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Chapter Four: The Prince Is A Bug

The palace, Wren decided within her first hour of arrival, was considerably too large for one man's ego to properly justify.

She was assigned quarters barely larger than a broom closet, handed a stack of servants' uniforms in a shade of grey that flattered absolutely no one, and marched by a stern-faced steward directly to the prince's private chambers, where she was informed, without ceremony, that she would now be serving as his personal maid until he decided otherwise.

This is fine, she told herself, adjusting her ill-fitting uniform. This is entirely fine. I simply need to survive this until the curse lifts, and then I never have to see any of these people again.

Prince Alaric Verion was, in person, considerably worse than his humiliating tumble from the carriage had suggested.

He had buck teeth — a detail no bard's ballad ever seemed to properly mention, curiously — and a habit of speaking through them with a nasal, self-important drone that made every sentence sound like a proclamation regardless of how trivial its actual content proved.

"You," he said, looking her up and down with visible unimpressed disdain the moment she was presented to him, "are my new maid."

"Apparently so, Your Highness," Wren said, dropping into the shallowest curtsy she could reasonably get away with.

"I require my boots polished," he said, "my breakfast brought precisely at dawn, and my bath drawn at precisely the correct temperature — not too hot, not too cool, I have exceptionally sensitive skin, you understand."

"How fascinating," Wren said flatly.

"I also require," he continued, entirely oblivious to her tone, "absolute silence while I am reading, considerable enthusiasm while I am speaking, and you are never, under any circumstances, to look directly at me while I am eating. I find it distracting."

Wren stared at him.

"You want me to serve your meals without looking at you," she said slowly.

"Precisely," he said, entirely serious. "Consider it a privilege that you may look at me at ALL other times."

By the end of her first day, Wren had polished eleven pairs of boots — the prince, apparently, owned an entirely unreasonable number of boots — drawn three separate baths because the first two failed to meet his exacting temperature standards, and been scolded twice for "insufficient enthusiasm" while he recounted, at considerable length, a hunting story that involved him personally defeating a boar that, judging by the guards' quiet snickering, had actually been dispatched entirely by someone else.

"You seem distracted," he informed her, midway through dinner, which she was serving with her eyes carefully fixed somewhere near his left ear rather than his actual face. "Servants ought to be considerably more attentive."

"My deepest apologies, Your Highness," Wren said, through gritted teeth.

She lay awake that night in her tiny, cramped room, staring at the ceiling, thinking longingly of dice games and tavern applause and a life where she had never once had to bow to a man whose entire personality appeared constructed from vanity and boots.

He is the actual worst, she thought. An absolute bug of a man. A buck-toothed, self-important, entirely insufferable bug, and I am somehow bound by ancient magical law to fetch his bathwater until I've properly learned humility.

She thought, briefly, of simply attempting an escape.

She thought, considerably more soberly, of the empty silence where her magic used to live, and the deck of cards sitting now on her small bedside table, offering no guarantee whatsoever what fate she'd draw the next time she needed it.

Fine, she thought grimly, closing her eyes. Fine. I'll play the maid. I'll polish his ridiculous boots and endure his ridiculous stories.

But heaven help him, she added silently, the moment I get my magic back properly.