Chapter 30: The Prince’s Growing Collection

"Look at the lining on this one! It’s dark plum silk. Plum. Please try it on! If you hate it, I’ll let you throw it in the river. I swear it!"

Xavion stared down at the Grand Duke.

Xavion had faced countless dangers without flinching. But one hopeful look from Lioren, and suddenly, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse.

"...Fine," Xavion finally relented, sighing softly. "I shall try it."

Lioren’s face lit up so brilliantly it practically brightened the dark timber beams of the shop. "Yes! Excellent!"

Watching from the doorway, Xavion caught a glimpse of Evelia smirking behind her silk fan. I have made a terrible mistake, he thought grimly as he was ushered into the fitting alcove. A truly catastrophic error in judgment.

What followed was not merely an errand. It was a full-scale, relentless siege of the capital’s commercial district.

From the tailor’s, Lioren dragged everyone to a bootmaker two doors down. After that came a hat shop, where he spent a good ten minutes debating whether a wide-brimmed traveling hat would cover too much of Xavion’s good eye.

Then they stopped at another shop for accessories. And just when Xavion thought they were finally done, Lioren dragged them to a second tailor because, apparently, the first one didn’t carry the right shade of deep indigo.

By the fourth establishment, Xavion had come to a profound, exhausting realization: arguing with Lioren Roscaire required exponentially more energy than simply putting on whatever piece of clothing was shoved into his hands.

Whenever Xavion refused, Lioren didn’t argue. Not exactly. He simply launched into a lengthy explanation of why Xavion should reconsider, complete with enough reasons to fill a twelve-minute lecture.

By the end of it, Xavion’s ears were practically begging for mercy. So he learned to pick his battles. Step in front of the mirror, nod once, and let the shopkeeper get on with the measurements. Much less painful.

Evelia found the entire spectacle so hilarious she had actually paid a small boy a copper coin to fetch her a bag of roasted hazelnuts so she could watch her brother work in comfort.

Behind them, the situation was becoming visually absurd. Therin and Caldrin, were currently reduced to human pack mules. Caldrin was carrying four stacked wooden hatboxes and three wrapped parcels, while Therin was stoically balancing two leather satchels of silver-trimmed gloves and a wooden case of brass shoe-buckles under his arm.

"We are no longer shopping," Xavion remarked flatly as Lioren dragged them toward a high-end apothecary near the plaza fountain. "We are preparing a supply train."

"Don’t be silly," Lioren chirped over his shoulder, pushing open the apothecary’s heavy glass door.

Xavion stopped dead in his tracks beside a display of imported glass vials, looking around at the mountain of supplies Lioren was accumulating on the counter.

By mid-afternoon, even Lioren’s terrifying reservoir of shopping energy seemed to plateau.

They took a much-needed break near the central plaza, finding a row of wooden benches beneath the shade of three tall birch trees near the street stalls. The air smelled of roasting chestnuts, horse sweat, and warm yeast bread from the nearby bakeries.

Caldrin dumped his mountain of boxes onto a unoccupied wooden bench with a heavy, rattling thud that made two passing noblewomen jump. He rubbed his sore biceps, groaning under his breath.

Therin carefully set his satchels down beside him, taking out a small silk handkerchief to dab the faint bead of sweat from his forehead.

"I must admit, Your Grace," Therin remarked dryly, his voice dripping with long-suffering administrative weariness, "in all my years serving House Roscaire, I was entirely unaware you possessed such a terrifying, ruthless passion for consumer trade."

"It’s not a passion for trade, Therin," Evelia chimed in smoothly, cracking an apple open with a small silver knife she’d pulled from her sleeve. "It’s an illness. My brother has bought more items in four hours than I have in the last two months."

Lioren sat beside Xavion on the bench, stretching his long legs out into the sunlight and crossing his boots at the ankle. "That is a blatant exaggeration, sister! Most of these items are not for me! They’re for Prince Xavion!"

Evelia raised her eyebrow, taking a bite of her apple. "And does making the mountain of shopping bags belong to someone else somehow make the mountain less ridiculous? Look at Caldrin. The man looks like a walking furniture display."

Xavion, sitting quietly between the squabbling siblings, cleared his throat softly.

"If I may," Xavion murmured, looking at the mountain of boxes, "I am inclined to agree with Lady Evelia. I truly do not believe I require quite so many things."

Despite everything, the atmosphere was light, relaxed, and remarkably pleasant. The warm autumn sun filtered through the yellow birch leaves, casting flickering dappled shadows across the stone plaza. Xavion leaned back against the wooden bench, watching the passing crowd, children chasing wooden hoops, merchants shouting prices, townswomen carrying baskets of apples, and felt a strange, quiet stillness settle over his chest.

For a few minutes, he wasn’t a hostage. He wasn’t a maimed prince. He was just a man sitting on a bench in the sun, listening to a green-haired Duke argue with his sister over shoe leather.

"Right!" Lioren announced suddenly, clapping his hands together briskly as he stood up from the bench. "Break’s over! We still need to check the leather-worker down on Silver Street for a proper sword-belt!"

Evelia let out an audible, dramatic groan, burying her face in her hands. "Somebody find me a deep hole. I should like to disappear into it."

Lioren ignored her, turning around in a full circle to check that Caldrin and Therin were gathering their various satchels. "Everyone ready? Your Highness? You good?"

"Yes."

Lioren offered him a quick, bright smile, then turned his head back toward the open plaza they had crossed twenty minutes earlier. His blue eyes casually swept over the crowded street stalls, the stone fountain, and the line of carriages parked near the tea house.

Lioren was halfway through turning when something caught his eye.

Lioren had spent years patrolling the border. He knew better than to react the moment something seemed off. So he carried on as usual, even as a quiet warning stirred in the back of his mind.

Standing near the awning of a spice stall fifty paces back, half-hidden behind a display of dried peppers, was a man.

He was dressed in the plain, dusty brown wool of a middle-class clerk or a merchant’s clerk, common enough in the capital market that ninety-nine out of a hundred people wouldn’t give him a second glance. He wasn’t staring directly at Lioren.

In fact, he was pretending to inspect a sack of nutmeg. But his posture was all wrong. His feet were set wide, his weight shifted onto his heels, and his eyes kept darting past the spice bags to track Xavion’s blue hair.

Lioren had noticed him two streets ago outside the bootmaker’s. At the time, Lioren had dismissed it, a Grand Duke walking through the market with a foreign prince was bound to draw curious gawkers.

But now? After a few store stops, a tea break, and a walk across the main plaza?

A curious gawker doesn’t follow a party through five different shops without ever buying a single item or moving closer to get a better look.

Lioren casually reached down, brushing a speck of dust off his cuff, his eyes casually scanning the rest of the square.

He had brought six of his own elite Roscaire guards today. Two were walking openly with them, Caldrin and another one, while four more were trailing in plain clothes twenty paces behind to keep the crowd from pressing too close. Lioren knew every single one of those men by face, name, and military record.

The man near the spice stall was not one of them.

Neither was the thin, sharp-faced fellow currently leaning against a stone pillar near the baker’s shop, holding an unlit pipe.

Two of them, Lioren calculated instantly, his mind running through spatial distances with cold, quiet precision. Working in a pair. Keeping distance. Not city guards, not royal messengers.

Lioren’s breezy, cheerful expression didn’t flicker for a single second. He turned back toward Xavion and Evelia, a bright, lopsided grin plastering itself across his face as if he didn’t have a single care in the world.

"Actually," Lioren said easily, clapping Caldrin on the shoulder, "let’s take the long way down Silver Street through the arcades. The shade is much better over there."

Lioren turned and walked alongside Xavion, their sleeves brushing as he matched the prince’s pace. He looked perfectly relaxed, as though nothing was wrong.

On the outside, he was still the foolish, overbearing Duke dragging his fiancé through an expensive shopping spree.

On the inside, every military instinct Lioren possessed was dialed to absolute focus.

Someone was following them, and Lioren wasn’t about to let them get away without an explanation.