Black Keys (The Colorblind Trilogy #1) - Rose B. Mashal Page 0,64

supposed to wait for your highness? Is that a rule? Or a tradition that says ‘I shall wait forever for you to come back because it’s too disrespectful of me to go to sleep before you’?”

The prince stood up, scratching the back of his head, the frown not leaving between his eyes. “Are you okay, Princess?” he asked, and then his eyes moved lower, way lower than my eyes–to my chest–and lingered there for a few moments. The frown magically left his forehead and something shifted in his eyes when they met mine again.

I groaned in frustration, leaving him standing there as I made my way to the sunroom, trying once more to calm down a bit because what I was doing looked silly, even to my own eyes.

A few minutes later, I felt something soft being placed on my shoulders. I looked down and found it to be some sort of a fluffy scarf–with the prince’s hands securing it in place. I looked up at him from over my shoulder and he smiled. My nostrils flared and I yanked the scarf off of me, throwing it to the floor.

“Ok-kay…” the prince said. “I’m just afraid you might get sick again.”

No answer.

“Are you mad at me or something?”

Nothing.

“Is this because I left without explaining?”

“Huh! So smart. No wonder you just graduated from medical school,” I said, and even with my back facing him, I still rolled my eyes.

I heard him sighing. “You have every right to be mad. I’m sorry, Princess.”

“You apologize too much,” I told him.

“Believe it or not, I rarely ever apologize to anyone.”

What does that mean? If he apologized to no one, why was I any different?

“Maybe you shouldn’t have put yourself in this situation then,” I snapped.

The prince sighed again. “Yes.” He paused. “It’s just–Salma is too important to me, and-”

“I don’t want to hear it!” I said with a loud voice, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Do you really think I want to hear about the whore you were with?” My eyes started stinging suddenly.

How could he?

“Um, my whore?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I made sure that my apology sounded as fake as it could be. “Am I using the wrong term? Oh, yeah, I know, you call your whores ‘harem’!” Venom laced my voice as I spoke the words to the glass walls in front of me.

The silent pause that followed that was too loud in my ears and I wanted to scream my head off. I wanted him to say something, anything. But at the same time I was really scared that whatever he was going to say would hurt me even more, and I wanted him to stay silent.

Why I was hurt by the thought of him with another woman was beyond me.

“You think I was with my harem?” he asked.

“Whatever!” Tugging at my heart and sickness in my stomach were the two feelings that dominated everything I was feeling at that moment.

Another moment of silence passed. “Are you jealous, Princess?” Even without actually seeing him, I was able to tell that he was smirking; I could hear it in his voice.

I spun too fast to face him, finding myself standing so close to his body that we were almost touching. “Absolutely not!” I was completely offended by his suggestion of me being jealous. Over him of all people.

What a ridiculous thing to say!

The jerk was seriously smirking just like I knew he was, and I found myself with a desperate need to wipe it off of his face. I wanted to hurt him. “I’d have to care about you first to be jealous.” I held my chin high, pulled the smuggest face I could manage and smirked, knowing full well that those words would hurt him and the smirk on his face would be gone, just as I wanted.

I was wrong.

The prince smiled one of those dazzling, crooked smiles of his and looked at me through his long, thick dark eyelashes before inching his face even closer to mine and whispering near my ear. “Exactly.”

“Huh!” I gave him my back again. I couldn’t stand for him to be that close to me, smelling so freaking good, while facing him. It did things to my heart, things I didn’t like. “You’re delusional!”

The prince didn’t say anything, and again, it was driving me nuts. “I only believe that it would’ve been nice if you cared enough to tell me where you were going, to not just leave like that, as if there was an earthquake or