Chapter Fifty-Six: The People’s Prince

Through the stately, elegant chambers of the governor’s mansion in Şebyan moved soldiers and civil servants alike, and among them—less visible, but no less orderly and efficient—the domestics. Even at this early hour, the mansion was a machine. After all it was their master’s first day home from campaign, and everything had to be perfect.

Oblivious to this hustle and bustle there awoke a certain man: blond, bedraggled, and pleasantly sore from days in the saddle. His familiar room was little more than a closet at the heart of the servants’ quarters, and bare of all decoration save for a chair, a small table with a candelabra, and the cot out of which he’d just crawled. Home, or something like it.

He opened the door to greet his first morning back in Şebyan, and made it precisely three steps.

“Osmund, what is everyone saying?! You were snatched up by a gryphon?!”

Nuray’s grip was tight as an iron shackle. Osmund nearly leapt in surprise.

“Oh—it’s a long story!”

“And you helped take down one of those terrible other princes?!”

“It was 80% luck, at least!”

With supreme eagerness, the pretty young servant girl leaned in close to whisper the most pressing question of all:

“And you finally slept with Şehzade Cemil! How, where?! Tell me everything! Don’t leave anything out!”

Scarcely a single night home, and already the soldiers’ gossip had caught like fire. Osmund looked upon Nuray’s bright, wide-eyed face, and his heart went light.

“It’s good to see you again, Nuray!” He went in for a hug. “How was life at the house while we were gone?”

“Don’t think you can change the subject!” she charged, blushing as she withdrew. “And don’t be so familiar! You’ll get me in trouble with the aunties!”

Osmund noted the blankets folded under her arms. “You’re working? Let me help!”

“A prince’s favorite shouldn’t be doing servant’s work,” Nuray said judgmentally, but she gave Osmund half her burden anyway. “Now you’d better start talking! You don’t know how long I’ve waited for something new!”

Most of the other servants (apart from those with homes and families in town) stayed in long, shared rooms and slept communally. The arrangement wasn’t terribly private, but they did have the luxury of windows. Osmund gazed at said windows wistfully as he helped Nuray tuck the bedding away into the storage compartments along the room’s perimeter.

“Well? How did it happen?” She continued to pester him tirelessly as they worked. “He really didn’t look at anyone else? What about his old lover? Everyone said that he—”

“We became friends in Kaliany. She’s just as amazing as everyone says. And,” Osmund spoke over an attempted interruption, “her name is Sakina now.”

As expected, he ended up having to repeat this a few times in various ways before he got the point across. “So she’s actually a woman?” Nuray’s face screwed up as if in contemplation of some rather large concept. Then her cheeks puffed. “Oh—and she was already super beautiful, too. It’s not fair.”

In the end, the young and unworldly servant barely batted an eye. Osmund felt fresh affection for her. “Anyway,” he continued sheepishly, “we have an agreement now, Cemil and I. He still has to get married one day, but otherwise…”

“Osmund!” He yelped as a soft cushion smacked the side of his face. “You really are a prince’s favorite now! How did you manage that?!”

A cough from the doorway alerted them to an observer. Osmund’s cheeks burned, while Nuray looked ready to perish on the spot.

“Şehzade Cemil!” she squeaked, withering to half her usual height as if she could disappear altogether.

Cemil smiled at her, easy and unbothered. “I apologize for interrupting your work. Might you give us the room?”

Arms locked at her sides, Nuray shimmied awkwardly past him. Her eyes darted stealthily as she moved, and she slowed by the door, as if hoping to catch a few seconds of their conversation. Cemil waited patiently until her footsteps echoed down the hall.

“You scared her,” Osmund chastised him, grinning. “Um—to be clear, you don’t mind that I…?”

“That you share details of your life with your friends?” Cemil finished for him. “Not at all. There’s no need to be modest about what we are.” 

He punctuated this with a step in Osmund’s direction, shamelessly gathering him into his arms. “What are you doing?!” Osmund stuttered with nervous laughter as he stole glances at the door. “Not here!”

“This is my house.”

“No, this is a government building, one that you just happen to live in, and this is not your room.”

“Hmm.” Cemil pretended to think it over as he covertly squeezed an area on Osmund’s hip that was only very technically not his ass. “Your room is even closer.”

“You can’t just—come into the servant’s quarters hunting for sex like some common lout! You’re the people’s prince, it’s undignified.”

“Hah.”

“What will everyone say? You have a reputation to—mm, stop.”

“That wasn’t very convincing.”

Osmund seized his hand. “Come on, then,” he said, feigning surrender like the dark red flush dyeing his cheeks wasn’t betraying his own very intense interest. “We’d better go to my room so that you don’t traumatize half the servants in the house.”

“My house.”

“Stop, I said!”

“After you.”

When Osmund professed to have one talent in this world—caring for and riding horses—it was only a half-truth. His other skillset, though he may have acquired it among the noble sons of Valcrest and between the finest of silk sheets, wasn’t something easily boasted of in polite society.

Throwing Cemil down in his cot and climbing atop him, he put all his years of experience into the effort. And, well, his skill in riding came in handy too.

Afterwards, flopping back in the sheets recovering from one of the most impressive sexual performances of his life, he panted, “I don’t understand—hah—your endurance.”

“I told you that the procedure made me less sensitive.”

Osmund looked over at him and quirked a brow as he continued to pull in breaths. “So that’s what you meant by it? That you can keep going, forever?”

“You were so eager,” Cemil replied with an innocent grin. “Why keep a horseman from the saddle?”

“What about that time on the mountain? It was over quick then.” Osmund nudged him with his elbow. “Or were you wound up by those fairies watching us?”

“Something between that, and you begging me to wreck you like you’d die without me inside.”

Recent exertions and all, Osmund shuddered. “Such a mouth,” he mused, stretching out.

“Nothing to what yours can do.”

The minutes slid past, the sounds of their breathing retreating to an even, steady pace. “How’s your first day back?” Osmund asked, fingers ghosting over the old markings that crisscrossed Cemil’s chest. “I’m surprised you aren’t chained to your desk working.”

“Am I neglecting my duties, you ask?”

“Perhaps, though I’m still glad to see you.”

Cemil breathed deep. “…I’ve been awake since before the dawn. There’s a lot to do, but we’re managing it.”

“You’ve been awake how long?” Osmund wriggled in closer, entrenching them further in the sheets. “Neglect them a while longer and get some sleep. I’ll wake you before the next hour.”

The Meskato prince hummed. His eyelids drifted lazily shut. “It’s an ugly room we put you in.” And before Osmund could protest, he concluded, “But cozier than any chamber in the palace.”

“It’s the charm of that one candelabra and the lack of windows. Adds to the character.”

“Mm. So you’ll be sorry to see it turned into a storage closet, then.”

“Oh? You’re turning me out?” Osmund gave him a playful poke. Cemil’s dark brown eyes opened once more.

“I’m inviting you to stay in my room, with me.”

“O–oh.”

He’d thought they’d been only bantering. It took his mind a moment to recalibrate. “To sleep?” he asked stupidly.

“And to eat, and read a book on rainy days, and whatever else you’d use a private room for,” Cemil teased. “Will you move in? Tomorrow? I’ll finish what’s urgent and then take the day off. We’re both due a bit of rest.”

“Oh,” Osmund repeated a third time. The rest of his vocabulary had abandoned him. “Um, oh.”

“…Or would you prefer to stay in here?”

Cemil’s tone communicated what he thought about the good sense of the person who’d choose that. “No, it’s just,” Osmund said carefully, “yours is a prince’s room, and I’m a servant. Surely that’s too improper for anyone.”

“Then don’t be a servant.”

“Well—what will I do?”

“We discussed it on the road to Kaliany, didn’t we? You can assist in taking care of Banu and the other horses as before—to the extent you wish.”

“Only I won’t be paid?”

“Naturally you wouldn’t earn a salary.” Cemil grinned as if they were sharing a secret, and kissed his shoulder. “I would continue giving you whatever you needed simply because it pleased me to do it.”

“So I guess you could say my ‘job’ would be to have sex with you.”

It came out sounding rather ruder than he liked. He quickly laughed it away as a joke. “And to think I’m here happily doing it for free!”

Even on the verge of sleep, Cemil saw right through him. “Something bothers you about the idea. What is it?”

That was an excellent question! No responsibilities, no schedule, and all he had to do was continue to sleep with a beautiful prince who cared for him. If he’d told his old self about what awaited him in the future, he’d have thought a fever-induced delirium the only logical explanation. “Nothing bothers me about it at all,” Osmund decided, coming up empty on why he should hate being a kept man. “It’s the most wonderful idea I’ve ever heard.”

Cemil smiled at him, and all those shadowy doubts vanished from Osmund’s mind entirely. “I’m glad.” His lids fluttered shut again, and his temple rested against Osmund’s collarbone. “Wake me as you promised,” he said under his breath.

“I will.”

The remainder of Osmund’s afternoon passed in the yard. He placed several orders with the farrier and checked each animal meticulously for signs of injury or strain.

“Settle down, you two!” he cried as Anaya and Banu joined forces to nose at his shoulder. “I don’t have any treats for you.” When had his girls become so spoiled?

Tomorrow at first light, he’d be gathering up his possessions—which truly didn’t amount to much besides the diary and Meskato romance novels Sakina had given him, plus the long-borrowed dictionary and a few changes of clothes—and officially “moving in” with Cemil.

He was heading back to his little windowless room for the very last time and had just touched the door handle when a voice sounded behind him.

“A moment to talk?”

Osmund spun around. There stood Emre, dressed plainly without his dark cloak, and yet somehow stealthy as always. “I told you to stop sneaking up on me!” the Tolmishman yelped. It was so strange, seeing him here in the house without a care for who observed him. A serving woman passing in the halls gave them both a curious look as she went on her way.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to startle you,” Emre said awkwardly, and Osmund’s defenses lowered in sympathy. Maybe dark mages simply couldn’t help slinking around wherever they went.

“Come in.” Osmund pushed open the door to his room—and then crinkled up his nose and instantly shut it again. “On second thought, why don’t we get some air?”

The sun was starting to set as they stepped out into the courtyard, alone but for two civil servants taking dinner together on the opposite wall, too distant for either party to overhear the other. “How is it?” Osmund asked. “Being back home.”

“Strange,” Emre muttered. “My mother hasn’t spoken to me yet.”

Lady Danvarra. Osmund had barely had occasion to speak to her since he’d started living here. (Not that he’d made much of an impression the first time.) “And Cemil?”

“He showed me to my room. That was it.”

Osmund sighed inwardly. For all that Cemil loved his maternal half-brother, it seemed the two stubborn men still weren’t on easy speaking terms. “So that leaves you with me for company,” he guessed.

Emre cleared his throat. “I never said thank you.” This stopped Osmund’s thoughts in their tracks. “For saving my brother. And for saving me, when you could’ve done the easy thing and run away. I’ll never forget what you did for us.”

The Tolmishman blinked, suddenly out of his own element too. “I couldn’t have done it without your help,” he landed on saying.

“Will you just accept my thanks already?”

Emre’s copper skin was tinted redder than normal, and he was avoiding his eye. Sincere gratitude appeared to be as uncomfortable in his mouth as a rotten tooth. Osmund fought an urge to pat him on the head as he would a stray cat.

“Then, you’re welcome,” he said instead, offering his warmest smile. “But we’re friends now; you don’t have to feel indebted. I know you want to mend your relationship with Cemil, and I want to help. Consider us on the same side from now on.”

“…I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great.” With that resolved, he turned on his heel. “Now actually, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Wait,” Emre said before Osmund could retreat into the house. “We’re back in Şebyan. You aren’t concerned?”

“About what?”

“About,” and here the other lowered his voice even further, “Lord Pravin hunting for you.”

A cruel memory resurfaced: the corpse of the young man at the caravansary. Medium height, medium weight, medium-length blond hair. Osmund’s double, when seen from a distance.

That wasn’t Pravin’s doing! It had nothing to do with me! he told himself, unwilling to accept that a man could have died for no crime apart from an unfortunate resemblance to a lost Tolmish prince. Pravin wants me alive, after all…right?

“You didn’t forget that you’re a wanted man, no?” Emre pressed, frowning.

Osmund worried his lower lip. “No, I hadn’t forgotten.” (It had just been more…comfortable not to think about it. Was that the same thing?) “But wait. Didn’t you say you could help me with my problem, if I got rid of the sword for you? I think I delivered on that and then some!”

“I’ll need some time to pull it off,” Emre said seriously. “He’s well-connected. It won’t be easy to make him ‘disappear’, even for an illusionist as gifted as myself. For now, keep out of trouble. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

“Um, I’m not historically very good with those instructions.”

Emre rolled his eyes. “Fine.” And he amended: “Stay close to Cemil, then. Even without that cursed weapon, he’s still one of the finest swordsmen the Empire has to offer. As long as you’re together, I know ‘the people’s prince’ will keep you safe.”