“Sit up straight in the chair.”
What am I?
Five?
Grinding his teeth to keep from lashing out, Caillen did as instructed. A little belligerently, granted, still he did obey as he’d promised his father he would. But it was hard to sit up straight when what he really wanted to do was give the pompous ass in front of him a goblet enema. He felt like he was drowning in nine million layers of heavy fabric. Honestly, how could any aristocrat be fat if they carried this much clothing weight on their bodies all the time? How much food would you have to eat to gain weight? Forget the gym, he felt like he was bench-pressing a ton.
And it wasn’t even weight you could use to blow shit up. That he could understand hauling around. This? This was ridiculous. He rubbed at his neck where hives were forming from the high starched collar.
At least you still have your head.
Yeah, but that wasn’t as appealing right now as it’d been a few months ago. He glanced over to two of his best friends who watched him and the cultural advisor with a stoicism that didn’t match the amused gleam in their traitorous eyes. Little bastards were enjoying every minute of his misery.
Eat it up, assholes. My vengeance will come. And you will bleed.
But he knew the truth. He’d never hurt either of them. He’d only imagine the strangulation. They’d been through too much together for him to hold something like this against them.
Lean with dark red hair, Darling Cruel was as reserved and regal as any monarch could be which made sense since he was from one of the oldest aristocratic families. He was immaculately dressed in a black suit trimmed with white that was covered with a lightweight, flowing black dignitary robe. The son of a royal governor and a high prince himself, he was used to crap like this. Yet for all of Darling’s breeding, Caillen knew the truth of his renegade friend—a rebellious side no one would ever suspect of him. Darling’s shoulder-length hair covered one side of his face and hid a bad scar that Darling never spoke about. Caillen was one of the few who knew how he’d gotten it.
With perfect, unblemished features that would make any woman proud, Maris Sulle was much more flamboyant. His long black hair was tied back and braided with silver beads running through it. He wore a vibrant orange-and-yellow robe that trailed on the ground and pooled in a graceful mess around his red-booted feet. Obviously Maris wasn’t concerned about mobility ’cause he’d never had to run a day in his extravagant life. Rather he ordered other people to run for him.
Maris’s and Darling’s friendship went back to early childhood. Caillen had met Maris about ten years ago and had hated him at first because of that spoiled arrogance that bled out of every gesture he made and from every piece of expensive fabric he wore. But Maris was like Gondarion spiderweed—he clung to you and after a while you learned to appreciate the strange beauty that was his quirky sense of humor and his uniquely skewed take on the world around him. Now Caillen treasured his friendship as much as he did Darling’s.
The two of them were a vivid contrast to the stone-faced, drab-dressed cultural advisor—Bogimir—who glared at him with open disdain. The man didn’t think much of Caillen which was okay by him. He didn’t think much of Boggi either.
Bogimir cleared his throat. That sound was really starting to tread Caillen’s last nerve into hash meat. “Are you paying attention to me, Your Highness?”
Caillen let out a long breath of annoyance. “Yeah, yeah, Boggi.” It was a moral imperative that he use the nickname he knew drove Bogimir insane. “I’m with you.”
Bogimir narrowed that beady little gaze that made Caillen want to put his foot in a highly uncomfortable plae on Boggi’s body. “You mean to say, yes, I see.”
Caillen ground his teeth before he corrected his enunciation and words. “Yes, I see.” Asshole.
Boggi gestured to the table. “Now take a sip of your wine.”
His biceps screaming over the weight of his clothes and his gall begging him to toss the contents into Boggi’s contemptuous face, Caillen reached for the cup and picked it up.
Instantly, Boggi started that agitated dance that would only come in handy if walking barefoot on coals or trying to stomp out a nest of fire snakes. “No, no, no. The correct way to hold your goblet is like this.” He snatched it from Caillen’s hand to demonstrate the proper use.
Caillen rolled his eyes. Damn pathetic when even drinking something was a production. What the hell was wrong with these people? Did it really make a difference how he picked up a krikkin cup and drank out of it? Was that really all they had to worry about in their worthless, overprivileged, overindulged lives?