A/N: Okay, now we're past the intro stuff and getting into the heat of things. This chapter has one of my favorite lines of dialogue in the whole story, so I hope y'all enjoy reading this chapter as much as I did writing it!

Chapter 6 Content Warnings: very slight reference to Chapter 2, reference to Telmarine prejudice against Narnians

Chapter 6: this slope is treacherous

Addie

Weeks pass. With every fortnight, Addie finds herself sneaking into the prince's study a little more.

In her defence, reading nestled between pillows in his window seat is a nice alternative to burning her fingers on dripping candle wax. It's practical to read by candlelight when the candle is already lit and someone else is using it too, especially when she's near the end of the book anyway. She'd have to stop by either way to return it; she's just making good use of the trip. He doesn't seem to mind.

Quite the opposite.

He seems to like the company - though he makes a good show of sitting straight-backed in his chair and taking much neater notes than the scrawls she first noticed.

"Does the posture come with the manners?" she mumbles. Tonight, the prince can't seem to get his spine as straight as he wants. The constant fidgeting is just obvious enough to be distracting, and it's a good excuse to practice the unfamiliar word.

Caspian looks up at the same moment she glances sideways, their eyes meeting across the desk; the comfortable distance suddenly feels smaller than it did before. When Addie lifts an eyebrow, he turns back to his book and his too-neat notes.

"I believe we can safely assume so," he says. Something like a smirk flickers at the edge of his mouth.

Addie sniffs and slumps further down into the decorative pillows. When she risks another glance at the prince, he's sitting straighter still but the candlelight catches on his smile.

Two books and twice as many weeks later, Addie catches him slumping over his notes as he scratches out messier letters.

"Careful, Your Highness," she tells him. "Your posture's slipping."

He doesn't answer, but if she looks hard enough, the curve of his back seems deeper.

Over the weeks, Addie's there in the study more often. Not by any special design, naturally not. It's just that the reading practice is helping; she's reading faster, getting more comfortable with the letters whether or not they're dressed up in swirls. Reading faster means she finishes books sooner, so she's stopping by the study closer to once a week instead of twice a month. And it's easier to finish the book sharing the prince's candlelight.

It's not her fault she miscalculated once or twice and didn't quite finish the book by the end of the night. She just thought she'd finish quicker than she did. (Now she knows what a prince trying not to yawn looks like. She refuses to call it endearing.) It was a simple, silly mistake, thanks to the stupidly fancy Telmarine script. Entirely innocent.

Never mind that she's managed to make it a third time - it's nearly midnight and her book on seafaring tales lies unfinished. She was three chapters from the last page; now it's late, and she still has one more to go.

No matter. She can finish it tomorrow, or the night after, if Perla keeps them late.

Addie stretches until her back cracks, the sound mostly absorbed by the pillows. The prince doesn't look up from his notes. He's completely slumped over tonight, his cheek propped against his left fist and his quill tapping absently against the desk. The book in front of him is a Telmarine history tome, labelled with so many whorls and embellishments that she never could've made out the title a month ago. Now, at least, she can pick out "Telmarine" and "Conquering Narnia." Caspian frowns down at a map and a chunk of dense text too small to read from where she is. Before Addie realises it, her curiosity wins out over their usual strangely companionable silence.

"Lots to memorise?" Addie juts her chin at his book. If she looked him in the eyes, he might see something other than the snark she so often treats him to.

Caspian jerks and looks up so quickly their eyes nearly catch before she flicks hers back to his history book. "No," he blurts. "Well, yes. But the material is… not as accurate as it should be."

Addie keeps her eyes stubbornly down at his book. "History problems?"

"Something like that." Caspian finally looks back down, but he doesn't start scribbling and the frown lines across his forehead deepen.

Maybe it's the cracks in his usual princely manners. Maybe it's because perspective problems about something that never comes up in her usual daily life are interesting. Maybe it's just that they've kept a desk between them for weeks and she wants to see what he'll do if she breaches the divide.

Maybe she really is the type to tease and toy and pry.

Addie doesn't sit around long enough to think it through. She sits up, leaves her book on the window seat, and leans over the desk, propping herself up on her elbows far enough she can still be considered polite.

The prince's sharp inhale and the flicker of his eyes toward her makes testing the distance immediately worth it. He gets control of himself a moment later, but still. It's a break in those ridiculous manners.

"Something like that, or exactly like that?" Addie murmurs, the words coming out closer to a smooth purr than she planned. It's not nice of her, but Caspian's parted lips and the odd little glimmer in his eyes when he looks up isn't discouraging.

Quite the opposite.

Addie's heart thunders in her ears. Caspian swallows, and the moment breaks.

"Exactly like that," he answers. "It's tiring to read of one side calling the other savages and beasts. Especially when it's not true."

Addie chews her lower lip. It's true that no one has good things to say about the old Narnians, when they speak of them at all, but she doesn't know enough to say for sure what's true and what's not.

"There's other stories, right?" she asks as she nestles her chin into her palm. "Are those truer?"

Caspian nods and sets down his quill. "They are. But they're not encouraged. My uncle has made quite sure no one speaks of the Old Days anymore."

Addie doesn't mean to smile, but it happens anyway as she meets his dark eyes. "Not quite no one. You and I make two. Your tutor makes three, right?"

Caspian's eyes widen. "You mustn't say so. My- it could be dangerous for you."

"Don't worry. You're a stiff-mannered royal, but I still like you far better than your uncle," Addie says with a wink that shouldn't come so easily to her. "But you mustn't say so."

The wink wins her a boyish half-smile.

"I believe we have an agreement." Caspian holds out his right hand. She hesitates.

In her defence, the candlelight is playing across his palm and he's only reached out to her once before.

The last time their hands met, she decided she liked the heat and calluses of his skin. Her hands are calloused too, and she never expected a noble - much less a royal - would have tough skin.

Addie moves her own hand out to meet his, and it's even nicer than before, to have her hand entirely enveloped. It lingers.

If she's honest with herself, she's matching his soft smile with one of her own.

Caspian

Caspian succeeds marvellously in keeping to his usual schedule over the next few weeks. He sees Addie whenever she comes to the study with a book in hand, usually to return it, and restrains himself from keeping her further. She has no need of him feeling like… whatever this is.

Put mildly, he's curious about her. It's only natural to be curious about a servant who can read. All the same, she might not appreciate it given how they met; keeping his distance is the respectful thing to do. So Caspian tries to be aloof, to keep her at arm's length with polite conversation and the stiff manners trained into him from birth. Even if lately, it seems she's visiting as much to read as to return a book.

That's the plan, right until he returns from an exhausting dinner with his uncle, sits down to finish the day's readings, and a soft tap and creak in the bookshelf alerts him to company.

In fairness, his bottom only leaves the chair by an inch or two, and he didn't expect her for another week. Or another few days at minimum. She started a new book a few nights ago - a collection of children's stories because she'd asked for light-hearted reading.

Addie is smiling when he jumps to his feet. "I did knock," she says.

She did, and rather politely. He's learning she can play along with etiquette when she wants to. The trouble (the joy) is that she rarely wants to. Caspian smooths his shirt and sets his quill in the inkwell before it falls from his hand.

"You did." he replies, lifting the book from his lap. "I suppose my inattention is a compliment to Sir Grivan's writing." Caspian focuses on gripping the book so he won't pay too much attention to how her hair is mussed from the day's work.

How a stray curl brushes the corner of her mouth.

Addie's smile widens. "Here's your storybook back; I finished it early."

Caspian takes it gingerly, unsure whether to be disappointed or relieved when their fingers don't touch. As the gods would have it, he fumbles and barely catches the thick tome against his side before it tumbles to the ground with his dignity.

Caspian wills strength into his legs and crosses the study to return it to its place on the bookshelf. "Thank you. Did you enjoy it?"

"I did. There's something charming about children's stories." Addie fiddles with her sleeve, though her gaze is unwavering. "It helped to read something without all those extra marks on the letters. Those fancy swirls are ridiculous."

"Beautiful but impractical." Caspian dares not move back toward her, not when her smile lingers and his heart thrums faster than it should.

Distance, he must maintain polite distance. Anything else has to come from her. Caspian tucks his hands behind his back stays where he is.

"Impractical and unnecessary," snorts Addie, apparently unconcerned with him studying her. "Why bother with prettying them up unless to make up for dull words? Actually that's why they do it, isn't it?"

Caspian chuckles before he can think the better of it. Despite breaking propriety (perhaps because of it), he finds his shoulders relaxing.

"I believe they wrote many of these tests more for pride than for product," he confesses. "Perhaps the ornamentation is a justification for conquest." His voice hums low in his throat as the truth of his lineage's history presses heavy on his chest. "So many will believe a cause is righteous if the victors dress up the tale in ceremony and fancy scripts."

The moment the words escape, Caspian clamps his teeth. Did he learn nothing from his nurse's disappearance so many years ago? Already, he said too much to her a few weeks ago.

Yet, like the last time he slipped, Addie makes no affronted defences of history, nor a quip about the Narnians deserving the conquest's outcome. She's a servant girl, he reminds himself, not a scholar of history. Perhaps people outside the nobility don't see the Telmarine occupation of Narnia as favourably as many of the lords do? Perhaps, but not certainly.

Addie tilts her head and looks him square in the eyes. "Is that why you expanded your reading list?" She looks over her shoulder at the lowest shelf of the bookcase behind her.

Though perhaps he should, Caspian doesn't deny it. He suspected it was she who disturbed his cache of Narnian books those many weeks ago, though he's only ever caught her with Telmarine books in the time since. Addie seems insatiably curious more than anything else, much like he was when he first learned the old legends were real. Caspian has the peculiar sense he can trust her, even though she's a servant and she shouldn't be taking an interest in anything like old Narnian history. Perhaps that's why her visits have steadily increased in frequency.

Perhaps she's as curious as he.

"It's a good thing, you know - another perspective." Addie continues. Caspian is acutely aware of her gaze as it sweeps from his toes to the crown of his head. "I suppose I shouldn't have called you presumptuous."

The half-grin on her lips is playful, but it only sets Caspian's heart thrumming for entirely other reasons. He has to subtly clear his throat before his voice cooperates.

"No, in that instance you were correct. Perhaps I did presume too much."

Better to discuss that than his Narnian reading material. It's still strange to speak of it with someone other than Doctor Cornelius after years of secrecy.

"Yes," Addie allows, "but at least you meant well. You listened to what I thought."

She sits at the window, her features soft and feminine in the candlelight. He's staring again, but he never noticed those flecks of hazeled gold amid the lighter brown of her eyes. Thankfully, Caspian's legs see fit to do as he asks and take him to his chair where he plops down in a manner not entirely dignified.

"You took me quite by surprise," Caspian admits. "Never has any -"

Lion, it's rude to refer to her station, isn't it?

"Servant girl?" Addie sinks into the cushions with one leg tucked under her.

"Any servant," Caspian amends. It wasn't so much about her being a woman and a servant so much as a servant - though he became painfully aware of that detail the longer she reproached him. "Never has any servant spoken to me like that."

He meets her gaze by accident, but once their gazes lock, Caspian can't look away. Rude as it is to stare, his eyes stray to her mouth as Addie's lips part. He pulls them back up quickly.

"I didn't expect your kindness," she says. "I thought I'd have to fight for what I wanted."

Caspian speaks before his mind can catch up, and Lion help him for it.

"I assure you, Adelina, you will never have to fight for anything you want from me."

Lion's Mane, he must learn to mind his tongue. Caspian looks away; perhaps she won't see the truth of it if she can't see his eyes. He's only vaguely aware that Addie has risen from the window seat and stepped closer.

"Anything?"

Her voice jolts Caspian back in his chair and away from his self-recriminations, drawing his eyes up from the floor to her face. Addie stands less than an inch from his knee, close enough her skirt whispers along his trousers. He swallows, throat threatening to strangle his words. Yet for all his embarrassment, his voice answers on its own.

"Anything." The word comes out soft and gravelled, like a promise he should know better than to make.

He knows better than to make promises he can't keep.

In the next breath, Caspian finds he cannot speak. There is a light pressure against his mouth, something soft and pliant and hotter than a flame. Caspian's sense bleeds away as he moves his lips against hers, his hand tangling in her hair of its own accord.

Addie's mouth retreats, but her breath mingles with his.

Caspian surges from his chair and cups her face in his hands as firmly as he dares. Even in all this sudden desperation, he doesn't want to trap her.

Addie's hands are gripping his sides, turning to fists in his shirt as she pulls him so close her soft curves press into his chest. She must feel her effect on him, but she doesn't seem to mind. When she rises to meet him, he abandons himself to the frantic press of her mouth, the dance of tongues and teeth and the intoxication of pulling her curls free of her cap so he can comb them with his fingers. Caspian's world shrinks to the taste of her lips and her little gasps on his face. He kisses her until his head spins.

When Addie pulls away with her cheeks all aflush, Caspian repeats it like a promise, a prayer, a plea.

"Anything."

Addie

Anything she wants indeed. Addie presses her lips tight against a smile as she scurries back to her own quarters, where the others are asleep and she can avoid any questions. She slips inside easily, the door's creaking not loud enough to wake Anna and Claudia. Lola's here tonight, surprisingly, her form a vague lump in the cot next to Addie's.

It's a relief to tug off her shoes and dress, freeing her feverish skin until only her undershift remains. Addie curls onto her side, the blanket bunched in her arms. It's too warm to sleep beneath it, even with the creeping autumn chill.

Kissing a prince in his own quarters was perhaps not her most thought-out notion, but once she realised what she wanted there seemed little reason not to do it. It's different when it's her idea. She likes that every time they've so much as touched hands, it's been her doing. Her choice, as much for her own curiosity as for Caspian's desire.

Well, whatever desire leaks around those awkward princely manners. But the manners aren't so bad when she catches him breaking them with those heated stares across his desk. Those looks make her want things she's never let herself want before. There didn't seem to be much of a point before now, but something about Caspian makes her want.

Something about Caspian is different. If Addie weren't so busy preening, she might mind such a notion.

Addie plucks at a loose thread on her blanket, shifting to her other side as if the change in position will lull her to sleep. As if she can turn away from the memory of his lips on hers, desperate and inviting and hungry, so hungry. He kissed her like a starving man, and now the need is worse than it was before. A kiss was supposed to dissipate the tension between them so she can stop thinking of him when she's in the kitchen slicing bread, or curled up in bed with a candle stub reading a book he lent her, or using the excuse of dusting to pry in his papers and books as if they held all the answers she sought about him.

Addie grips her blanket until her nails poke holes in the worn material. It would be lunacy to run back to him now. He's likely asleep.

Tash's curses. He's likely in his bed in a state of undress. Surely he doesn't sleep in the shirt that dubbed him Mr. Flowers to her and those ridiculous embroidered brown trousers.

She shouldn't wonder what else Caspian wears to bed. She shouldn't wonder what he doesn't wear to bed. She shouldn't wonder if he sleeps on his back or on his side, curled up or sprawled out. Or if he still has all his formalities about him first thing in the morning.

Perhaps he snores.

The thought is ridiculous, but it helps. Addie giggles softly, little more than a breath with the blanket stuffed against her mouth. She's being silly. He's only a man, and there's no need to stay up all night replaying a kiss or imagining what it would be like to curl around him in the glow of sunrise, soft and sleepy after a night of -

When did the servant's quarters get so warm? Isn't the castle stonework meant to keep the heat out? It's the beginning of autumn; she shouldn't be sweating in her shift. It's ridiculous.

Still, there's nothing stopping her from dropping by after dinner cleanup tomorrow. Not technically, not when Claudia and Lola are used to her keeping odd hours. And it's so much more convenient to read by candlelight in that window seat than on her cot with a candle stub dripping burning wax onto her fingers. Tolerable, thanks to years helping tend the kitchen hearth, but still distracting.

It's nice, reading in a prince's study. Especially when she catches those careful, longing glances he sends her way - glances he always breaks whenever she meets them for more than a heartbeat. He's royalty, technically, but their stations melt away to nothing when he looks at her like that.

She thought he was a prick when he was Mr. Flowers and all he did was get her in trouble with Perla. But now he's Caspian, and he looks at her like she's a woman, and she likes the blush staining his ears when they poke through his dark hair. She likes that he waits for her to act first. He's not so annoying when he forgets his courtly manners.

Perhaps those manners make all the difference.

Addie spends far longer than she should lying awake remembering the heat of his mouth, the gentle scratch of his fingers' callouses. She shouldn't lose sleep, but maybe it's better than mooning after him all morning and afternoon. After all, she's not Lola.

Addie turns and wills herself to rest. She doesn't need to obsess. She can see him again, mostly whenever she likes.

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Chapter 7 Preview:

Caspian clears his throat and grasps one last time for courtesy and control. "I wouldn't wish my desires to cause an adverse… to bring up any unwanted memories."

Addie's teeth sink into her bottom lip and Caspian divines a new meaning of torture then and there. "Caspian, you're very courteous, but you're an idiot."