How would they even know that I kissed DG?
Who: Az, Jeb and (briefly) Sergei
When: January 6th
Where: Az's room
What: Talk of a newspaper article
Jeb had caught a maid outside, asking for the daily paper that he’d taken to reading recently. More often than not, it was full of complete gibberish or useless ads for potions that did not work, but every once in a while it had something worth reading.
Today, he flipped through it lazily, sitting by the window in his room. It was still early in the morning, and he found no reason to be up and about the castle yet. Azkadellia would probably still be asleep, and he wanted to do his best to avoid both Cain and DG as much as possible.
As his eyes skimmed the page, one title caught his attention.
“Cain Men Conspire Against Gale Innocence,” he read aloud, frowning at the article. “What the hell? Father seems perfectly respectable and I’ve barely been here long enough to do anything.” As he continued to read, a pained look found home on his face. Great. Just what the people of the O.Z. needed to think: that the Cain men were some kind of womanizers, or something of the sort. “Note to self: Find the authors.”
Of course, as far as his luck went, the article was written by two ‘Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous,’ apparently they knew just how wonderful their writing was, and sought to remain nameless.
Her latest embroidery project lying in her lap, Az listened to Sergei tell her tales of working on his family’s farm when he was young. She laughed when he told her of one of their sheep who used to bite humans and try to fight every dog they had. Shaking his head, he tried to tell her that the ‘damn thing’ took a chunk out of his pants when he tried to take it to market, but he was laughing to hard himself.
Their laughter was interrupted when a red-faced Jeb burst through the double doors into her rooms, clutching a crumpled piece of newspaper in one fist. When he stuck out said fist for her to take the paper, she shot him a curious look. It took a minute to properly flatten the sheaf so that she could read it, and she felt a mixture of shock, anger and slight amusement at what was written there.
“I’m sure that the Treasury would authorize the money for this potion, if you really feel that you need it to get ar-”
He’d decided that Azkadellia would be the best person to talk to about this, since she’d known the darker side of the O.Z, and perhaps even knew who would be writing this kind of crap about the Cains, and her own sister.
Allowing her to take the paper, he let out a frustrated snarl at her words. “What potion?” Glancing over at the page, he practically ripped the paper from her hands, turning it around and shoving it back at her. “This!” He’d ignore the comment about the potion for now, or at least not freak about it yet. Feeling his cheeks burning with the anger, he could blame genetics for that, Jeb clenched and unclenched his hands, grinding his teeth to prevent himself from hitting something. With Sergei around, it would not have been smart.
“This!” He repeated, gesturing vaguely at the paper. “Who’s writing this sort of crap? Why are they writing it? Who would? How would they even know that I kissed DG? What kind of palace is this? One with recording devices and maids spying on the princesses at all times?” He couldn’t blame Azkadellia for it, but the anger wanted out.
Az had read the article the first time around, but had tried, and apparently failed, to distract either one of them from the anger boiling through their systems. Taking a calming breath, she handed the paper to Sergei.
“Could you please take this to Captain Cain?” She asked in a low voice. “I’m sure he’d want to see this right away.” With a quick nod, he was off. Most likely grateful to get away from the tense atmosphere. “Oh and be quick on his feet should he go for his gun!” She called out as the door closed behind him.
The moment the door closed on Sergei, Jeb closed his eyes with another frustrated noise. If he wasn’t in Azkadellia’s room, he would have knocked over some furniture, possibly tossed a vase filled with flowers across the room, but he couldn’t do that… Even while he was angry, it didn’t seem like the gentlemanly thing to do. Instead, he stared at Az with disbelief. “You… you just sent him to… to father?” While he had no idea how much Wyatt Cain knew about what Jeb had done, the paper might give him the wrong idea, and that Jeb did not want to deal with. He could feel some of the color fading from his cheeks, but nonetheless slammed a fist against the hard wood of her dressed, rattling the piece of furniture, and hurting his hand in the process. “He’ll probably be furious, thought that depends on how much he knows. Do you know how much he knows?” He frowned at her, hoping for a definite answer.
Az shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “He needed to know about the further breach. And I have no doubt Deeg most likely told him right after it happened. She’s never been good with anything but honesty.” She set aside her needlework, prancing fawns and galloping horses were the last thing on her mind at the moment. “But it’s not as if she would spread that around the castle. I didn’t know about it until just now.”
Ignoring the odd feeling in her chest at the thought, she continued to speak calmly. “And to answer your earlier question, as long as there have been palaces and Royalty there have been grimy little news people digging into their lives.” Az stood, brushing off her skirt. “Two reporters cornered Bahst, Raw’s mate, yesterday. They called themselves Tersa and Nattapong. They were munchkins, and she described their interviewing techniques as ‘word twisting.’”
This time, he hit the back of his head against the wall hopelessly. Yeah, DG would tell Wyatt the truth, but would he assume that there was more to it? “Of course, right, of course…” So Azkadellia hadn’t known. Well, news for her, whatever. He’d blurted it out himself anyway. “It’s not as if I did anything. It was just a kiss.”
At the mention of the munchkins, it took a few more deep breaths to calm Jeb down. Though his face was still red, the color was slowly fading away. “Munchkins.” He could already anticipate what poor Raw and his mate would probably have written about them in the paper next, and it didn’t look good for them. He didn’t bother questioning the fact that no one had introduced him to this mate of Raw’s. “And no one captured them then? They have to be found, rounded up, caged, whatever. They can’t just keep on writing this like that.” The rumors had always been plentiful, but this was a little extreme, mostly because it was personal.
“Right.” Az echoed, with a certainty she definitely did not feel. ‘Just a kiss.’
She shook her head, mentally not physically, to get herself back on topic. “No, I thought I recognized them from somewhere, but I was too busy just trying to shield myself from poor Bahst. She doesn’t have the training needed to deal with the emotional messes we all are. Luckily I was able to block any emotions from reaching her, as was Sergei.” She purposefully didn’t mention the doubt she had that Jeb could do the same. Half the time Az herself got a headache from his complicated nature.
“Mother has decided to invite several newspapers to the palace. Before she passes the crown to Deeg the day after her birthday.” Az rubbed her forehead with one hand. “They will be here for several days. Interviewing both DG and myself, and various people around the palace. She feels we need further proof for the people that our ‘story’ is true.”
“Oh,” at least she’d know them if they approached again, and this time; hopefully they wouldn’t be quite as lucky. The mention of reporters something to the palace made Jeb’s eyes light up slightly. “Are they?” It meant he would get a chance to study them, and if anything seemed to be going wrong, any words twisted, the culprits would be found. Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous would not remain so for long. “That’ll be good, I could watch them and find the writers. They’re bound to show up to describe all the wonderful things happening around here.”Now all he had to worry about was avoiding his father and DG until then. “Sorry for bursting into here like that, by the way, you seemed like you were having a good time before…” She’d been laughing, he just hadn’t bothered to care before bursting through the door. “Lots of people don’t believe your story.” and it would probably take a lot more than an article to convince some of them. “Though if you have any more people like that.” He wished he still had the paper, but Sergei had probably already found Cain with it. “You two are better off un-interviewed.”
Az grimaced. Inviting reporters to the palace to grill her was right up there on her list, of things she wanted to avoid, with being repossessed or walking in on Cain and DG in flagrante. “Yeah, good.”
She brightened at the thought of Sergei’s stories. “He was telling me about a mad sheep on his farm.” But she was brought down almost immediately by the thought of those that didn’t believe her about what had happened all those years ago. “No, not many do.” One of the many reasons she dreaded being interviewed is the fact that she was sure to be examined like a bug under a microscope. And she didn’t like being so heavily scrutinized. It was one of the reasons she stayed, hid, in her room most of the time.
“A mad sheep?” He raised an eyebrow, watching the small amount of brightness fall from her face at the mention of people not believing her. Every time Jeb was around Azkadellia, he seemed to manage to upset her somehow, this was becoming a bad trend. Even though this time, he hadn’t really done anything wrong, he’d just burst into her room angry and ready to kill something. “I’m sure the papers will clear it up for the people, they can’t keep hating you forever.” He nodded, hoping the point would be good enough. She certainly looked like she’d been much happier talking about the sheep than the Witch possessing her and all of that. “So, tell me about this sheep, why don’t you?”
Grinning, Az remembered Sergei’s stories of the sheep who liked attacking random people. “Well, I guess one of their neighbors offered them a sheep for free, and his mother tried to warn his father that something must be wrong with it. But Mr. Chaikovskoy thought he knew better…” They ended up spending all night trading humorous stories, including some blackmail material on DG and his father. Only Marion coming to relieve Jeb just before dawn interrupted them. The Princess smiled and waved goodbye as her lead bodyguard exited the room yawning for all he was worth.
Without Sergei’s presence she knew Jeb would be able to work out the anger that was bleeding from him. Because if he didn’t, he was liable to explode. And besides, she didn’t have any irreplaceable objects in her rooms. Or even any she really cared about, not that she thought about it.