Friend
If the man noticed how much of a hopeless fool Goss was, he made no show of it. He merely smiled, which just made staring even more difficult not to do.
He was beautiful. Taller than Goss by at least a head, slender but strong like Tolan, with warm, pale brown skin and eyes the deep green of the shallows at Seabolt when Goss drifted in an old rowboat enjoying the cool air drifting over the water. They were deep-set, with almost no lashes to frame them, unusual in a place where people used fake lashes when they couldn't make their own look long and thick.
He was also dressed in strange clothes, with many layers of bright colors held in place by sashes, rather than all the belts, buckles, and countless ribbons that were currently the fashion. His hair fell past his waist, even braided as it was. Goss wanted to see it loose. In his bed.
Swallowing, desperately shoving those thoughts where they belonged, he cleared his throat and said, "I'm sorry, I think I'm more exhausted than I realized. Thank you for the assistance, my lord."
The man chuckled and gently led Goss away from the fisherman, his arm not sliding away until they were clear of the harbor and Goss felt steadier on his feet, though how the man knew that, he couldn't begin to guess. "It is my honor and duty to serve where needed, which I'm sure you appreciate, given your own words to those men. My name is Tae Min. You are Lord Seabolt, I believe?"
"Not yet," Goss said, looking away before he hurt himself or did something stupid. "The ring was gifted to me when I started my apprenticeship, but I won't officially take up the title until I'm twenty-five."
Tae Min's brow furrowed briefly, but instead of the questions Goss dreaded, he only smiled again and said, "That was impressive Binding. I normally do not see such skill in one so young."
Goss gave him a look. "I'm twenty, and you cannot be much older than that."
Laughing brightly, face lifted to the sky, shoulders shaking, Tae Min eventually managed to say, "You flatter me, my new friend. I am thirty-one as of a month ago."
"You're lying."
"I promise you, I am not. I am my mother's second child, of five. The youngest of us is twenty-five, my fine sister, who shows every promise of taking after our mother, while us boys flit about the world doing other things, though all of them vital to my honored mother and the people we serve."
Goss's chest seized as the words spun through his mind. Something about them, Tae Min's whole demeanor, the quality of his clothes… "You're not a lord."
Tae Min's levity faded, though a hint of ruefulness lingered in his eyes alongside resignation. "Well, I'm not not a lord. That is one of my titles."
"You're a prince. What is a foreign prince doing traipsing about the docks helping strangers?"
That brought back the beautiful laughter. Goss wanted to taste it, wanted to twine around him and feel that laughter in his own chest. Why did the gods hate him so much?
Removing the hand he'd used to smother his laughter as they drew looks, Tae Min slipped it back into one of his voluminous sleeves, bringing his hands together to hide them entirely in the lush fabric. "I wanted to see the city without all the fuss and bother of my title. Thankfully, I am not as important as my brothers. Nobody ever wanted to assassinate a scholar mage."
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Goss said, thinking of his fathers and their unique ability to make everyone in the room contemplate murder.
"Well, so far as I know, nobody wants to kill me, yet. But then, my most daring policy change was to alter a few education laws. Teachers and masters aren't very happy with me, but not angry enough to kill me, I don't think. Though I'm told I've received some interesting letters."
Goss snickered. "I know a thing or two about that. My father, Lord Tolan, has done similar here."
"Lord Tolan? The Master Finder who once found a missing ship that twenty other Finders failed to locate? The one who found that baby—oh, my goodness, you're the baby!"
"I'm the baby," Goss said with a tight smile.
That was him. The almost-murdered baby or the unstable murderer.
"My apologies, I did not mean to make you uncomfortable." Tae Min drew to a stop and faced him. "It is only that we are especially fond of the story back home because it's very close to one of our legends. When I return home, I will be taking five hundred books for the royal academy with me, agreements with no less than thirty esteemed professors and masters of magic to give special lectures, two trade agreements my mother has wanted in place for years, and seven marriage contracts for various cousins. But once I tell everyone I met you, not a bit of that will matter."
"There's not really much to tell. I'm pretty boring. The most exciting thing in my life happened when I was too young to remember it."
The lie chaffed, but damn it, this was the first time he'd spoken with someone who didn't know him, hadn't already judged and condemned him, in longer than he could remember. Nevermind the man was breathtaking, friendly, a prince, and associated Goss with a legend.
His heart was beating so quickly he thought it might pop.
"I refuse to believe that," Tae Min replied, dark eyes sparkling. "Someone so noble he'd help fisherman with a problem caused by another and reimburse them from his own pocket, asking nothing in return? No, such people are never boring." They resumed walking, falling into a lull that, for once in Goss's life, wasn't filled with tension or awkwardness.
As they entered the main portion of the city, headed down a street packed with shops and stalls, his stomach rumbled with hunger for the first time all day. "Would you like something to eat?" he asked. "We could get some stuffed buns. I'm fond of the quail ones, but my father prefers the really sweet ones, and Shaw likes the fruit-filled."
That got him another thought-destroying smile. "I think I'll have to try one of each, from the sounds of it."
"A wise man." Goss stopped at his favorite stall, bickering cheerfully with the old woman who owned it, and came away several minutes later with twice as much food as he'd requested and paid for. But that was all right. He always slipped extra coins into her pot when she wasn't looking. It was just one of their games. "Here you go," he said, returning to Tae Min and handing over one of the buns, which were piled in a paper sack. "Savory, the sweet ones are at the bottom so the sugar on them doesn't get on these. Some are quail, and I also got duck and beef."
"Shall we sit by the fountain there and enjoy them? I am glad I decided to come exploring on my own. My retinue will be irate with me, but they usually are."
They sat, and Goss placed the bag of buns between them, fishing out two and wolfing them down quickly despite his efforts to appear civilized.
"So what would you recommend a visitor to your fine city see and do while here for, oh, three months or so?" Tae Min asked.
Only three months? Goss took a bite of bun to hide his disappointment. Honestly, he'd known Tae Min maybe an hour; he had no business being disappointed. "Depends on what you like. A lot of people come here to buy things they can't buy elsewhere. We have some amazing museums, if you like that. The theater is famous, there's Sealore Park… If you like things a bit more unusual, there's the catacombs."
"Catacombs?" Tae Mi tilted his head. "That's not a word I know, for all I pride myself on my fluency."
"Well you certainly know more of my language than I know of yours—I don't even know what yours is."
Tae Min laughed. "My apologies, I never did properly introduce myself, did I? I am Prince Tae Min Kae, second son of Her Eternal Grace and faithful servant of the Empire of Loran. I am tasked with the improvement of education, standard, magical, and advanced, and marrying off all five hundred of my cousins and "cousins". I am here for those reasons, but also to meet up with my brother, who is journeying here with his wife so that she might visit with family and show off their first child. I suspect they also want to announce a second is on the way, but my brother is being his usual cagey self." He finished off a bun and fished out another. "Now tell me about yourself, my dear new friend, and about these catacombs."
"I really am boring. My fathers are Lords Shaw and Tolan Seacrist. I'm the sole remaining heir to the House of Seabolt and an apprentice Binder. I spend a lot of time helping in the royal library. When I was a little more than a year old, my birth parents tried to murder me as a sacrifice to increase their magical power. I didn't know that, though, until I was ten."
"That must have been a difficult thing to learn."
"It didn't seem real." Goss shrugged. "Sometimes it still doesn't. Everything happened when I was a baby, so most of the time it feels like a story that happened to someone else." He finished the last of the savory buns and removed the sheet of paper that separated them from the sweet ones. "The pink sugar is for custard-filled, the white sugar for fruit-filled."
Tae Min had brightened noticeably at the word 'custard', and Goss couldn't help but file that tidbit away.
Goss nibbled at a fruit one. "The catacombs are the old city, from back when it was abandoned due to disease for a long time. The current city is built on top of it. Mostly it's all been covered up, but there are places here and there where you can see the old city, and two spots where you can actually access it. All sorts of people go down there, and there are troupes that put on plays, clubs that do book readings, poetry recitals, musical performances—almost anything you can think of. I've heard rumors of secret markets and, uh, other things, but I've never bothered to find out if they're true."
"What do you do down there?"
"I like the book readings—they read novels, other popular stories, especially scary ones. When they have one of their masked parties, I like to go to those."
"Really? That sounds positively delightful."
Goss's heart started beating rapidly again. "Would you like to go to one? There's one happening soon—next week, in fact."
"I would love to," Tae Min replied, breaking into another smile. Gods, he needed to stop doing that before Goss embarrassed himself. "For now, though, I regret to say that I should probably be returning to the palace before people try to Find me and administer a sound dressing-down."
"I know all about that. Come on, I know all the shortcuts. So which was your favorite?"
Tae Min sucked a stray bit of custard from his thumb as he rose. "The custard, definitely."
"So you side with Tolan." Goss laughed and threw away the paper. "Most people do, even when they want to kill him." He winked and motioned toward a small side street. "This way. We'll be back to the palace in no time."
After that, Goss was too busy leading the way through the crowded streets, trying to make haste for Tae Min, for them to speak much. But as they finally reached the long, wide steps that climbed the short hill to where the palace was located, Tae Min said, "Would you like to have dinner with me this evening? Soon I will be wrapped up in banquets and luncheons and balls, all the usual affairs, but I have nothing planned tonight. Dinner with my new friend would be a wonderful way to spend the evening."
Goss wanted to scream and cry. "That sounds wonderful."
"Splendid," Tae Min replied. "I'll send you a note with the details." He paused as they reached the main courtyard. "For now, we must part ways. Thank you for the wonderful walk about the city, and the stuffed buns."
"The pleasure was mine. Thank you for helping me at the docks."
"Of course. I will see you later."
Goss bowed, heart stuttering when Tae Min did the same, and headed off before he did something stupid, like throw himself at Tae Min and kiss him senseless.
Dinner. With a friend. Tae Min had called him a friend and invited him to dinner.
It took every scrap of control Goss possessed not to run through the castle screaming his excitement. But he still reached his family's suite out of breath.
"There you are," Tolan said, folding his arms across his chest. "I was about to Find you."
"I was in the city—hardly need magic for that," Goss said. "I'm sorry I ran off. But guess who I met?"
Tolan's brows rose, and he dropped his arms. "Met? I heard you had a rough encounter with Kerra. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. I met Prince Tae Min! He invited me to dinner! Do I still have my purple tunic?"
"Tae Min? Purple? Goss, hold still." Tolan lifted his hands to further urge Goss to calm down, but he was smiling in a way that made Goss's chest ache. "Tell me everything you've done since you stormed off."
"I went into the city and sat at the ruins for a bit, then I helped some fisherman who'd been cheated by a charlatan Binder—"
Tolan sighed. "Why were you doing magic illegally again? Nevermind. Continue with your tale."
So Goss told him, everything right up to the dinner invitation.
"Leave it to you to meet Prince Tae Min as he is traipsing about the city and giving his bodyguards apoplexy. At least he fell into good hands."
Goss smiled, Tolan's praise warming him as it always did. "I need to find my purple tunic."
"Your purple tunic was thrown out for being offensive," Tolan replied.
"It's my favorite!"
"That wretched thing offended me every time I was forced to look at it. I got rid of it the way I should have long ago. It also makes you look twelve, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I am fairly certain you do not want to look like a child in front of His Highness."
Goss's cheeks burned. "Oh, be quiet."
Tolan smirked. "That's no way to talk to your father. Come on, we can do infinitely better than that purple monstrosity you're so unreasonably fond of." He turned and strode off, and Goss could only scramble after him.
They ended up in Tolan and Shaw's bedroom, which was piled with books, papers, and more in carefully managed chaos. Tolan went straight to his dressing room, where Goss found him searching through his extensive collection of clothes.
It was one of Shaw's favorite tidbits to share, the way Tolan had gone from indifferent to clothes to having more than their various abodes could contain. Tolan did not find the story nearly so amusing. He didn't like Shaw telling the whole world how much of a spoiled brat he'd become. That was usually when Goss left the room, because he could only stand to see them flirt so many times, and he definitely wasn't hanging around for the kissing to start. Once was more than enough.
Eventually, Tolan emerged with a tunic draped over one arm. As he held it up for examination, Goss couldn't deny it was absolutely beautiful—dark green at the top, fading through increasingly lighter shades until it was the softest, barest green along the bottom. The whole thing was embroidered with gold and silver ocean motifs—shells, seaweed, starfish, and more—and the sleeves meant to fit close, falling all the way to the wrists. It was an out of style fashion, something that would have been more popular a few years ago, but Goss didn't care about that. He only cared how perfect it was. "I love it."
"I should hope so," Tolan said, and held it up against him. "I'll take it to the palace seamstresses and have them adjust it for tonight, then tailor it to you properly later. I'd wear your white hose and the gold boots. Borrow Moonrise's manservant to do something about your hair."
Goss swallowed and wished his smile wasn't so wobbly. "Thank you."
Tolan scoffed but gave him a quick hug before striding briskly off.
When he was certain he wasn't going to cry, Goss followed him—then stopped short, rolled his eyes at the sight of his fathers acting like they hadn't seen each for months when they'd been apart maybe six hours, and hastened to his room before he saw more of them than he wanted.
Closing the door quietly, he went over to his jewelry case and started going through the contents to find the perfect pieces to go with the new tunic.
Gods, he hoped this stupid infatuation wasn't as obvious to everyone else as it was to Tolan. But Tae Min was eleven years his senior, so it probably was—and yet he'd still invited Goss to dinner. He'd said they were friends.
Did he mean it? Or did he call people 'friend' all the time, the way so many nobles did, like it was just another word for acquaintance. But there was the dinner invitation.
There was also the catacomb masque. Goss loved them. Everybody wore masks and fancy clothes, and it was so dark and crowded and chaotic that nobody knew anyone, rank and money didn't matter, everyone just drank, danced, and had fun.
He'd had invitations for more private fun, but he'd stupidly held out for Kerra.
Who he wasn't going to think about anymore. It hurt too much, and he refused to ruin the best mood he'd been in since…well, forever.
Eventually, he made himself stop fussing with his jewelry and sat at his desk to get some actual studying done. If he mostly just wound up daydreaming, well, at least his fathers were too distracted to come in and catch him at it.
Just as he was giving up and tidying his things away, he heard a knock at the main door. Bolting from his room and across the suite, he threw the door open and smiled at the servant on the other side. "Good afternoon. Can I help you?"
"Message for you, Master Goss, from His Highness Prince Tae Min."
"Thank you. Does it require an answer?"
"No, sir."
Goss bid her good day, closed the door, and tore the note open.
Dear Master Goss,
I am afraid that an unexpected problem has arisen, and I will be busy dealing with it for the next couple of weeks, and so am unable to entertain you for dinner as I wished or accompany you to the masque next week. I hope you will forgive my rudeness. The moment this problem is resolved, I will seek you out to make amends for my behavior.
Your sincerely,
Tae Min
An unexpected problem. Goss balled the letter up and threw it across the room, where it landed only a few paces from the fire.
Him. He was the unexpected problem. Somebody had caught Tae Min up on all the palace gossip, including how despicable Goss was, and he was withdrawing before associating with Goss tainted him. Just like everybody else.
Stupid. He was so fucking stupid, thinking that Tae Min would be different, that he'd actually made a friend, that someone would see Goss and not the violence of his past—violence that had never been his fault, not once, and yet he was the one who suffered the most for it all.
Master Goss. The sacrifice. The killer.
The friendless, the lonely, the miserable.
Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes to staunch the tears, he fled to his room and locked the door. Stripping off his clothes, he left them where they fell, closed the curtains, and crawled into bed. He was done with this stupid, awful day.
It wasn't like anyone would notice he wasn't around, anyway.