Page 6 of Prima (After the End #8)

“No, but it might affect how I would rate you as my gift from Prince Five.”

“It was unpaid work, but not backbreaking. Just physical labor. And frankly, it was good for me to be away from the capital. I didn’t like my punishment, per se, but it was hardly the most difficult period of my life.”

She tilts her head. There is a teasing light on her face. “Are you trying to rate higher in my eyes, Prince Nineteen?”

“Madam, far be it for me, who is trying not to be ravished by you on such short acquaintance, to deliberately make myself more appealing in your eyes. I simply don’t wish to be thought of as damaged goods.”

She laughs. “And why not?”

Because he does want to remain appealing in her eyes, just not so appealing as to be devoured this second.

“Useless masculine pride,” he says.

He pours the soup into a serving dish and sets another pot of water to boil. “You might wish to stand back a little, my lady. The oil could spatter when I cook the scallops.”

And the splatter guard reaches only to her chest height, leaving him completely exposed to the smooth skin of her decolletage and the hypnotic power of her smiles.

“What about you? You too are wearing something better suited for a diplomatic reception.”

So he is. He walks over to the far end of the bench where he stowed some of his things, takes off the silk shirt he put on to receive her for tea, and pulls on a t-shirt so old it’s hard to tell what its original color was.

He certainly doesn’t remember, but it’s another one of those possessions that were found with him when he was rescued at sea.

He turns around, expecting her to make some comments about his body—or his disrobing in front of her. But she only asks, “You were part of the Dawani Coast Watch?”

“So I’m told.” He wonders how she managed to discern at a glance the faded emblem on the chest pocket of the t-shirt. “Not for long, apparently. I served for less than a year.”

But long enough to cement Prince Four as an implacable enemy.

“If you want, I can tell you something about it,” she says, smiling in a way that is almost sadder than it is enthusiastic.

That hint of melancholy evokes a disproportionate desolation in him, a vast, lonely grief, an entire hidden ocean in the depths of his heart.

When he can speak again, he tries for a measure of flippancy. “You, my lady?”

“But only after you offer yourself to me.”

Her words are without inflection. He can’t tell whether she’s dead serious or merely deadpan.

“My lady, I have lived this long without throwing myself at someone just to hear about my time with the Coast Watch. I can hold out for a good while yet.”

“Can you?” she laughs softly. “By the way, sir, your water boils.”

* * *

She speaks very little at dinner and eats as if she is at an important exam, tasting every bite with a sober concentration.

He, on the other hand, studies her hold on her chopsticks, the delicate shape of her earlobe, and the soft panels of her half-sleeves, draped over one another like the petals of a half-open flower.

The only comment she makes comes at the beginning of the meal. “This is a very good scallion flatbread. But these days I can probably make a better one.”

When she finishes and sets down her bowl, she sits silently for several minutes.

He is about to clear away the table when she says abruptly, “Years ago, a boy grilled me some scallops and they were the most delicious anything I’d ever had.

I was hoping to enjoy the same dish tonight.

But yours is a completely different preparation. ”

What boy?

He waits for her to say more, but she only gazes at him as if he were the final question on her exam that counts for half of the score.

“Is it just different or is it inferior?” he asks after some time.

Personally, he thought tonight’s scallops—blanched, then braised after a quick sauté—turned out beautifully.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. There is doubt in her eyes. Doubt, frustration, and perhaps even a simmering anxiety. “They say no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

“But you wanted the same scallops?”

They are absolutely not talking about scallops. But what are they talking about, exactly? Him?

She sighs. “You know what, prince? You cooked, let me do the cleaning up. You probably haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. Go ahead and have some rest.”

With her still aboard?

He pitches a brow. “I wouldn’t wake up to find myself already yours, would I?”

She bursts out laughing. Her laughter is a different kind of enchantment, a bubble of joy that leaves a shimmer in the air even after it dissipates. And that she laughs easily with him—he is tormented by a lightness of being unnerving for its utter rarity.

Rare—or forgotten?

She rises from the table. He does likewise and helps her carry dishes to the galley. “You don’t need to do anything, my lady. You’re my guest.”

She pushes him out. “Go check on your instruments or something, before you fall asleep in five minutes.”

His fatigue, which has been kept at bay by the unsettling excitement of her presence, comes roaring back now that she has named it. “Let me also lower the sails then, while I’m on deck.”

“No, leave them up. I like to sail.”

He doesn’t rebel at the thought of her handling his vessel—perhaps he really is on the verge of falling asleep.

When he returns to the lounging area, she has tidied away everything from dinner. This time he does change in the wet room. He emerges yawning, his hand over his mouth. She’s no longer there.

He lies down on the bench, closes his eyes, and realize that the lights are still on. But he’s too tired to move. Her footsteps come up from the cabin.

"There’s a sub behind us,” he manages to warn her.

“Yes, there is,” she replies simply.

Then she sits down at the edge of the bench, her hip pressed up against his right thigh. An hour ago, that much contact between them would have been unbearably arousing. Now it’s strangely comforting.

“When did you cut your hair?”

He hasn’t had long hair in years. “They buzzed it off at the hospital,” he says, his lips barely moving. “I had some external head wound.”

And he’s kept it short ever since.

“A pity,” she says. “On the other hand, maybe your magnificent bone structure was actually underserved by long hair.”

He snorts.

The silence that follows—is she simply looking at him?

“Maybe I should have collected some abalones instead,” he mumbles.

Her disappointment has stayed with him. Or perhaps it’s not disappointment, but bewilderment. He’s too worn out to unravel it, except to know that he figured into it somehow.

She picks up his right hand and applies a salve to the numerous cuts and scratches he has disregarded, her touch warm and slippery as the salve melts. “I wanted the same scallops because I wanted to be nineteen again—and falling in love for the first time.”

What a strange reason. The even stranger thing is that he understands, somewhat. “I want pink sunsets for the same reason, I think—even though I can’t remember ever falling in love.”

She ministers to his other hand with equal gentleness. “Doesn’t mean you didn’t, only that you can no longer access those memories.”

So much of his past is inaccessible, and all those he most loved lost to him.

She lifts his pajama shirt and before his sleepy mind can decide how he feels about it, his side stings. “Ow!”

“I don’t think you bothered to disinfect this cut.”

He didn’t. He noticed it during his deck shower, meant to do something about it, and promptly forgot. And now she’s taken it upon herself.

“Thank you,” he says.

Or at least he thinks he’s said it.

She cups his face. He’s too drowsy to wonder whether she means to kiss him.

She only says, after a while, “You’re right: It was a pink sunset. I forgot about that.”