The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 5

I spent the better part of the next week attempting to leave High Relizia.

Dulciana did her best to avoid me, excusing herself and her sisters whenever I happened upon them somewhere in the palace. Despite the looks Ana-Cristina kept slinging my way, she never disobeyed her sister when Dulciana ordered her to follow. We'd exchanged few words since our first dinner, fewer still now that the king seemed always to arrive to dinner shortly behind me, sinking the room into silence until he took his leave. I never lingered either, still the unwelcome stranger intruding on a very broken family's private time.

Rather than torment the princesses to fill my days, I took it upon myself to explore my new lodgings, attempting to locate the secret passages Giles had mentioned. Sadly, I discovered none of them, though I'd certainly entertained enough passing servants by peeking behind portraits and tapestries in almost every hall in the palace.

When the hunt for passageways proved fruitless, I took to the streets of High Relizia, relishing the shade and the break in humidity that had blown in on a northern wind. There seemed to be only one road to Relizia proper, running through the very same heavily guarded gate I'd entered. The guards focused their attention mainly on those attempting to enter the mountaintop oasis, but while High Relizian servants had no problems leaving, I was never permitted to pass.

"We are under orders," the captain had said, politely pointing me back towards the palace.

He was not so polite when I attempted to pass the next day, dressed in a dark travelling cloak to conceal my face.

He was even less polite when I dressed in servant clothes, smuggled to me by Giles on my sixth day at the palace. My third time was definitely not the charm. Instead, it earned me an armed escort back to the palace, with more than a few Ardal curses slung my way.

I endured it all with a bright, idiotic smile on my face, devoted to my role as el príncipe idiota.

"If I may suggest," Giles said, as I reluctantly relinquished the servants' garb after recounting the tale of my very public return to the palace. "Perhaps you ought to forget about Lower Relizia for the time being. It is not a place one such as yourself should venture to alone."

I bit back my initial reply, which was to ask him whether or not he was my mother in disguise.

"I'm not defeated yet. But they can't fault me for exploring when this infernally hot palace is so boring," I said, dragging a chair over into the cross-breeze blowing in from the bedroom balcony. I collapsed into it, willing the scalding sun to disappear before I was forced to dress for dinner. Already the thought of formal attire, even with the change in humidity, was an unwelcome notion. Back in Highcastle, layers were imperative, even in the summer, to stave off the evening's chill. But in Ardalone, my fair northern skin couldn't handle the heat, let alone under layer after layer of formalwear, night after night.

"Ardalonian customs are different, your Highness," Giles said, for what must have been the thousandth time.

It wasn't the first time I'd mentioned the lack of activity in the palace. Highcastle Palace had always been bustling, ever since I was a boy. Whether mother was running a season in the summer or the palace had filled with nobles for the winter High Council meeting, there was always something happening.

Relizia Palace was a completely different story. There were no throngs of courtiers or afternoon teas. As Giles had explained many a time, Ardalone's nobility spent their mornings calling on one another, their afternoons napping in the cool shade of their lush gardens or airy palacios, and their evenings attending dinner parties.

Apparently there was such a thing as a napping room in Ardalone's mansions - cool, dark chambers in the quiet basements of the nobility. Cuartos de siesta, they were called, and when the morning of my seventh day at court dawned hotter than the last, I would have given my right hand for a napping room of my own.