There she sat at his desk, writing furiously, only to stop, squint at the paper, and begin scratching with her pen again. Her hair was mussed, and a rather austere pair of glasses were scooting down her nose, unheeded. He took the tips of his white gloves between his teeth and tugged one by one until he could pull the silken thing off completely, tossing them to his bed coverlet without looking away from the creature hunched over a sprawl of papers.
"How far are you," he asked.
She didn't stir. "Not too long now," she murmured, preoccupied with her manic scribbling.
He sat on his bed with a huff, looked around his room restlessly. Gohan watched from the corner before his head dipped once again to the task of his school work.
"I have something for you, meanwhile," Bulma informed him breathlessly, and the Prince bolted from the bed to stand beside her.
He hinged at the hips to scrutinize the sketches across his desk."This is a time-sensitive matter," he complained, even as his eyes widened at the breadth of work before him, readjusting his breast plate absently.
She didn't trust herself to look at him, so she didn't. Her eyes flicked in his general direction with exasperation, and she muttered something about his peevishness, which he ignored. The late morning light spilled between them, and she pulled a folded sheet from her lab coat breast pocket and sat it in its warm center.
"I've deciphered the code. Here is the list of Elites and Council members who are actively communicating with the Colds. You may go kill them one by one now." Her eyes rolled toward him, burning with disapproval. "I know that you don't agree with me," her voice rose, and he chuffed testily at the forthcoming lecture, "but I really think you aught to hold position until that crown is on top your head. I think, according to these communications here," she gathered up some papers to her chest, frustratedly flipping through them—too many, unsettling—"that there is something else abreast," frustration tugged at her, "something I'm missing—"
"Whose fault is that?" He interrupted, voice rumbling at her ear.
She turned to glower at him, but he only returned her expression dryly as he leaned over her shoulder. She straightened the papers primly. "These communications are ripe with references to a big day, but I can't decode it. I've ferreted out the names of Council members and Elites who are conspiring with the Colds, at least, but I think that's just the tip of the iceberg." She started shaking her head in exasperation. "From their tone in this correspondence, these council members believe they have the upper hand, that they have control of the situation. But I don't think they are." She looked up at Vegeta again with worried eyes behind wide glasses. "My concern is that they are not the only enemy. Knowing what little I do of the Colds, I can't help but doubt that someone as ancient and powerful would lower themselves to bargaining with Saiyan politicians unless there's something frighteningly complex at work. It smells fishy."
"The Colds would not bother themselves with it," Vegeta muttered, rifling through the papers in front of her.
"Meanwhile, the councilmen and elites speak back and forth of 'securing' the throne, which is an alarming allusion to dethroning you. Are they planning an offensive tomorrow? If only I could figure it out." She allowed her forehead to fall into her palm, squeezing her eyes shut in fatigue. He was relying on her, and to her knowledge, only she. The expectations he wanted her to effortlessly meet were filling her with panic, and the more intel she sought to dig up, the further buried she became.
"I cannot wait to show them how very wrong they are," the Prince hummed with a disturbing eagerness.
"We don't have enough time to figure this out," she cried, looking up with one blue eye imploring him, her palm mashed into the other side of her face with defeat. "Something about your coronation fills me with dread."
Gohan chewed his pencil as he listened with absorption.
Gohan knew she'd broken down First Strike's blockades in the middle of the night and uncovered a disconcerting connection between First Strike and the Council. She'd spent the last few hours manically scribbling notes and deciphering code at the Prince's desk, and while the Council's sins were gradually becoming clearer, Gohan was worried the escalation of events was going to unhorse her.
The Prince's controlled voice rolled over them. "This morning I met with the Judges. We found nothing that incriminates them in the correspondence last night, so I have urged them to come armed. I leave to confer with the Royal Guard soon and assure them no man that enters tomorrow should be considered above suspicion."
Bulma nodded weakly, biting her lip, gaze roaming frantically over her notes. "If you move your piece before they do," she murmured, "I worry they'd construe it as a coup, a purge simply based on your dislike of some philosophies or faces within your cabinet. And your consolidation of power could alarm more than just council members. It could disrupt stability abroad. What if they think you're seizing power?"
"But I am the heir," he contended smoothly. "Mine is divine right, and through me speak my ancestors. The provincials abroad would accept any change I institute as holy. Any improvements, hallowed."
Gohan watched Bulma chew her pencil, troubled by her wan countenance. He'd felt her leave their room in the middle of the night, and when she returned, she'd tossed and turned in bed until the sounds of the Prince waking could be heard, before the first sun swept up over the horizon, divorcing the sand from the night and marrying pale red sky.
He'd watched her hover in the dark doorway from his cocoon of blankets, early morning light making monochrome of the sitting room outside. Her head leaned against the molding with an overall air of melancholy.
Gohan was in and out of sleep when a shadow loomed in the doorway. He blinked as he saw the Prince pull up to the woman, who straightened in his sight.
"May I work at your desk?" He heard her ask stiffly. "I would like to continue my work without waking Gohan."
"You may," the Prince had responded with just as much formality.
And she'd bowed, and the Prince had nodded faintly, and then they'd walked away from each other in opposite directions.
She'd set to work immediately with nervous energy, and Gohan had rolled out of bed with a soft groan to keep her company. And though he was used to her bouts of total absorption in her projects, something was different this time.
When they'd lived at the tiny apartment in the Science Wing, sometimes Bulma would become overwhelmed by pressure at work and shut herself in the bathroom for a cry. Once she'd got the worst of it out of her system, she would move forward, make dinner, get some sleep, begin anew tomorrow. But since they'd came to reside in the Prince's quarters, she'd not had any relief. She was sleepless, she was pensive. Gohan felt a tug of resentment toward the Prince for holding her hostage this way. The Prince had given her a lot of work, expected impossible things from her. And because she wanted her freedom, and because she had her pride, she pursued them without complaint.
Gohan puzzled on it. He didn't understand the subtleties of personal relationships between men and women; what was between his parents had always just been. But he suspected that something complicated like that was at work before him. Except, in these circumstances, there was no room for joy, and all three of them were painfully aware of it. Nothing could grow in these barren times. And perhaps some of that was the cause of the tension between the Prince and Bulma.
Gohan frowned, perplexed.
Vegeta had pulled up a chair, and the unlikely pair poured over the paperwork in front of them. The Prince, absorbed with the work before them, had not given her much personal space or preserved his own like usual. Their heads bowed together.
"Here, and here," he could hear Vegeta saying, sketching something between them. "The Judges sit here. Öngdala will reach its apex at 1400. Elites here, here, and here. Council members front right."
"What about here?" Bulma's finger pointed at the bottom left corner of the map.
"Elders," Vegeta answered. "My Royal Guard will keep positions at every door." His feathered stylus whipped an "x" at each doorway. From the scribbles littered on the paper, the Prince would be well-defended.
"What about a disruption here?"
"Negative. Judges there."
The Prince sat back and slouched in the chair.
"At 1400, I give blood and accept the crown, and the bells will ring out over the galaxy. The ceremony itself takes a negligible amount of time."
But something else was threading together for Gohan, niggling at him. He tucked the dark hair in his eyes behind his ear.
"Give blood?" Bulma looked up at Vegeta in confusion. "What's 'give blood?'"
Vegeta gave her an indecipherable look, a mixture of haughtiness struggling with the need to indulge her. "My palms are opened up with the ritual tênto dagger. My palms fill with blood and sunlight, and an Elder places the crown into my cupped hands, and the sacred ruby glows with Öngdala in confirmation. I give my blood for my empire, and by blood, the crown becomes mine." The anticipation made him smirk briefly.
Her mouth had parted in shock. "Vegeta, your hands—"
She stopped herself and turned back rigidly to the papers in front of her. A Saiyan did not welcome another's concern for their well-being; it would be an insult to act like they couldn't accomplish something. More criminally, to question the Prince's ability to do it.
He sent her a look of annoyance. "I fear nothing."
She sighed, resting her cheek on her knuckles and chewing her lip. "Is there truly nothing that could go wrong?" She pleaded, slapping her hands on the table. "I have poured over this correspondence and this map time and time again. Sure, your defense has no holes, but something still seems awry."
"The ceremony is standard. If there is no way to ambush me during it, no violence can be done." He paused, almost awkwardly, studying her askant. "But I will not be back to my rooms until dawn tomorrow."
A surge of anxiety trilled through her. She and Gohan looked at him uneasily. "Where are you going?"
"The coronation tradition does not end after the ceremony," he explained. "It will not end until Öngdala pierces the sky again at dawn."
"What happens then?" Bulma's voice was girlish in its vulnerability, and it was as if the world had narrowed down to only she and the Prince. Gohan listened carefully.
"I cannot share that with you, little off-worlder," he answered firmly, but his eyes softened, lids lowering fractionally, and Gohan didn't miss it.
She frowned down at the papers, trying to keep her emotions contained. "You make yourself vulnerable," she whispered. "Something could happen then, and we'd be powerless to stop it."
He rolled his eyes, leaning back. "My power is beyond every Saiyan's range. Even an ambush can not eclipse it. It's not my pain that you should seek to mediate." Then he smiled wide, a frightening thing. "All this talk of a fight at my coronation is making me eager."
"So are we just to wait here?" Bulma's eyes grew wide behind her glasses. "Will we be safe?"
He leaned back, chin resting on his curled fingers in thought. "I have an idea. But you will not like it." His eyes darkened.
"So you agree that this isn't the safest place for us should someone cause trouble during the ceremony?"
He nodded once.
Bulma made a disapproving noise in her throat and looked away. She detested the feeling of helplessness that saturated her every moment.
He leaned back, bracing his arms behind his head. "For generations, it has been," his eyes lifted to the sky as he searched for the words, "tradition, for the King to have at his disposal, a, a…group, or menagerie, of…."
The air between them grew chilled.
"Say it," she demanded, brows crashing down around blazing eyes.
"The King traditionally has a harem of women for his sexual needs," he enunciated slowly.
Gohan tensed, watching Bulma closely. To their surprise, she looked immediately into her lap and paled. She sought to control her shaking fingers by threading them through each other and squeezing.
Both males watched her cautiously.
"Yes. Go on." Her voice was just above a whisper.
"To keep you there for the night—"
Her voice grew hard, but she didn't look up. "As chattel?"
Vegeta stiffened. "I would not use you," he denied frigidly.
"Miss Bulma," Gohan interceded, pushing past his fear of intruding from the safe space where they'd forgotten about him. "I think he's right. It would be somewhere removed from any conflict, if any fighting were to occur. The Prince's enemies would have no reason to venture there."
"The King, ill as he was, has not indulged the harem for years," Vegeta tried to explain, his voice pitched low and rough, an angry defensiveness warring with a bizarre concern for her opinion of him. "There would be no reason to target it. And should a woman arrive the day of the coronation, why, no one would question why."
A jagged silence met him.
"And when I have finished my ascension to the throne," he argued, "I may come and get you without anyone the wiser."
"Why can't I just attend the coronation?"
"I cannot explain you," he dismissed brusquely. "You're not safe, and so you may not attend."
"Surely there must be another option?"
He scowled, suddenly exhausted of patience. "Why must you always argue with me? Trust me to know the safest quarter of the palace. That is where I'm sending you, and that's where you'll go until dawn breaks the following day."
"Yeah." She bowed her head. "Sure." Gohan and the Prince's eyebrows both rose with surprise at her passive, defeated tone. Her eyes didn't stray from her hands. "If that's what you think is wisest."
Bulma, too, reluctantly agreed that it was wisest. Because Vegeta was a traditionalist. He believed deeply in convention, in history and custom. Long-established Saiyan traditions were powerfully relevant, and participating in them elevated the event to an almost religious experience. It was, after all, the basis of his disagreement and his complaint with the Council and Elites: they didn't obey the traditions that he embodied.
He would partake in the harem, undoubtedly, and if not sooner, then still later. And she would assist the man in regaining his throne, because it meant more people could live freely, and because it was how she could buy her freedom. And then she would take her work permit and the dissolution of her indentured 'contract,' and she would leave.
They were right. It was wisest.
Gohan watched them sit stiffly shoulder to shoulder, each looking ahead as if the other wasn't just right there. But the set of their shoulders indicated all they were aware of was the other, within reach.
"My mother was a concubine." Vegeta's solid voice finally thrummed in the silence. "Royal right does not need to be corroborated by marriage on Vejitasei. Royal lineage is simply passed patrilineally." He paused, whether to make sure she followed or to gather his thoughts, he couldn't say. His fist unfurled absently, his fingers curling in and out from his palm contemplatively. "When I was very small, the zve'ra—'women's quarters'—took care of me. Even as the heir, to be near my father was a privilege, its goal typically a brief military lesson or excursion. Saiyan warriors do not typically raise their young." He pinned her with a look that willed her to understand. "These are women who are not forced against their will. They live well, and they are proud of their rank. Women are…they are not so common among Saiyans. They do not often survive childbirth. Our gestational wing was built to make up for that. Therefore, these women are honored. They are not simply…used."
"Are they Saiyan?"
Vegeta's head tilted back slightly against the head rest, surveying her. He seemed to know what she was after.
"Not all of them," he admitted reluctantly.
"To be un-Saiyan is to be lesser than." She stared up at him rawly then. "That was the first lesson I learned on Vejitasei." Her voice dipped, harshly. "Don't lie to me."
"You will not be ill-treated while I'm gone," he insisted, patience unraveling.
She glared into her palms. It was wisest. It was wisest.
"What did you do before your home was purged?"
Vegeta's question surprised them both.
She looked up at him with reddened, guarded eyes. "I was the heir of a great industrial giant and a great fortune." Her voice was hard, her mussed hair coming free from behind her ear and obscuring half her face as she stared intensely from blue, blue eyes. "I was an engineer. I was a glamour girl, coveted. I was in love. And I was free."
Their eyes didn't leave the other's. The silence between them was pregnant with the unvoiced.
"Remember that," he finally advised her gently, and Gohan felt heat creep across his cheeks for witnessing what became more and more clear was a private moment that he was intruding on. "Remember how you have survived. And when I come to greet you as Emperor, you will not have to survive any longer. Keep your word to me, and you will know freedom again."
The two shared a look that Gohan couldn't decipher.
The Prince stood and belted his cape silently. Decisively, he slipped on his gloves and turned to leave. "I will be back at nightfall. Keep working."
Bulma again stared at her hands. They were pale ivory, fingers clutching each other to prevent the other from trembling. They were small hands, with slender fingers and rounded fingernails. They were a woman's hands, an Earthling's hands. Weak, but adept. They were the hands of a woman who met one thing, over and over: pain, perseverance.
It was wisest.
"My father will be here tomorrow," Gohan announced quietly once the Prince had shut the door behind him.
"I'm not going there, Gohan," Bulma asserted brokenly.
Gohan stared at the carpet, unsure of what to say. "I…." He gathered his courage. "I think it's smart. I don't think the Prince means it as an invitation to stay down there." His statement ended in a whisper, and he flushed.
Bulma watched him carefully. "Gohan, sweetheart, you're a bright kid." Her eyes were rimmed red with sleeplessness and nerves. "And I would not expose you to our arguments if I could help it. But I don't…." She gazed outward at nothing, face drawn. "I don't fear being a part of it. I fear that it exists at all." Her eyes moved to the carpet, before she stood. "I can't change his mind. I'm chattel, whether I'm here or there. I've done all I can to flesh out these plots, and your parents have moved beyond the reach of my transmissions, so I don't even know…I don't know even their plans. I just can't keep this all together by myself. I'm done," she finished tiredly. "I think I'll sleep now." And she shuffled from the Prince's room to their own, lab coat hanging limply from her petite frame.
For all that the Prince had no concept of privacy—after all, everything in a royal's immediate universe was his by default—he hovered at the edges of the room, watching the small woman's shoulder rise and fall as she slept, curled on her side with her back to him.
The young boy, the half-Saiyan, slept facing the doorway on the opposite side of the bed, nearest the door. He had the familiar inky black hair, and as it grew and became shaggy, the pin-straight stuff began to stand on end, disclosing his bloodline. There was something about the two sleeping peacefully in the rosy evening light as he watched them, a creature of war and power, that made a feeling zing under his skin.
The boy's eyes cracked open and blinked. He watched the Prince dully for a moment before slowly sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Prince Vegeta?"
The boy clearly had no etiquette training. He was carefully polite but lacked all gestures of submission and intricacies of rank behavior. The woman had said they'd come from a planet with a democratic system, and it showed. And yet, while the Prince's Saiyan instinct recognized one of its own and its failure to properly submit, there was something refreshing in the way they spoke to him without pretension.
"You are here because your father is training with the gods?" The Prince ambled in, his cape catching the air lightly behind him.
Gohan nodded, clutching the blankets beside him with a flush of nervousness.
"You have lived with the woman for a Standard year. Have you been training yourself?"
The Prince had pulled up to him now, and looked down upon him.
"No, sir. I spend most of my time staying caught up on my school work."
The Prince's expression didn't change, but he pinned the boy with a look of intensity. "You have Saiyan blood in you. It must scream to get out. Do you ever feel its violence, calling to you?"
Gohan shook his head with wide eyes. "No, sir." He fidgeted. "I think I may take more after my mom."
"One of these days, its siren song will call out to you. And because you have not tamed it, you will not be able to leash it when it explodes from your very being. Consider training. If not for your own pride or heritage, than for her." He nodded at the sleeping woman.
Gohan nodded. "Yes, sir."
Vegeta's eyes had already left Gohan, and he floated closer to the woman, watching her. "Bulma." Her name on his lips was foreign; his tongue used to harsher consonants."Bulma." He crouched, peering at her.
Her brows furrowed before her eyelids fluttered. "Vegeta?" She blinked, before sitting up with dizzying speed. "What's wrong?" Her face tightened, her hair tousled from sleep.
"We must talk," he answered indecipherably.
She nodded, pulling her lab coat tighter around her and shuffling behind him out of the room, her slippers whispering against the carpet.
He slid into a chair at the dining table, and when she stood awkwardly at the edge, arms protectively around her chest, he scooted the other chair toward her with the toe of his boot.
She plopped down into it with surprise.
His dinner lay on porcelain platters before him, and he began buttering a biscuit. "Our defensive has been planned. I've activated the guard and alerted the Judges."
To her surprise, he handed her the biscuit.
She stared at it with wide eyes.
He shook it at her to make his point, and delicately, she took the thing in her fingers. He bent back down to buttering another biscuit, face smooth and calm, wide cheekbones just under his eyes aglow in the lamp light. "Are there any other concerns you'd like to address?"
She chewed thoughtfully before swallowing, and frowned. "I'm just worried that a physical defense is not enough. The Council don't just seek more money….They seek more power. And the kind of power their after isn't reached through knocking another Saiyan over the head." It terrified her. She'd admit, even to the Saiyan Prince, that she was no Saiyan patriot. But this was insidious. This was inviting even more moral ambiguity and complications into a system that was already sadistic. If the Council members sold out, it would be even harder to stay alive. "They've bribed their select Elites, who only care for themselves, the idiots," she cracked, and Vegeta echoed the sentiment, "and received their funding from them. But what do they need funding for? And all of this," she mused, "I easily pulled from the Saiyan COM server. The Empire's in part responsible for this conflict." She peered up at Vegeta, who was scowling at her with both disagreement and consideration. "Your security is laughable across the board," she cried. "This Empire isn't a culture of intellect—"
Vegeta growled.
"Just listen to some constructive criticism for a moment!" Bulma reprimanded him. "Look, you're using technology from other cultures without even fully grasping it! And you don't understand, you have to protect it with its own language. With code. You can't stand in front of a computer and look menacing and think that's going to prevent hackers and viruses."
Watching him carefully, she popped another bite in and chewed. "I was able to just waltz in with a primitively constructed radar and bypass a few pithy obstacles before downloading Saiyan ship schemes directly from your server," she balked. "Now I'm able to look into your communications system as easy as peering out a window. Council member-to-council member communications aren't encrypted whatsoever. The Council's only advantage so far has been allying with First Strike, who're shuffling mail from Saiyan to Cold hands for their own ends, whatever those are. You have an empire here spread across the universe who can only communicate through tech," she chided. "You've got to protect your channels, or you will always be vulnerable. Tomorrow, no matter if you're crowned without incident—and the next day, and the next day, and forever."
Vegeta rested his chin on his fist. "I can not rely on foreigners to helm a project of that magnitude. I cannot trust them."
"Perhaps a solution to an issue of trust," she issued testily, "would be to treat them as respected employees and not rip them from their homes and exploit them."
He stared flatly at her.
She'd expected that. "What about training Saiyans?"
He answered her carefully. "We are a culture with select pursuits. We are creatures of instinct, and we project them through expansion—"
"Violence."
"Competition," he growled.
"A person can be competitive in the stock market. In a game of cards. But this ain't competition, buddy. This is purely physical domination. This is about the body. Yours is a game that always ends with death. In all the ways it can be condemned, at the very best, it's just not sustainable."
Vegeta seemed taken aback. "If a person cannot fight back, nothing changes in that person's relationship to power. Sustainability exists by default within that system. We always win; nothing changes."
Her voice grew urgent, her hand gesturing wildly with the last bite of biscuit in her fingers. "You're too idealistic, too constrained by what's narrowly 'Saiyan.' You're not seeing the whole picture here. You need to accept the reality that there are other ways to dominate besides through bloodshed, and be pragmatical here," she argued. Vegeta growled, a throaty thing, but she continued. "Isn't that why you're resisting just blasting the palace to bits to eliminate some rogue council members? This is a strategy you were pursuing before we even met. So," she swallowed the last bite, "I think you need to consider that dissolving the Council and the Elites is only one way this Empire can be changed for the better."
She peered up at him. Well, he hadn't blasted her at any point during her sermon. She was not yet a crater, at least. He was growing scarier, though. The Prince really wasn't used to being told.
"You and I have different definitions of better," he snapped, bristling.
"Changed for your continued success, then. You need to consider training Saiyans for other occupations than warfare."
"We outsource that labor."
She shrugged. "Then pay those you outsource and earn their loyalty. Or make your own subjects more well-rounded." Bulma frowned to herself. "I don't understand. You're a smart man. You can't be the only Saiyan who can tell left from right," she mused with confusion, and then her mouth went slack, and she looked up at the Prince with embarrassment.
His eyebrow had arched, but he didn't call attention to her unwitting compliment. She was thankful.
"The hall outside your doors," she began, tucking her hair behind her ears contemplatively.
Vegeta surveyed her quietly. On what world did blue make sense? Not here, not among white sand, white light, red sky, blood currency.
"It's full of murals. Who painted them?"
"Honored Saiyans," he answered automatically.
"How does a warrior civilization have painters? Honored painters, no less?"
He looked at her flatly.
"You could be more," she finished. "You've been more."
"What does a primitive know of sophistication?" He snarled, tearing off the rest of his meat from the bone with his teeth. "It is others who need to change to adapt to our reality, our great traditions. We evolved like this for good reason."
"You're primates," she argued energetically. "You evolved like this, with thumbs and big brains, so you could use tools and create and re-create culture. And you continue evolving. You're a species capable of language, self-awareness, social cognition, problem solving, strategic planning, multi-tasking, organized meaning! Just like Earthlings! You have sophisticated, specialized brain functions, a neural apparatus with a prefrontal cortex that by design supersedes other vertebrates." She licked her fingers of butter, and he watched her fingers in her mouth with intensity. "Look, I'm just saying. We may not have an identical morphology, sure, we may have structural differences in our makeup. But you have art. You have buildings. You have ranked systems, and organized militaries, and social symbols." She nodded at the sigil on his breastplate. "You may not be a culture of intellect, but you're a species with a history of it. Use it."
He had never, in all his thirty two Standard years, had someone speak so defiantly to him.
"Is that all?" He managed to grit, breast plate heaving with the effort of his restraint.
"Why won't you tell me what happens after the coronation?" She interrupted.
A sly smile grew on his face, and he gulped the bloody wine down that slicked his glass. "Why so curious?" She looked suddenly uncomfortable, and he cut through his fruit pastry with the side of his fork, smile growing with each jerk of his wrist. "Why so eager, little woman?"
She tried to shrug. "Just curious," she grumbled.
"It's an ancient ritual." The Prince's tone became suddenly serious, before he speared a bite of pastry, smeared with cooled cream, on his fork. "I will not come by any harm from it."
And then he held the bite of pastry out to her.
Her stomach dropped. She looked at the golden, crusted bite with shock, barely breathing.
The Prince regarded her calmly from under his lashes, head tilted slightly.
Her lips parted in surprise. Slowly, she leaned forward.
She took his fork between her teeth and pulled. She chewed slowly, and then licked her lips of any residual cream, and his eyes fell on her tongue on her lips, and lingered.
She blushed furiously, seized a cloth napkin, and wiped her mouth to hide it.
He cut into the pastry again, and watching her carefully, heatedly, his own mouth slowly closed around the next bite, his lips gliding over the fork where hers just slid.
Her gaze plummeted to the table, her heart hammering.
"Is there anything else?" He asked, his voice a purr that climbed her spine.
"No," she mumbled dumbly. "Nothing else I have any control over, anyway." There wasn't any time to untangle it all. Only one night, and a stack of papers she'd poured herself over a handful of times and, over and over, salvaged nothing from.
"Control is, at times, overrated," he declared silkily, and stood, stretching the tension taut. "Wake the boy and feed him. I'd like to bathe and get some sleep before tomorrow's excitement."
She pushed her chair out from the table with her heels and stood weakly, brushing imaginary crumbs nervously from her lap. "I'm not satisfied that there's nothing left I can do to help," she lamented, glancing at him with worry. "That I've unraveled all these tangles. I'm just not satisfied."
"That's funny," the Prince replied, before tugging his breastplate off and throwing it onto the bed. "Neither am I."
His dark stare before he glided to the bathroom was molten, and she was left standing alone in the heart of his room, a waif in her slippers and tousled locks, a foreign heat creeping up her center.