Boggi set the cup down and glared at him. “Try again.”
Caillen curled his lip. “Ah screw this shit.” Yanking his blaster out from under his robes, he shot the cup. He laughed as it spun up from the table so that he could shoot it again three more times. On the last round, it shattered and rained fragments all over the floor before the bowl landed upside down at Boggi’s feet.
Now that was entertaining.
But Boggi didn’t think so. He huffed and puffed, then scurried for the door no doubt to tell on him like one of his sisters had done when they were kids.
Whatever. With three older sisters, Caillen was used to being bitched at. And honestly, his father was an amateur compared to his sisters.
Darling didn’t make a sound until they were alone with Maris. Once the room was clear, he and Maris burst out laughing. “You are evil to your worthless rotten core.”
“Abso-krikkin-lutely.” Caillen blew across the hot tip of his blaster before he bent over and divested himself of the stifling clothes by twisting them off his body to land with a thump on the floor. Bare except for his black pants and boots, he holstered his weapon, then met Darling’s amused expression. “How are you people sane? Really? I grieve exponentially for the childhood you must have had. Don’t touch this. Don’t do that. Hold the cup like this,” he said in a high-pitched, mocking tone as he crooked his hand into a claw. Then he dropped his voice to its usual baritone. “Never thought I’d be grateful for poverty. But you know what? I pity the rich. Y’all don’t know how to live.”
Darling smiled. “There’s a reason I hang out with riffraff like you.”
Maris shook his head at both of them. “Your father’s going to have conniptions over this.”
Leave it to Maris to use a girl word like conniptions.
“Maris is right, Cai. You only have two days to master this before your debut into society. God help us all and especially you.” Darling pulled his lightweight robe off and handed it to him. “Trust me, you can’t be shooting defenseless goblets at the dinner table in front of emperors and governors. You could cause an interstellar incident.”
Caillen snorted. “Didn’t realize goblets were a protected class of species. Fine. Can I shoot tableware or is it protected too?”
Darling laughed again, but didn’t respond to his sarcasm.
Caillen shrugged the robe on so that Boggi wouldn’t call him a savage… again. “This”—he gestured to the ornate palace room that was bigger than most of his former apartment building—“isn’t my style. I don’t belong here and we all know it.” He belonged on his ship, running through blockades and giving cardiac arrests to authorities. Most of all, he belonged in the bed of a woman who was more into keeping rhythm with him than not messing up her hair.
He wanted to leave this place behind and go home so badly he could taste it.
But it wasn’t that simple. He actually liked his newfound father.
And worst of all, he’d made a promise to the man that he’d try this for a year before he made up his mind about leaving.
Why did I pick a krikkin year?
Much like that thirty minutes in his cell, it hadn’t seemed all that long at the time. Now it stretched out into infinity and he hated it. He barely saw his father and when he did all they talked about was how unacceptable his behavior was.
Suck it up, Cai. You signed on for the mission. And he would see it through.
Even if it killed him.
“I told you, Sire. He’s an animal that doesn’t belong here. I realize he’s your son, but honestly, you need to send him back to the gutter that created him.”
Evzen shook his head at Bogimir’s condemnation as he watched in front of the monitor bank in his office. Caillen laughed with his friends while he stood with his hand on the grip of his blaster as if ready to defend at a hair’s notice. It was a cocky stance that belonged to a rogue outlaw. Not a prince.
But a prince he was…
And it was his job to make his son realize that destiny.
“He’s not an animal, Advisor. And you would do well to remember that he is a prince of this empire and as such deserving of a deferent tone when you refer to him.”
While Bogimir blanched from overstepping his position, Evzen glanced at the monitor where Caillen was still grinning with proud satisfaction over the destruction he’d wrought. He, too, was amused by his son’s aim. Rude but impressive though it was. “Granted he’s a little rough around the edges—”
“Sire, please… He h the manners of a ruffian and the sense—”
“He is my son.” One he’d thought dead for these last long years. Dead because he’d failed to keep the boy safe.
To have his son back and alive…