“I’m curious, my— ” I caught myself. “I’m curious, Your Grace.”
“Thorne,” he corrected. “And I’m sure you are.”
I arched a brow at that. “What could your needs be if they cannot be met within Primvera?”
“Right now? I wouldn’t have your hands on me if I were there, would I?”
“As I said before, flattery is not necessary.”
“But appreciated?”
I cracked a grin. “Always.”
He chuckled roughly. “How did you end up here?” he asked.
I glanced down at him, seeing the thick fringe of lashes along his cheeks. The sleeves of the borrowed robe floated along the water as I ran my sudsy hands over his lower stomach. The muscles were tauter there, as if he’d tensed. “Archwood seemed as good a place as any.”
“I didn’t mean the city,” he expanded. “But here, in this manor and in this chamber, a . . . favorite of a caelestia.”
Air thinned between my teeth. He wanted to know how I ended up a courtesan, which I wasn’t. None of the paramours truly were, but I was sure the reasons one chose such a profession varied, so I decided to keep the answer simple. “I needed a job.”
“And this was all that was available to you?” A pause. “This is what you chose?”
Heat burned the back of my throat as my eyes narrowed on him. Did he look down on such a profession? Irritation flared to life, and whether I was a courtesan or not, the idea that he thought less of the trade needled my temper. I started to lift my hands. “Is there something wrong with choosing to do this?”
His hand moved faster than I could track, closing over mine and trapping it against his chest. My heart stuttered at the feel of his hand around mine, and there being no thoughts, no images. He kicked his head back, his eyes meeting mine. “If I thought there was something wrong with that, I would not be where I am and nor would you.”
I nodded, watching his pupils expand and then shrink back to their normal size.
The Prince’s gaze held mine. “I only ask because of the way you speak. Your dialect and words. It’s not what you typically hear from one who is not of the aristo class,” he noted. “Or within those of . . . your trade. You’ve been educated.”
I had been educated. Kind of. It wasn’t a formal education like Grady had received before his parents died of a catching fever, leaving him an orphan. Nor had it been one sanctioned by the Hyhborn, but the Prioress had taught me how to read and write and to do basic math, and the Baron had insisted that I speak properly.
But Naomi spoke properly too . . . unless she was angry. The same could be said about Grady and me, and then we’d slip into a less formal way of speaking.
“My education and how I speak don’t make me better than anyone else, nor less than an aristo,” I said.
He huffed. “What a novel thing for a mortal to say.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“From my experience, mortals seem preoccupied with who is better and who is less than.”
“And the Hyhborn are different, Your Grace?”
His lips twitched at the emphasis on his title. “We once were.”
Now it was I who huffed.
“You don’t believe me?”
I shrugged, thinking it was rather ridiculous since they were the ones who created the class structure.
“You do know that Hyhborn cannot tell a lie.” A smile played over his lips.
“So I’ve heard.”
He chuckled, releasing my hand as he faced forward once more. I remained as I was for several moments, my palm still flat to his chest, to where his heart should be located, but I . . . I felt nothing.
My brows furrowed. “Do you . . . have a heart?”
“What?” He laughed. “Yes.”
“But I don’t feel it,” I told him, a little unnerved. “Is it because your skin . . . is so hard?”
“It’s not that,” he said. “My heart hasn’t beat in a long time, not as it would for a mortal.”
I opened my mouth, but I was at a loss as to how to respond to that— at the reminder of how different we were. Drawing in a soft breath, I shook my head as I slid my hand from his chest. I didn’t know why I said what I did next. The words sort of spilled out of me. “This is not what I always want to be,” I shared, and goodness, that was the truth if there ever was one. “This is not the future I planned as a child.”
The finger of his right hand began to tap idly along the rim once more. “What’s the future you planned?”