Page 6 of Night’s Fall (The Four Realms #1)

Unexpected

I navigated these steps like my life depended on it, even as I battled with everything that was going on in my brain and body.

Feet hurting. Phantom beast rearing her head for the first time since I lost her. Dream come true of meeting Prince Aleksei and doing it in a posh club when I was in a pretty frock with sexy shoes and really good hair.

I mean, how was this even real?

The human stopped just to the side of the low table sitting before the prince, and I stopped right in front of it. I barely caught myself from crying out, “ I did it!” when I made it there with no incident.

I then stared at the long, powerful body folded into the plush booth, his face still in shadows, and I did this thinking it was good I couldn’t see his face, for after besting the effort of appearing before him without incident, I didn’t want to pass out at witnessing his sheer male beauty, live and in person.

I said nothing.

He said nothing.

The human said nothing.

I said more nothing.

The prince remained silent.

The human made an annoyed noise, got close, and hissed, “ It’s customary to curtsy.”

Such was my surprise at his statement, my head jerked to the side (and slightly down) to take in the human. “ What ?”

“This is the True Heir of the realm. You curtsy,” he snapped imperiously.

He could not be serious.

“In a club?” I asked.

“ Anywhere ,” he spat.

Holy Beelzebub .

I turned back to the prince, and it was then I felt a chill sluice over my skin, the phantom in my chest subsided as my stomach curled into itself.

I felt this because he was sitting there, silent, expecting me to curtsy.

By the gods, it was the Year of the Dragon 2118.

I’d seen people genuflecting to Aleksei , his father, King Fillion , his mother, Queen Calisa , brothers, Princes Timothee and Errol , and his sister, Aleece , but this was at ceremonial events where the royals were wearing crowns or troll skins or royal battle armor.

Not out at a (very elegant, but nevertheless just a…) bar .

I’d never curtsied. I didn’t really know how.

What I knew was I could feel the attention of everyone in the club, they were expecting me to do something, and I feared what they were expecting me to do was curtsy.

So I did.

It was awkward. It was frightening due to having to balance all my weight on a slender heel in an unnatural way that made me worry I’d fall face first into the table in front of the prince.

It was terrifying considering I knew I had attention, and that always made me uncomfortable, but the fact I had everyone’s was excruciating.

And last, it was humiliating.

“Rise and then you can sit to his highness’s right side,” the human ordered.

I rose and moved to sit as told, doing this stiltedly, and that had nothing to do with the ache in my feet. I sat primly in the curve to his side, not close to him, thighs, knees and calves pressed together, and I tucked my handbag in my lap with the fingers of both hands curled tightly around it.

“Drink, madam?” the human asked.

My eyes jolted to him, and I told him something he knew, but I did it with a purpose.

I wasn’t “madam.”

I lived in the real world.

I was Laura .

“My name is Laura .”

His head bowed, but his attention shifted to the prince, so mine did too.

Almost imperceptibly, his face still in shadow, the prince nodded.

“May I bring you a drink, Mistress Laura ?” the human queried.

Mistress Laura was even worse.

I opened my mouth.

“Champagne,” the prince drawled.

I closed my mouth.

Ah, so it was all coming clear.

I was summoned and expected to appear… now . I didn’t get to sit without genuflecting. I didn’t get an introduction, even if I knew who he was, he didn’t know who I was, and truly, neither of us knew each other at all outside of names. And I didn’t get to order my own drink.

I liked champagne (who didn’t?).

But I liked more ordering the beverage I would myself be consuming.

Since I could string two thoughts together as a wee child, I’d thought Prince Aleksei was everything a boy, then a man, then a prince who would be king should be.

He was exquisitely beautiful even when he was far younger, and it only grew bolder with age. He didn’t court the limelight. He didn’t do stupid stuff (like both his younger brothers did, and on occasion, his baby sister).

Sure, when he came of age, he was often seen out with a very beautiful female on his arm, and they had an alarming tendency to cycle in and out of that position frequently.

But it was known widely he had a head for business, and he spent a goodly amount of time amassing a vast fortune to coincide with the colossal fortune the Starknight Dynasty already owned.

It was also known he gave freely to charitable endeavors.

However , in doing so, he didn’t put himself front and center.

He just gave funds that they were so grateful to have, they were vocal about him giving them.

He wasn’t picced on a horse playing polo or participating in a laser joust (like Timothee ).

He wasn’t snapped frolicking on a sky yacht, or a sea one either (like Timothee …

and Errol ). He wasn’t caught on digital drunkenly lurching out of an ice casino in Sky’s Edge after losing a veritable mint at a gaming table (again, like Errol ).

In fact, I didn’t know what he did as hobbies or in his downtime, outside date gorgeous females and any private activities my active imagination speculated might come with that.

I had built him up in my mind as being so unattainable, and so extraordinary, I’d never even bothered to dream about what meeting him might be like.

However, if I had, this would not be it.

Further to this not being it, I’d had all these many thoughts, sitting stiffly in his presence, his whatever that human was to him off to get me a drink, and he’d not said a word. Not even hello. And I didn’t know if I was allowed to do so without his permission.

I did know he was watching me, his head turned my way, and there was something I didn’t like about that either, since the way the booth was illuminated, I knew he could see all of me, but I couldn’t see his face, and as such, his expression.

This went on so long, unusually for a quiet person like me, I couldn’t take it any longer.

“Am I allowed to speak?” I asked.

“Why would you not be?” he asked in return.

I’d heard his voice. He made speeches every once in a while. He spoke for the Dynasty , and occasionally, for the king. He was a succinct speaker and had a smooth, deep, delicious voice.

Live and in person, the deep, rich, posh silk of it was staggering.

And for some reason, it made me mad.

I pried my fingers off my bag to flick a hand to where I’d curtsied. “ Obviously , I’m unaware of royal protocol.”

“Obviously,” he replied.

“I feel like I need to apologize for that,” I said, not sounding apologetic at all.

“Accepted,” he said, sounding scrumptiously, but infuriatingly haughty and like he deserved the apology he very well knew I didn’t want to give him.

And this, for reasons that didn’t escape me, made me even madder.

“For future reference, considering I’m stunned to my absolute core that I’m privileged enough to be in your presence, say, if I ran into you at Captain Jacques’s Fish and Chips , and you were incognito, enjoying a tri-filet boat, should I curtsy to you then?”

There was droll amusement that I couldn’t be sure wasn’t aimed at me, rather than shared with me, when his remarkable voice queried, “ I’ve never had a tri-filet boat at Captain Jacques’s . Is that the meal you suggest?”

Of course he hadn’t eaten at Captain Jacques’s fast food fish emporium.

“No. Totally go for the chicken schooner. Less greasy,” I advised.

“I’ll file that for future reference,” he murmured, even though we both knew he’d never be caught dead in a Captain Jacques’s .

And mm-hmm.

I was amusing him, and not in a good way, or at least, not in a good way for me.

Was it the pink dress?

Everyone was wearing dark. Sleek . Sophisticated .

It wasn’t that mine was gauche, or even inexpensive.

I was a costume designer. I didn’t do gauche (though, I did inexpensive, but that had more to do with budget than choice).

I’d designed period pieces and curated elaborate contemporary wardrobes.

I knew clothes down to the last stitch over the last three hundred decades (this was not an exaggeration).

Some of my dearest friends were well-known artists in the fashion world (this why my current frock was not inexpensive, friends gave discounts).

But my dress was light and airy. It was soft and girlie.

It was me.

Was it so boring being a prince that you had to call over a strange woman and get your kicks by making fun of her?

I noticed his long, attractive fingers were wrapped around a squat glass filled with amber liquid. He had this resting on the knee of his very long crossed leg. And I noticed it because he lifted it to his lips.

This movement brought him into the evasive light, and for the first time, close up and personal, I saw in profile the sublime beauty of Prince Aleksei , the True Heir of Night’s Fall .

The elegance of his brow, the enticing hollow under his high cheekbone, the strength of his square jaw, the allure of his full lips, the shine to his thick black hair.

I watched him sip the amber liquid, a sensation I’d never felt when she was alive happening in my chest, like my beast had turned over to her back and exposed her belly, and yeah.

Oh yeah.

I got even angrier.

Fortunately, before I said anything that might send me to the guillotine (not that we had a guillotine, it’d been retired a couple hundred years before, but I’d gone sarcastic with the Captain Jacques’s business, and that was already pushing it with a male who expected you to curtsy to him in a bar, so I figured I’d best be on good behavior from here on out), the human returned with my champagne.