The Sinuous Bargain of a Cowardly Prince (book 1) - undergoing edits

Chapter One - Ramiel | edited |

I loathe very few things, but among them is the strong scent of a plastic-y, corn-textured purple flower: lavender.

Its fragrance dominates soaps, waxes, and flavorings, all to hide the sweet musk of fresh death. The perfume is haunting, like the gloom just before dusk takes the sky over in moody combinations of blue, orange, and purple.

I torture myself with the scent, because it is the only thing I have left of my mother.

My fingers spread over her dusty bed covers, feeling the stiff down feathers resist the pressure of my palm. They crunch and crackle like leaves in snow when winter has greeted autumn a week too early. As I release pressure, soft particles of dust pool around my hand, leaving the shape of my long fingers behind.

Her humble room has been vacant for thirteen years, but her death hits me like it was yesterday—it's as though I'm still the same little prince who clung to her breast for her maternal love. The maids no longer care for her chambers, yet to honor her life, they continue to supply a fresh vase of tall-stemmed lavender flowers once a year on the anniversary of her death.

I breathe in, slow. The sharp floral stench burns my nostrils, sends my heart to my throat.

Lavender is the ceremonial flower of death, and also my mother's favorite flower. The minimal effort the maids put into their floral arrangement therefore serves two purposes, neither of which pleases me, her only begotten son.

Alone in her chambers, I am at peace. No hiding, no pretending, and the fond memory of my mother lingering in the static air of her bedchamber. If I close my eyes, she's alive and vivid in front of me, her eyes bright and her black hair falling around her face and a smile touches her cheeks when she beholds me. This sort of blessing is rare, sort of like the magic we humans don't possess but would sell our organs for a taste of. Only once a year can I see her so clearly in my memory.

When I open my eyes, she's gone.

I say a quick prayer to our ancestor, Arioch Faundor, who founded our kingdom, even though I know he won't answer my pleas to protect my mother in the cosmos. I'm aware she's more likely to be burning wherever damned souls go, but on a day like today, my hopes are forgiven, and maybe even answered.

Light casts in from a parted window, casting reflections off the disrupted dust like jewels. With the rays of the sun comes the heat of the blistering summers in Arioch, humid and hot and greedy to hold scent captive in its moist miasma.

Pinching my nose, I back away from the large bed and glance around the unused room, covered in webs of dead arachnids and displaced with rotted wood furnishings. The sea-colored vase at the center of her dusty dresser is the one thing living in the room—the only object with any color, and the only object without layers of dust covering it—and yet it is the thing I despise most in her familiar absence.

I make my way back to my own chambers, which are in the left wing of Arioch's monstrous castle, opposite that of the king's consorts, where my mother's chamber rots.

As I pass by uninteresting lengths of walls covered in portraits, my heart returns to its rightful spot in my chest. In a year's time, I will visit her room again, and then again a year after. Even after my brother ascends the throne and our father's bones return to the ground, I will still be the only one to remember her legacy.

No portrait of her handsome face graces the walls, neither mine, nor my brother's. The honor is saved for kings.

I push the golden handles and open the large oak doors of my chambers, which are slightly larger than my mother's but still not as large nor befitting of a prince as are my half-brother's. For the most part, I've learned to live with this reality—that nothing I have will be as great as his, nor as royal, nor as symbolic. But it's only a room; I've faced much worse favoritism.