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Chapter Nine

A pparently, being royalty meant that there were always massive piles of food surrounding you that you could never possibly finish eating.

Not even an hour after I had finished the remnants of my afternoon snack, my handmaidens started preparing me for dinner by dressing me in about ten pounds of silk.

A pair of puffy seafoam-green pants were layered with a heavy teal overskirt that tied around my waist like a backwards apron.

The back of the skirt skimmed the floor, just short enough that it looked like a full-length gown but couldn’t be tripped on.

“Oh good, the seamstress hemmed it perfectly,” Valorie mumbled with hairpins clenched between her teeth. “You should be able to dance easily in this.”

“D-dance?” I asked as Priynna wrapped a bandeau top around my chest, tight enough to preserve a corpse before its burial. “I thought I was just going to dinner? ”

“Oh, that’s right! You probably aren’t familiar with our customs,” Valorie said, pulling the pins from her lips to tack a sheer green shawl into my hair that matched my admittedly comfy trousers.

“Dinner will be served on the dance floor,” Bylith explained as if it were a completely ordinary thing to assume. “The other invited princesses and ladies will be in attendance as well. You can all dine and dance together while socializing with the prince and his attendants.”

Dance and dine at the same time? That sounds like a recipe for disaster with my dizzy spells.

Priynna finished off my outfit with another layer of sheer fabric that was luckily not as itchy as it looked.

She draped it over my shoulder, covering my midriff but still leaving a patch of my stomach exposed.

The maids insisted I’d appreciate the breeze while dancing, and they even offered to pierce my belly button for the occasion, but I quickly shut down the idea by claiming that belly buttons were sacred in Kipuron.

I asked Valorie for a gold chain, and she happily provided one in a matter of minutes.

I slid the diamond ring along the chain, then hung it around my neck so I could keep the ring close without it being too obvious.

I tucked the chain into my bandeau and layered it with a few other clay bead necklaces, promising myself I’d show it to Adir when the time was right.

Jean had moved to the hallway while I dressed, so I left Kipu alone in the comfort of my suite with a bowl full of birdseed and an open balcony door to give him some fresh air.

My handmaidens escorted me through the palace, where we quickly ran into other gaggles of bedazzled women being escorted by their own entourages.

We moved into the center of the palace, and as we walked, servants carrying trays of steaming pork buns, fresh cucumber bites, and glasses of pear juice glided through the halls, offering morsels of food to the guests of honor before they even stepped foot on the dance floor.

I followed the lead of the princesses in front of me, selecting a juicy pork bun and a glass of something pink and fizzy to wash it down. When the princess ahead of me finished, she passed her glass to her handmaiden, so I did the same.

This trend continued all the way to the palace’s interior courtyard, where even more servants lined the edges of the square-shaped garden with every possible food you could hope to sample.

I wasn’t exactly hungry anymore, but I wasn’t stuffed to the point where I couldn’t dance the night away.

Music filled every corner, quickening the pace of the princesses in front of me as they eagerly moved toward the sound.

The other girls wasted no time taking to the floor, their shawls and skirts flowing beautifully in the cool night air.

I took a moment to absorb my surroundings before following their lead again.

The courtyard was massive, surrounded by the palace on all four sides with roofless, wall-less rooms that were marked off by marble pillars.

They dotted each corner with a few comfortable spots to sit and view the party while still feeding off the dance floor’s energy.

A menagerie of animals were also speckled across the space, with peacocks walking freely around the fruit trees and hedges. A few monkeys leaped overhead across the palace rooftops, and there was even a tiger, which was fortunately behind a barred enclosure.

My handmaidens left to return to their duties, and I immediately felt exposed without their company.

Every other girl was twirling across the dance floor, but just watching all the spinning colors made me feel like I needed to sit down already.

Cautiously, I inched to the edge of the dance floor, hoping to blend in with the other girls even if I wasn’t participating in the fun.

One of the princesses got caught up in the music and flicked her skirt so it hit me square in the face .

“Oh!” the princess gasped. When the hot-pink silk fell from my eyes, I recognized her as Princess Morana, the royal I had stolen the gold bracelets from.

Our eyes met, and I felt the blood drain from my face as the jingle of her gold bracelets haunted my ears.

“I’m terribly sorry! How rude of me, Your Highness. ”

She bowed to me, her excessive number of bangles sliding around like an abacus. I think my brain stopped working. My voice went mute as I tried to fathom the irony of the whole situation. It was just yesterday that she had called me a dirty mongrel.

“It’s fine,” I finally said. “Just watch where you’re going next time.”

“Of course,” Princess Morana said as she straightened. “Again, my apologies. I love your outfit, by the way. That color really brings out your pretty eyes!”

Ah, so a princess has pretty eyes, but a dirty thief shouldn’t even dare look at her.

“You’re too kind,” I said, returning the bow as she spun back onto the dance floor. I stuck out my tongue the second her back was turned. Was it childish? Yes. Did it make me feel better? Very much so.

“That’s quite an interesting custom...” Jeteran’s low voice crept up behind me, catching me with my tongue still hanging out of my mouth like a lazy gecko. “Is that some sort of greeting in Kipuron, Princess Kya?”

I pulled my tongue back in, wishing I could swallow it entirely. “Sorry, I don’t share Kipuron secrets with foreigners,” I said as boldly as I could manage, trying to look anywhere but his shimmering eyes.

I didn’t want to admit it, but he looked incredible. His dark red attire was well fitted, with a black sash accenting his sculpted shoulders and torso. Looking at him felt like what I imagined a cobra would feel when falling prey to a charmer, except he was the venomous one between us.

“Of course, I wouldn’t dare ask that you share any of your secret traditions.” He held out his hand, the gesture making me jump an inch even though the action itself was harmless. “But I will request that you participate in our traditions. Join me for a dance, Princess Kya?”

What a clever trap this was. The nobility may have been distracted with the party, but the servants had twice as many eyes. What would they think of a princess refusing to dance during the welcoming party? Especially after one of their own royals extended an offer.

“Yes...” I reluctantly accepted his hand, nibbling the edge of my lip as he escorted me to a more shadowed corner closer to the tiger enclosure .

The night sky provided most of our lighting, but there were a few lanterns near the center of the party.

The shadow of a pistachio tree masked our faces, leaving us to dance in an eerie darkness.

His grip on my waist was firm, but not threatening.

I tried not to focus on his touch, but it was hard not to when I could feel the warmth of his palm through the sheer fabrics.

“Royalty suits you, Kya,” Jet said in a low growl that I swore made the tiger prick up an ear. “Tell me, is it everything you wished for?”

My back stiffened as the word wish pounded in my ears. He pulled me closer, trapping me in his arms as we moved in slow steps to the music’s tempo.

“It’s not what I asked for, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I said, meeting his eyes with a heated glare. “What about you? Is this what you wanted? To send an innocent girl into the lion’s den just so you could entrap your nephew in a lie of your own creation?”

“Innocent?” He looked intrigued, studying me like a piece of art he couldn’t figure out the story behind. “Is that the proper term for a thief in disguise? I’m not the one lying to the entire kingdom. In fact, I’m the one who is generously keeping your secret.”

He twirled me under the tree, the broken starlight from the scattered leaves flickering in my vision enough to make me wonder if my body could handle much more spinning. When I returned to his arms, his grip seemed to steady me, allowing me a moment to catch my breath after the basic movement.

“Did you send the guards to arrest me in the vault?” I asked plainly. I thought back to the way the guardsmen had been conveniently waiting to catch me when Adir left me on the roof, and how easily Jet had let me escape into the vault. “How much of this has been your doing?”

I expected him to avoid the question, or at the very least avoid looking at me. But he didn’t shy away. He held me close, gripping my soul with that mind-numbing gaze that kept my heart from beating appropriately.

“Every step you’ve made in this palace has been under my watchful eye,” he whispered in my ear.

Goosebumps speckled my arms, but before I could think of a response, our conversation was interrupted by a round of applause. We both looked toward the source of the sound.

Adir and the sultan made their grand entrance, each dressed head to toe in white and gold.

Jet’s grip on my hand tightened for a moment as Adir caught a glimpse of us in the corner.

The glare that passed between them could have frozen the entire desert, but Adir quickly returned to smiling and waving at his cherished guests .

Jet’s hatred didn’t dissolve so easily, never fading until I pulled him back into the conversation.

“What do you plan to do to him?” I asked, my voice wobbling as my fear trickled into it. He looked back at me, his expression softening but barely shrouding the malice he still held in his heart for the golden prince.

He brushed his fingers over the top of my hand. “I merely wish for the sultan to recognize what a poor ruler he would be.”

A wish...

I pulled my hand away, realizing he had been searching for my ring before making his wish. He didn’t stop me from withdrawing, confirming his intentions and making my heart race.

That was close...

I pressed a hand to my chest, where the diamond was hiding on its chain. “And I wish you would find a new dance partner!”

His hand immediately dropped from my waist, and he took a step back like a marionette jerked back by his strings. I felt hot, my face likely flushed from the panic that had coursed through my veins.

“As you wish,” he said simply, bowing low before meeting my eyes one final time.

“I’ll go, but heed this warning, princess.

This palace may be guarded, but you’d be safer in that tiger’s cage than you are in these halls.

You know better than anyone that a diamond draws eyes.

It won’t be long before someone else tries to steal it. ”

He disappeared back into the crowd, passing Adir, who had slipped into the darkness to find me. I lowered my hand from the hidden chain, my head swarming as Adir asked me a question I didn’t even hear.

All I could do was watch Jet select another dance partner.