front of me chuckled from the other side of his stall.
"I can pass the recipe along to your cook, Your Highness," the cook offered.
"Oh, no, you should come to the palace and make it yourself and sit with us for dinner," I said, waving a hand and smiling as the man's eyes widened and he spluttered through his thanks.
Thao was at my side. I didn't know if Cresswell had mentioned to him that he should stay close to me, or if Thao wanted to be there anyway, but he was taking the task seriously, his hip pressed to mine and his arm around my shoulder. I turned the skewer in his direction, raising an eyebrow in invitation as I licked my lips. Thao ducked, helping himself to the bite I'd offered, sharing my groan of appreciation. I watched as he licked the char and fat and salt from his own bottom lip, staring avidly at the flick of his tongue and not looking away as he found me watching, his grin growing.
"Another?" the cook asked.
"Please," I said, even though this was the last stall we were visiting and I was far too full of good food already.
It took an hour or more before the crowd at the platform grew bored of my waves and nods and the little words I was able to exchange with them. Once, and only once, someone threw a tomato toward the stage, but they missed me by quite a bit and it was Owen who caught it in his palm, giving thanks and then eating it like an apple. Our audience cheered for him, and a small fight broke out near where the tomato was thrown from.
When the sun began to set and the music grew loud and wild again, the crowd thinned and Cresswell relented and let me wander the festival grounds, surrounded by a ring of my Chosen and a second of guards.
Once I'd started visiting the stalls, I couldn't stop. I purchased woven baskets, corn husk dolls, hand knitted sweaters, wooden bowls, miniature paintings, and a beautiful glass figurine of a horse from one of Cosmo's artist friends. I'd eaten tarts and honey wheat buns and shucked corn dressed with butter and cheese curds and ground spices.
"I love festivals," I said, sinking into Thao's side with a sigh.
Oh, and I'd drank a fair amount of mead.
Owen laughed and took the mug from my other hand, finishing the contents and grabbing my attention as a little dribble ran down his cheek. He gasped and waggled his eyebrows at me as he finished.
"You'd better get your dancing in before you have any more of that," Owen said.
"Your Highness should return to the tent, surely you could dance there," Cresswell argued.
"Nooo! Cress, you promised, you did. Just one or two dances," I said, slipping free from Thao and squeezing past a cuddly Cosmo to face my head guard. "Please," I said with wide eyes.
One of the other guards muttered something under his breath, scoffing lightly, and I watched as Cresswell turned a genuine growl in his direction, before clearing his throat and settling to face me again. "The crowd is still heavy and you are…"
I was drunk. A bit drunk. Pretty drunk.
"I'm fiiiine!" I cried, my arms swinging wide, the skewer still in my hand prodding the guard who'd scoffed at me.
"Ow!"
"I wouldn't trust you with that blade right now," Cresswell said firmly.
"Can I be of some help?"
Just the soft, velvety rasp of his voice, and suddenly the Hunger was there, as if she'd been lying in wait the whole time.
"Aric!" I spun, and there he was, standing outside the ring of my guards, the firelight from the torches around the festival catching in his gaze as he smirked at me.
"Princess," he said, nodding.
"Bryony," I corrected. "Come here."
He raised an eyebrow, but the guards stepped back and Aric joined us in our little nest of company inside their bronze ring of armor.
"Where have you been?" I asked.
"Working," he answered, brow furrowing with confused amusement. "And you?"
"Working," I mimicked, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Would you like a little sobriety? Just enough to dance," he asked.
He was beautiful, wasn't he? Strangely so. Grandmother was right, he was too old for me, too rude, too completely uninterested. No, not completely.
"Thank you for my sheath. It's beautiful," I said, reaching down and finding it right at my hip, the gold still warm to the touch.
"You're welcome," Aric said, with the slightest dip of his waist. Not a bow,