I barely manage to swallow a shriek.
The king is in my bed.
Throwing the blankets off, I leap from the covers and gape down at him. A second knock, a hair louder this time, sounds at the servant’s door.
The king lets out another groan. “Are you going to tell them or not?”
I fling a look back at the door, panic roaring through my mind. “Tell them what?” I hiss.
With a great sigh, the king heaves himself onto his elbows. “Five more minutes,” he bellows before flopping back onto his stomach. A feather, incongruously caught on the tip of one horn, flaps about like a flag as he does. I stare at it a moment before stammering out, “What are you doing here?”
“How do you not understand the meaning of five more minutes?” he grumbles into his pillow.
Of all the—
“I understand it perfectly fine,” I snap, “but you haven’t answered me. What are you doing here?”
He rubs an eye with his fist. “I thought we discussed that last night.”
“Yes, you said for your subjects to believe us fated flames, you needed to sleep in my room, not in my bed.”
The king rolls to his side to stare at me as if I’m daft. “Did you expect me to stay on the floor? The staff would think we were fighting.”
“We did fight,” I remind him, the sudden waking making me ornery.
“Yes,” he says, stretching an arm, “because you were being unreasonable.”
My mouth falls open. “Me? You wanted to kill a man last night.”
“Still do.”
I clamp my lips together. Best not to bring up Abely if I’m to keep him alive.
“We don’t have time to discuss that right now,” I say quickly. “They’ll be back any minute. What are they here for anyway?”
“To serve us breakfast, of course. Are you not served breakfast at home?”
I cross my arms. “My mother doesn’t take with breakfast in bed. She says it encourages laziness.”
The king snorts and covers his head with a blanket. Leaning forward, I pull it back down.
“Your Majesty, please,” I say. “Could you not at least get up and—and put on some clothing?”
Currently, the blankets are covering him from the neck down, but he’s certainly not wearing a shirt. What if he isn’t even wearing pants? The thought of the staff seeing us together in such a state turns my cheeks blistering hot.
“But I’m tired,” the king whines just as I hear footsteps approaching again.
“You are the Dragon King,” I whisper. “You are the most feared ruler on the continent. You cannot be too tired to get dressed!”
“Well I am.”
A third knock comes. That couldn’t have been five minutes. I whirl around in search of an escape. Perhaps I can hide in the dressing room.
“Do you want to convince them or not, princess?”
I turn at the king’s question. He’s drawn himself up into a seated position, exposing his bare chest and arms. Men often go shirtless in Vasna, and yet I stand there as if I’ve never seen any of them. I’ve certainly never seen a man with such pronounced muscles, such defined lines…
My eyes dart away.
“Stay and have breakfast with me,” the king says, running a hand through his hair, “and you’ll not have to see hair or hide of me for the rest of the day.”
His tone is such a sudden shift that I forget he’s half-clothed. I look at him again, puzzled once more by the swift change in mood. His eyes cut to my own.
“Unless you’d rather go home,” he says.
Is this to always be his threat? Bolstering myself, I lift the hem of my nightdress and climb back into bed. “No, Your Majesty. We have an agreement.”
My cat friend, who I hadn’t noticed before now, emerges from the king’s other side to enjoy a long, leisurely stretch. I purse my lips at him.
Traitor.
Facing the servant’s entrance, I clear my throat and call, “Come in,” but instead of that door, the one Soren entered through last night slams open. A young woman wearing more frills than dress bursts into the room, gasps at the pair of us, and levels a finger at the king.
“Soren,” she cries, “how could you?”