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

Chapter One - Ramiel | edited |

With a stretch of my arms, I swish my feet across the stone flooring and kick my boots off before flattening myself against the still-cool fabric of my bed's cloth covers. I ought to savor it while I can, before the humidity ruins everything with its hot summer breath.

"Ramiel," a voice calls from the doorway. I twitch at the sound, but I immediately recognize the crackly warmth of my dear maid, Bernadette.

"Come in," I call back, rolling to one side.

The gray-haired woman peeks in through the door and with her small, judging eyes appraises the room to see what needs to be returned to its proper place. This always makes me feel like she's expecting someone uninvited to jump out and scare her. I don't blame her—I wasn't an easy child to raise—but with my twentieth birthday and the coronation of the crown prince coming quickly, she ought to be a bit more at ease.

Anxiety quickly displaces the hazel in her eyes and her skin pales, beads of sweat speckling along her small forehead. My hair goes on edge, too. Her composure stiffens as it used to when she'd disciplined her maids, but the expression in her shrunken pupils and flattened lips can't mean anything good.

Her gaze finally settles on me as she kneels slowly, a few feet in front of my bed where I now rise to attention. She places her hands daintily on her stained apron, brushing the folds down, and looks at me with a soft and sad countenance. It's rare for her to smile, and for just a moment I believe there's a hint of one there, but it's quickly erased by a twitch in her jaw.

"You've earned my audience. Speak." The phrase comes out harsher than I usually say it, reflecting my own paranoia. The maid doesn't flinch at my demand.

Bernadette shifts her small, wrinkly hands and bunches her dirtied skirts in fists. Her breaths come out as weak and shaky as a leaky bellow. Once her eyes lock with mine, they hold me with such intensity, I can't bring myself to look away. "My boy," she whispers dryly, and the sadness in her voice slices through me, cold. It's so sudden that I lose my practiced composure and for a moment, my entire body is weightless as I wait, suspended in the choppy silence of her breath. Her eyes glisten with budding tears. I stand with an abruptness I'm not known to show, not even to those of my own blood, and fall to my knees before her. I grasp her shoulders tightly and pull her head of silver tangles to my chest.

"What happened?" I ask, but in response her body only shivers in my arms as her hands continue fiddling with the edges of her apron, turning them over the dark gray skirt. "Tell me what happened." My voice softens and this seems to help her calm down a little.

Her lip quivers as she barely squeaks the words out, but they're there and they're nothing that I would've expected and everything I've always dreaded.

"Xavelor has been defeated," she whimpers and looks away to cry. "Rami, your brother is dead."

I draw the string of a golden longbow back to my cheek, my fingers shifting slightly over the bamboo arrow resting on the leather grip. Normally, I'd protect my arms from the string's painful whip and my hands from the strenuous precision they're required to maintain, but I hardly had any time between Bernadette's cruel announcement and the meeting my father, the King of Arioch, called into session before the day's second meal.