Page 29 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

COURTNEY

No matter how many times I repositioned, my hard wooden stool found a new angle to make my tailbone ache.

When we got to the council room, everyone noticed the fact that all the cushy gold-plated chairs that had surrounded the long stone table were missing.

Servants had to rummage up a hodgepodge of assorted stools, wooden folding chairs, a couch, and a giant velvet pouf, which the king immediately called dibs on, even though he now sat so low, his nose was barely higher than the top of the table.

I’d blamed the missing stuff on the Evil One.

The presence of an Evil One had upsides.

They were a convenient scapegoat to take the blame for all my screwups and nefarious activities.

Everyone bought the lie, which succeeded in taking the spotlight off me but added to the length of the council meeting because everyone had to speculate what kinds of ghastly things the Evil One was planning on doing with the chairs.

People started throwing out ideas, ranging from using the chairs as weapons, using the chairs as torture devices, and then, finally, using the chairs as chairs.

This last suggestion was the one they settled on, deciding (with great thoughtfulness) that the Evil One probably needed somewhere to sit.

The whole time, I kept a shrewd eye on the king, watching him for signs of guilt. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the night he was absent, supposedly sequestered in his rooms, another person went missing.

After the chair debate, the meeting moved on to Bryce’s sex dream, and Bryce’s face discovered eighty-seven interesting new shades of red.

The phenomenal waste of time made me antsy. Right now, General Thimblepop and Winston were enduring who knew what kinds of terrors, and I wanted to do something about it. Training was all well and good, but I didn’t feel like we were making progress.

And then, of course, there was still the looming tournament where we’d have to compete for the title of Chosen One—something that now felt like yet another meaningless waste of time.

I was 99 percent sure Bryce was the Chosen One, but when I tried to secretly tell Amy that (because I didn’t want Bryce to hear me forfeiting), Amy insisted the tournament was the only way to truly know who they should trust with the fate of the world.

We were nearing the end of our second day of training, which meant we only had one more full day before we had to compete.

“We can’t rule out that the kiss might be a metaphor for a kiss of death—something which will lead to our downfall,” wheezed one of the six decrepit old men seated around us.

I rubbed my dry, gritty eyes, stifling a groan.

A kiss from Bryce likely would lead to my downfall.

I shouldn’t have lied to him by faking the stupid sex dream.

This was karma. The beauty of our relationship was its honesty.

I was a scumbag, worse than a breaker of pinkie promises.

Encouraging Bryce to bother only got me bothered in all the wrong ways.

It was a reckless idea, and I needed to undo it.

If I told him it was all an act, he’d be furious, which would effectively un-seduce him, and, as a result, un-seduce me.

I pulled out my phone. I’d turned it off to save the battery, but I figured powering it on for a few minutes wouldn’t hurt. Bringing up my Notes app, I tapped out a message. I owed Bryce the truth. He’d been honest and had to endure six hours of embarrassment for it.

I faked my sex dream.

Before I could chicken out, I slid the phone onto Bryce’s thigh.

I fiddled with the edge of the cold stone table as he glanced down and read the message.

Only a moment later, he gave the phone back.

Say it isn’t so.

I mean it. I faked the dream.

His knuckles brushed my hand as he passed the phone.

I know you did.

What, how?

He paused. Then typed for a long time. Paused. Typed. Paused. Typed. When he finally passed the phone back, six words stared up at me.

Why else would you hug me?

Hug? Did he mean after the dragon got loose? Bryce thought there was no scenario in which I’d genuinely want to hug him? Not even after he came to rescue me from a dragon ?

My insides began to soften like Jell-O left out too long.

Shoving my traitorous Jell-O innards back into the metaphorical fridge, I typed:

For the record, the hug was real, but I cansee where the confusion came from. You’re probably so used to people faking things around you that you’ve grown to anticipate it.

When he read that, he chuckled so low I didn’t think anyone else heard.

Have I ever made you feel like you had to fake anything?

My stomach twisted. No. He never had. And I lied anyway.

Well. I just thought you should know. I didn’t want to take advantage of you, if you thought the dream was real.

I showed Bryce the message before tucking my phone away as the discussion around us shifted to General Thimblepop’s disappearance. I didn’t dare note his expression; I didn’t want to see if he was disappointed, or worse, relieved.

I focused instead on listening intently to the debrief on the kidnapping situation.

Once again, there were no clues to lead us to the victim’s whereabouts.

General Thimblepop had gone out to patrol the outer edges of the city and never returned.

Before the meeting adjourned, I suggested a buddy system, so that no guards would go out on their rounds alone anymore.

The temporary solution was a feeble Band-Aid slapped over a hemorrhaging artery, but it was all I could think of to do.

At last, the meeting came to an end, and everyone started standing up and saying their farewells. They all trickled out, giving us nods and telling Bryce to let them know if he had any more visions. Then they were gone, and it was just Bryce and me seated at a long, empty table.

A weighty moment humming with tension passed between us. I glanced at his lips. He noticed, eyes hooding, jaw ticking.

I had other things I should be thinking about, like discovering exactly what the king had been up to last night. I stood, banging my knee on the bottom of the table.

Before I could beeline for the door, Bryce hooked a hand around my elbow, spinning me back.

Though it was still afternoon, the council room didn’t have windows.

The only light came from flickering sconces recessed into the walls.

The dim fire and the aristocratic angle of Bryce’s cheekbones slashed seductive shadows across his face, but his eyes were soft and unsure, flitting as they struggled to maintain contact with mine.

He was just awkward enough that I didn’t think he knew how damn pretty he was.

“For the record, you can take advantage of me. That is, if you want to.”

A heavy wave of heat coursed through my veins. Maybe I should be concerned about how much I liked this gorgeous, fragile man telling me I could take advantage of him. I cleared my throat, trying to get ahold of myself. “No, I’d never—”

“Take advantage of me,” he said softly, taking a step closer. I couldn’t tell if he was begging or daring.

Gently, I pressed my fingertips against his stomach.

He paused, stomach flexing tight under my palm as he sucked in a sharp breath.

“You don’t want—” me , I thought, but didn’t say.

“You don’t want that. I’m the worst, remember?

” I whispered, because he must have forgotten. “I… I don’t RSVP to weddings.”

“I don’t either, so what are you scared of?” It was amazing how not yelling softened his voice.

“I’m not scared. You’re scared.”

“I’m not,” he said, in the steadiest voice I’d ever heard him use, even though vulnerability stabbed through his expression.

My pulse drummed like impatient fingers on a tabletop.

Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me , my stupid crush-filled heart said.

But kissing made things complicated. If we kissed, I’d catch feelings for him the way you caught any other fatal illness—by licking something you have no business licking.

Kissing led to me losing myself as I searched desperately for True Love, only to find out, yet again, that it didn’t exist.

I took a step back. “I watch TikTok videos at full volume in public spaces. I unironically chew on toothpicks sometimes. I’m a toothpick guy, Bryce. No one likes a toothpick guy.”

The corners of his mouth lifted. “That’s what I thought,” he said, backing out of reach. “Don’t start games if you can’t finish them.”

So that’s what this was. Him teaching me a lesson. Calling my bluff. Ensuring I’d never do it again. It had to be. That was why he was so confident; he knew I wouldn’t say yes.

I desperately wanted to say yes.

My secret love for stalker romance books had given me a surprisingly useful skill set when it came to tracking down the Evil One. Like now, for instance: I was tailing the king like I was in love with him.

The king had a cushy schedule for someone who was supposed to be leading a country.

As far as I could tell, it was Amy who made most of the actual decisions, and the king was more of a mascot.

I followed him around as he drifted aimlessly through the castle for a while.

Then we spent an hour in the parlor for tea, during which a bunch of other nobles sat around talking shit about everyone who wasn’t there.

It reminded me of work; the parlor was a break room, and tea was basically the water cooler.

The king looked a little shifty when he finally got up and left the parlor. I crouched around the corner in the hall as he stepped out and murmured something low to his attendants. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I heard the servant’s reply.

“We’ll tell everyone you retired early. You won’t be disturbed.”

It was still light out, far too early for bed. No doubt his real plans involved more kidnapping. The king is a traitorous sneak, leading the downfall of his own country. Though I wanted to leap out of the shadows and shout gotcha! I refrained. I needed further proof.

So, after I heard the servant’s shoes clicking down the hall, I scuttled from my hiding place and resumed my pursuit.

The king displayed more excitement than I’d ever seen from him as he moved swiftly through the castle. Probably, the sick bastard enjoyed whatever evilness he’d been up to.

We stopped at his chambers, where he collected a large black pack—probably his murder tools.

After that, we traveled all the way out of the castle, across the courtyard, and into the garden.

I nearly lost him when he entered the hedge maze but managed to find him again by cheating the maze and burrowing through the hedges.

I tripped and nearly crashed out of a bush in full view of the king but managed to catch myself on a limb.

In the center of the maze, the king sat on a bench drenched in late afternoon sunlight.

I peered through leaves, trying to figure out what he was doing as he reached into his pack and drew out—

A lyre.

He fiddled with the strings, tuning the instrument before he launched into a catchy little tune about a frog and a unicorn.

The king wasn’t the culprit. He just had a secret, harmless hobby. I doubted kings were allowed to perform, so he probably did it at night in disguise, and that was why he’d been absent yesterday evening and slept in this morning.

While part of me was relieved I didn’t have to accuse the kingdom’s monarch of being evil incarnate, now I was back to square one.