose posture, but a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth even as I did so.
“Oh, you’ll know how ‘shellfish’ I’m being when you see what we get to eat around here,” he retorted. I groaned, and he chuckled, the first sign of laughter I’d seen on his face. It suited him.
“I thought royalty got treated better than normal people,” I said forcefully.
“At home I did,” he said, his smile fading. He looks so much better smiling; it makes him look like he's actually fifteen instead of twenty. “Oh well, there’s no use wishing in this foul place.”
I yawned. “I’m so tired.”
“That’s fine, sleep; I can’t stop you.”
I gave him a look, and he cocked his head. “What?”
“Well, Prince of Knowledge, let me explain for you. I am a girl, and you are a boy, and we are in the same enclosure, so it would be improper to sleep near the other.”
“Oh. Well I guess you’re just never going to sleep, then, because the Stings won’t let us out unless my crowd of admirers comes busting through their walls.”
“What?”
Absalom looked gravely to me. “You didn’t really expect them to treat us as civilized folk, did you? To them, they need a place to store us, and they don’t want to take up more space than needed. So they’ll leave us in here.” He sighed again. “I’m sorry if you don’t believe me, but I promise that I would never do anything to you while you sleep.”
I stifled another yawn and stared wide-eyed at my hands. How could I trust him? I had just truly met him. I chortled at the thought of how Joy would react if she could see me now, contemplating whether or not the faithful, grand prince would bother me in my slumber.
Making up my mind that I was falling asleep anyway, I said, “Well, I’m not staying about. Night.”
“Good night. And Aigneis?”
“Yes?”
“It’s been really nice talking to you. Being all alone with these brutes has been awful.” I looked up at him. His eyes were completely at ease. He must be used to entertaining company, much unlike me.
“I like talking to you, too, Prince Absalom,” I lied as I lay down my head on the wintry cold, rock floor.
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