The Prince's Bargain - K.M. Shea Page 0,50
Calnor!”
Arvel wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand, smudging blood there. “We’re safe now.”
“Where did they hurt you?” Myth slipped her book into her jacket pocket and moved around Arvel, checking for injuries.
“It’s just a few small cuts and some bruises.” Arvel grimaced, but he still loosely held his daggers, balancing them in his fingers with finesse. “I don’t think they were trying to kill us. Just roughen us up and scare us.”
“They attacked a prince.” Myth’s voice was cold and icy like her anger. “Scaring us couldn’t have been their main objective!”
“Hopefully we’ll clarify their goal if any of the men are caught. Regardless, there’s going to be hell to pay.” Arvel’s expression turned grim as he studied the guards.
“You intend to come down hard on them?” Myth asked.
“Of course, but that’s not what I was referring to. Sir Arion and Benjimir are going to have kittens when they find out about this.” He sighed deeply. “So much for my carefree days where I could move unseen through the palace.”
“We were just attacked, and you are mourning the loss of your anonymity?”
Arvel abruptly swung his gaze to her, his eyes sharp. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No.”
“Then yes. If I’m looking at it from my perspective. Naturally I wish you hadn’t been caught up in this just because you’re my translator. Oh, but that was good thinking in shouting for help in all the different languages. Your lung capacity is quite impressive.”
“If playing cute after a traumatic experience like this is how you cope, I’m taking a set of the guards and leaving you,” Myth threatened. “You’re hurt. There’s no sense in trying to downplay it.”
“There you are, two steps ahead of me as usual.” Arvel laughed, until Myth finally zeroed in on the frayed cut on the upper left arm of his jacket and pulled the two pieces apart.
He was wounded. The injury had been hidden by his coat and dripped blood down his arm before soaking into the fabric of his jacket.
Arvel winced when Myth moved his arm. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”
“No,” she agreed. She turned her attention to the elven guards. “Could someone dispatch a professional to see to Crown Prince Arvel’s wounds?”
“Don’t bother,” a man replied in Elvish.
It took a moment for Myth to recognize Prince Benjimir in the glittering light. “I sent word myself as soon as your shouts were reported. Thank you for your quick thinking.” He offered Myth a smile that Myth could see was the more serious, less boyish version of Arvel’s grin.
After she bowed to him, he turned his attention to Arvel. “Well, brother,” he said in Calnoric. “What scrape have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Quite a big one,” Arvel said cheerfully. “Based on this attack, I can safely say the Fultons must be doing many more illegal activities than we estimated.”
“You always have to stir the hornets, don’t you?” Prince Benjimir made a show of rubbing his head in exasperation, but he was inspecting Arvel with an eagle-eyed gaze. He also flicked the frayed edges of Arvel’s jacket apart to peer at the arm wound. “How bad is it?”
“Barely a graze. He had a long sword; I was trying to get him to drop his guard.”
“It seems I need to retrain you, because you are either slower than you used to be and couldn’t quite dodge fast enough, or you’ve gotten stupid and decided an injury might better make your opponent overconfident when any person with a properly working brain—including your wise translator—could have told you otherwise.”
Arvel winced. “It was an accident?”
Prince Benjimir thought for a moment. “That implies you were too slow and cutting it too close. So yes, a round of training is in order. That’s fine. Gwendafyn has been wanting to really focus on daggers since she only knows the basics. You can be her opponent.”
“I hope you’re joking.”
“My sense of humor is too dead to summon such a joke.”
Myth watched the red stain on Arvel’s jacket grow. The longer the brothers argued, the bigger it got.
And that’s enough.
“It seems to me,” she said, interrupting Arvel, who had his mouth open and ready to continue the verbal fight, “we had better move indoors where His Royal Highness will be safer. Presumably, whatever medical attention he receives would be better done there.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Translator Myth.” Prince Benjimir made a few hand gestures to the Honor Guards standing behind him. “As usual, you elves are able to inject good sense