Captive Prince: Book One of the Captive Prince Trilogy by C. S. Pacat

Author:C. S. Pacat
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-01-28T08:00:00+00:00

“The Prince’s orders,” Damen was told the next day, as he was stripped and re-dressed. And when he asked what these preparations were for, he was told that tonight he would serve the Prince at the high table.

Radel, clearly disapproving of the fact that Damen was being taken into refined company, delivered a peripatetic lecture, striding up and down in Damen’s room. Few pets were invited to serve their masters at the high table. To offer him this opportunity, the Prince must see something in Damen that surpassed Radel’s understanding. It was pointless to instruct someone like Damen in the rudiments of polite etiquette, but he should try to keep silent, obey the Prince and refrain from attacking or molesting anyone.

In Damen’s experience, being taken out of his rooms at Laurent’s request did not end well. His three excursions had comprised the ring, the gardens and the baths, with a subsequent trip to the flogging post.

His back was by now mostly healed, but that was of no consequence; the next time Laurent struck out, it would not be directly at him.

Damen had very little power, but there was a crack that ran right down the middle of this court. If Laurent would not be persuaded, Damen must turn his attention to the Regent’s faction.

Out of habit, he observed the security outside of his room. They were on the second floor of the palace, and the passage they walked along had a number of windows fretted by grilles, looking out on an uninviting sheer drop. They also passed a number of armed men, all wearing the livery of the Prince’s Guard. Here were the guards that had been absent from the pet residences. A surprising number of men: They could not all be here for his benefit. Did Laurent keep this kind of security about him all the time?

They passed through a pair of ornate bronze doors, and Damen realised that he had been brought into Laurent’s own chambers.

Damen’s eyes raked the interior derisively. These rooms were everything he would have expected of a princeling pampered lavishly, extravagantly, beyond reason. Decoration overran everything. The tiles were patterned, the walls intricately carved. The vantage was enchanting; this second-floor chamber had a loggia of semicircular arches that hung above gardens. Through an archway the bedchamber could be seen. The bed was swathed in sumptuous curtains, a panoply of luxurious embellishment and carved wood. All that was missing was a rumpled, perfumed trail of clothing strewn across the floor, and a pet lounging on one of the silk-draped surfaces.

There was no such evidence of habitation. In fact, amid the opulence, there were only a few personal effects. Close to Damen was a reclining couch and a book, fanned open, revealing illuminated pages and scrollwork glinting with gold leaf. The leash Damen had worn in the gardens also lay on the couch, as though tossed there casually.

Laurent emerged from the bedchamber. He had not yet closed the delicate band that collared his shirt, and white laces trailed, exposing the hollow of his throat.

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