The Hostage Prince Read Online Free Page B

like a black-and-white flag.
    The court began applauding with a steady beat, the kind that showed both appreciation and approval. All except for the twins, who only moved their long, beautiful pointer fingers in time to the beat.
    But for Aspen, it was praise enough. He smiled. He didn’t know it, but the smile changed his entire aspect. Made him look younger, nicer, more common. Had he known, he would have hated it. Would never smile again.
    â€œCome, boy, sit,” the king said.
    Aspen bowed his head and sat.
    â€œBring on the food,” the king commanded. And the room sprang to life as servers once again appeared as if by magic, carrying in haunches of beeves, ducks and pheasants stuffed with grains, eels soaked in vinegar. They brought in cheeses rolled in oats, and loaves of crusty braided bread, as well as roasted potatoes and seven kinds of salad leaves soaked in oil and dashed with herbs. And without even waiting for any courses to be finished—
as if you could call any of this chaos a course
, Aspen thought—they brought in plate after plate of gigantic sugary puddings.
    The Unseelie did love their sweets.
    As the servers bustled around them, Aspen drew in a deep breath. He thought it barely audible with all the noise from the food being brought in. But up the table from him, Sun and Moon snickered, and Aspen knew it was about him. The sound was not beautiful coming from two such beautiful young women, but he didn’t care. It made him love them the more. And that was what he regretted most of all.
    â€œYou’d do just as well to worship the actual celestial bodies as those two,” said Old Jack Daw, appearing next to Aspen’s seat in a swirl of black robes and giving Aspen a shallow bow. “A hundred years and they have learned little.”
    Jack was a drow, a creature as much carrion bird as man, and the king’s senior counselor. Despite his advanced age, he was the closest thing Aspen had to a friend in the Dark Court. Even more than Jaunty, he had taught Aspen how to survive his Unseelie exile. And he’d done it out of friendship, not because the king had assigned him to the job.
    â€œYour Serenity,” Jack added, then looked at the king. Long, dark ears nearly pointing at the ground, Jack bowed much more deeply to the king than he had to Aspen. Then, pulling up a rickety stool next to Aspen, he snatched a slice of meat off a passing tray.
    Aspen caught a whiff of decay as the old drow popped the meat into his mouth.
Must have been a slice destined for the ogres’ table. They like their meat uncooked and half rotten.
“I know the twins are far above my shallow skies,” he said petulantly. He looked down at his still-empty plate. “I am not a fool.”
    Jack chewed rapidly. “By your display with the serving girl—”
    Without thinking, Aspen corrected the old drow. “Midwife’s apprentice.”
    Jack gave him a look that would have curdled milk on a baby’s tongue. “As I said, by your display with the . . . girl . . . I might argue the point. Mercy—”
    â€œIs not highly prized here,” Aspen finished for him, again without thought. “I know. You have been telling me that ever since I arrived.”
    â€œAnd yet you still haven’t taken the lesson.” With a sharp black fingernail, Jack dug a piece of gristle from between two of his few remaining teeth. “You have been listening to that silly old fool Jaunty when you should have been listening to me.” He peered at the gristle as if interested in its history. “Perhaps it’s true that you can take a Seelie lord out of his court but you can’t make him Unseelie. You are soft, boy. Too soft.” He licked his lips swiftly, once, with a thin forked tongue the same drab grey as his skin. “And you need to learn when to keep silent. Oh, not for the way you speak to me. That is as it should be. You are a