Read Online A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

tongue tripped over the name. “I could hear her from outside. She’s . . . she’s really good.”
    Trudy smiled, revealing crooked teeth. “Got good taste then. I was beginning to wonder, seeing you come over here with this one.” She tilted her head at Tristan, who promptly elbowed her in the side.
    Aurora glanced back at Nettle, standing on the stage alone, now singing to an upbeat rhythm that made Aurora’s toes twitch.
    â€œThere we go,” Tristan said, pressing a large mug into her hands. “One mug of mead.” She raised it slowly to her lips and took a sip. She was surprised to find it sweet and rich like honey. It warmed her throat, and she took a bigger gulp.
    â€œLike it?” Tristan asked, and she nodded.
    Another customer appeared at the end of the bar. “Evening, you two,” he said. “Two pints of ale, please. And one for yourselves, in celebration of the princess’s return.”
    â€œI’ll take this one,” Trudy said, and she bustled off, leaving Aurora alone with Tristan again. He swung himself over the barand settled on the stool beside her.
    â€œSo,” he said, “that was my dear, demented cousin, Prudence Middleton. But don’t tell her I called her that.”
    â€œDemented?”
    â€œPrudence. She thinks it sounds like the name of a shriveled-up old shrew. I think it suits her.” Aurora tilted her head, unsure if he was joking, and he laughed. “And I’m Tristan Attwater.” He stuck out a hand, and Aurora took it with tentative fingers. “So,” he said again. “You got a name, or am I going to have to make one up for you?”
    Aurora looked him in the eye. Her fingertips tingled. “What would you choose?”
    â€œLet’s see.” He brushed her hair back from her face and looked at her with exaggerated care. “I dub thee . . . Mouse.”
    â€œMouse?”
    â€œWere you expecting something more regal?”
    She shook her head and took another sip of mead. The sweet burn down her throat made her daring. “Why Mouse?”
    â€œYou look like you’re hiding away.”
    He still offered her that lazy smile, but there was intensity in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, a fleck of something that seemed to cut to the core of her. She stared down at the mug in her hands, but she could still feel his eyes on her. “I’m not hiding from anyone.”
    â€œNever said it was a person.”
    She gulped the mead to avoid a reply. Her heart pounded,but it was a different sort of fear than the one she had felt in her tower. Thrilling. Nettle was still singing, and her music brushed against Aurora’s skin like the heat from a flame. Here were people, treating her like she was normal, like she had no fate and no duty and no trauma around her. Someone to talk to, not protect or manipulate. It was, she thought, a first in her life. She wanted to dwell in it longer, in this freedom, where she could breathe and talk and listen and not hide everything behind expectations.
    Yet Tristan was watching her closely, and his eyes seemed to see through it all, the myths and pretenses, to whatever lay curled beneath. The part of her that even Aurora could not see.
    â€œYou were going to tell me about the ceremony,” she said. “What it was like.”
    â€œSo you can paint a mental picture for your future grandkids?”
    â€œI just want to know what I was missing.”
    Tristan glanced over his shoulder, as though checking for lurking spies. “Not much,” he said in a low voice. “It was all speech, smile, curtsy, cheer, speech again. The princess didn’t say anything.”
    Aurora took another sip. “It must be pretty overwhelming for her,” she said.
    â€œFacing the crowd like that?”
    â€œEverything,” Aurora said. “They seem to expect so much from her.”
    â€œYou’re saying you