The Hostage Prince Read Online Free Page A

mistake when the laughter expanded all around the Great Hall, the Border Lords laughing loudest of all. But he found he couldn’t regret it.
    Probably will, though
, he thought.
Later.
    â€œPRINCE Aspen!” A loud, familiar voice cut through the laughter. “And have we not taught you better in all this time with us?” It was his foster father, King Obs. Obs of the Hard Hand, as he was called, and his right hand was not only hard but huge. It was the size, someone once said, of a roasting platter. There were whispers that there had been a troll somewhere in the far back of his ancestry. But no one ever said such things aloud. “Your family will not thank us. They will say you are a tortoise, not taught at all.”
    For a king’s witticism
, Aspen thought,
that’s pretty lame
. But then no one ever said this king was the brightest spark in the fire that was the Unseelie Court. Perhaps another gift of his troll ancestry.
Still, they’ll all call me Tortoise now
.
    He could live with it. He’d lived with all the other names.
    In the seven years he’d been at the Unseelie Court as a princely hostage, guaranteeing peace between their two nations—just like the Unseelie prince languishing in his father’s court—Aspen had been called too many names to remember. The only ones he truly regretted were the ones given to him by Princesses Sun and Moon, twins he’d loved from the moment he’d met them, though they were as far out of his reach as if they were truly the sun and the moon. They’d called him Little Bit, and Weeper, and Sniveler, and Fidget, all things he’d regrettably done in their presence, though mostly as a child. But amongst the fey, first impressions last a long, long time.
    A lifetime.
    Centuries.
    â€œSlow and steady, your majesty,” he called out to the king. “And wearing a very hard shell. Repels all splatters and shatters.”
Not to mention names
, but he didn’t say that out loud.
    â€œWill you excuse her then?” asked the king, his voice thundering but his face clear of anger.
    The Border Lords started banging the bone handles of their great knives on the table, causing all of the goblets to wobble. “NO EXCUSES! NO EXCUSES!” Several of them were drooling wine into their beards or spitting out the crumbs of something recently eaten. The usual.
    With a wave of his huge right hand, King Obs silenced them. “Speak, Tortoise,” he said. On either side of the king, the Unseelie princes leaned forward to hear Aspen’s response. The Heir on the right—hefty, pockmarked and gap-toothed. On the left, the Spare—lean and listless. Their pasty faces wore smiles like a chimera’s, all teeth and hunger, but their father’s rough intelligence was missing.
    â€œExcuse and accuse are two sides of the same coin,” Aspen said, quoting one of the old Unseelie philosophers he’d recently been studying.
    He nodded at Jaunty, his tutor, sitting way down at the far end of the room, and the old hob smiled at him, a green, toothy smile. “I excuse
both
the girls. They are hardly worth accusing.”
    King Obs applauded at that, his smaller left hand beating against the larger right, and the rest of the court took it up till the room shook with the noise. The two princes clapped greedily, as if they had been the ones to coin the witticism.
    â€œIn honor of the upcoming birth of my child, I accept your excuse. They are both spared. But do not be so quick next time to let such misbehavior go or the underfolk will take advantage of it. And what do you say to that?”
    Aspen thought, and then he had it.
A warrior’s response
. The king would like that. “They cannot take advantage, sire, because we princes have the high ground!”
    â€œHah!” The king’s head went back with laughter, like a flower on a stalk finding the sun. He laughed so hard, his striped beard waggled,