CHAPTER 10

"I'd rather electricity or proper coffee. But sure, jeans would be great." She paused for a moment, waiting for me but not pushing. Neither of us wanted to do this. "I never wore jeans."

"That's because you're proper. I wore jeans. Horseshit didn't stick to jeans like other pants."

"What about leather?"

"I didn't get leather, are you kidding? I got jeans, and I got ignored." I puffed out a breath and thought about turning the door handle. "Fuck, why am I here? I'm a stable handle. I shouldn't be trying to talk to the fucking prince!"

"Stable handle? Are you still drunk?"

"Still drunk? I didn't drink earlier tonight. I stayed in the library and fretted. That's what I do now. I fret. That's all I've been doing for the last three days. But yes, I'm a little drunk. I took a couple swigs to bolster my courage, and then I got carried away." I pulled my hand away from the doorknob. "Why? Do you think it's noticeable?"

She rolled her eyes, which wasn't a particularly helpful response. Would the dragon pull my head off? He'd been unhinged since the demon king took Fino away. More so than usual. He wasn't safe to be around.

"You're the butler," she whispered.

I stared at her for a solid beat because fuck her, that wasn't helpful either.

"But will the dragon pull my head off!"

"Shh!" she said.

Right, yes, that was too loud. He probably heard that.

I stepped away from the door and took a deep breath. Fino always said oxygen helped the brain. She'd take deep breaths when facing danger.

I took another deep breath.

It wasn't fucking helping.

"Right, okay, let's go over this again." I rolled my neck. "I'm going to go in there and tell him that he needs to get his head out of his ass."

"But respectfully."

"Sure, yeah. And then I'm going to tell him that Fino left him with a job to do, and he needs to do that job or what was the point of her leaving…"

"Except don't mention her leaving."

"Because he might explode into a rage and kill me, right. And I'm going to…" I stalled because that was about as far as I'd gotten in previous practice sessions before I ran out of courage. "Why the fuck does this fall to me? Have I asked that yet?"

"You're doing this because Fino made you promise to keep the master on track," Lala said. "He's lost his way. You need to live up to your end of the bargain so that he can live up to his."

"Right, yeah. The thing is, I always felt a helluva lot more courageous when she was around. The woman gives literally no fucks about what people think. Zero fucks. It's inspiring. Without her, I remember that I am a sad-sack, mediocre butler who used to get picked on by dragons."

"That was only because of your smart mouth."

"No, it wasn't only because of my smart mouth! It was because they have a tendency for random acts of rage."

"When someone mouths off, yeah."

I took a deep breath, hoping this one might be the one that helped.

It wasn't.

"Fuck it. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die." I stepped forward, grabbed the handle, nearly lost my nerve, but then found myself walking into the tower room.

The familiarity of it was like a gut punch. Fino hadn't been at the castle all that long. Months compared to the years that I'd been cooped up here. But in that short time, she'd left a mark. I missed Fino. I missed our banter. I missed her passion for plants and her company. Everyone who knew her felt her absence. This room had utterly been claimed by her. Her favorite weapon—a dagger—lay on the bedside table. Slinky but plain dresses peeked out of the half-open wardrobe. Her spicy smell permeated the air.

I might've just imagined the last one. I still didn't have access to my animal. Actually, the master hadn't pulled out any of our animals. He was supposed to be preparing our kingdom for war, curing the people who still needed it and reuniting all of us with our animals, but none of that had happened. He'd shut down instead. Which was why I was here. He needed to get moving, and apparently I needed to be the kick in his ass.

He sat nude on the bed, facing the window as the sun crept over the horizon. A gash marred his back and dried blood crusted against his skin. He hadn't bothered cleaning himself up after battling in the Mixed Martial the previous night, and I doubted he was worried about tending his wounds so they wouldn't scar. He'd started doing that when Fino came, I thought because he wanted to stop adding to his collection of scars for her sake, but it was obvious he didn't think she was coming back. He didn't want her back. He wanted, above all, for her to be happy, and for some fucking reason, he didn't believe he had anything to offer her. He was an incredibly powerful alpha prince, hot as all hell, with a stellar body, had the sort of rage she liked (she was insane), gave her mighty orgasms (quite loud ones, too), and he didn't think he had anything to offer. He was a real dipshit when it came to women, that much was clear.

He was bent over with his head in his hands, his fingers pushed up through his unruly dark brown hair. The force of his power and status shoved at me, uncomfortably strong, and I didn't even have the primal kick of my wolf to tell me that I should watch myself because a big ol' alpha was in the room.

Releasing the suppression magic had given him access to his incredible reserves of power, even if it hadn't given him his wings back. Not yet, anyway. A bunch of people surmised that when the curse was broken, life would go back to the way it had been, and not just in terms of electricity and running water and all that modern goodness. They believed anything that had been damaged because of the curse would be fixed.