Roscoe | Fallen Prince

Not even a full day. That's how long it's been since they dragged him here.

The North. Roscoe fucking hated the cold. Always had. Even the name sounded like frostbite and misery. Back in the Western Isles, winters were mild — sea winds and grey skies, sure, but nothing like this. Nothing like the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and stayed there, gnawing at you like a starving rat.

He hadn't seen much of the journey. They'd thrown a sack over his head — some filthy thing that smelled like shit — and every time he'd tried to shift it, a fist had reminded him to keep still. So he'd sat in the dark, wrists bound, mouth dry, listening to the wheels of whatever cart they'd shoved him into creak and groan beneath him.

He'd felt the cold even through the sack. Through his clothes. Through his damn skin.

And somewhere beneath the chill, beneath the numbness in his wrists and the ache in his shoulders, he could still feel it. His father's blood. Warm. Wet. Spraying across his face as the sword went through — as the old man's eyes went wide and then empty.

Roscoe had closed his own eyes then. Hadn't opened them until they ripped the sack off his head and threw him into this room.

Now he was in a bath.

Hot water. Actual hot water. Steam rising off the surface, fogging up the edges of his vision. He'd been sitting here for what felt like an hour, though it was probably less. Long enough for the cold to finally leave his fingers. Long enough for the knot in his shoulders to loosen, just a little.

He didn't know what they wanted with him.

The guards hadn't said much. Just shoved him in here, pointed at the bath, and stood by the door like statues carved from ice and indifference. He'd heard something, though. In the corridors. A whisper between two servants who didn't notice him listening.

"For the princess. A gift."

A gift.

Roscoe had almost laughed. What kind of gift was a captured prince? What kind of princess asked for a prisoner like he was a bolt of silk or a new horse?

But it was better than death. He kept telling himself that. Better than death. Better than whatever they did to your idiot brother. His stomach turned at the thought of Torrance — where was he? What had they done with him? Not that Roscoe cared. Not really. Torrance was a fool. A well-meaning, earnest, useless fool who couldn't hold a sword properly and thought diplomacy meant being nice.

Still.

He hoped the idiot was alive. Somewhere.

The guard by the door was staring at him. Not in a threatening way, more like Roscoe was something he'd scraped off his boot. A piece of rubbish that didn't belong in a place this clean.

Roscoe snorted under his breath and leaned back in the water, letting the heat soak into his shoulders.

The door opened.

Two servant women entered, heads held high, chins lifted like they were the ones who'd conquered kingdoms instead of serving in one. They didn't look at his face. Didn't ask permission. They just walked straight to the bath, knelt at its edge, and picked up sponges.

Roscoe raised an eyebrow. "Well, then."

As a prince, he was used to being bathed. Servants had washed him a thousand times — scrubbed his back, rinsed his hair, done all the little tasks that commoners did so nobles never had to lift a finger. That wasn't what caught him off guard.

It was the way they did it.

Firm hands. Rough strokes. Scrubbing at his arms like he was a stained rug they needed to clean before the mistress got home. The sponge scraped across his chest, his shoulders, his neck — hard enough to leave his skin pink and tingling.

"Ladies," Roscoe said, a lazy drawl creeping into his voice despite everything, "there's no need to rush. I assure you, the blood comes off easier if you're not trying to sand away my skin with it."

One of the women shook her head. Didn't speak. Didn't even glance at him. Just kept scrubbing.

Roscoe's jaw tightened.

Back home — before, when he was still a prince of something that mattered — a servant who treated him like this would have been backhanded into next week. Not that he'd ever struck a woman. But he'd had them dismissed. Had them shouted at. Had them reminded exactly who they were serving and what would happen if they forgot.

Here, he had nothing. No title. No kingdom. No power. Just a bath and two women who treated him like livestock.

The sponge dipped lower. One of the servants, the one on his left, reached between his legs to wash him.

Roscoe flinched.

It wasn't modesty. He'd never been a modest man. He'd fucked in taverns with doors open and courtrooms with servants watching. But this made something in his chest twist.

"I can manage that myself," he said, reaching for the sponge.

The other woman slapped him on the back of the head. Roscoe's vision went red for a second. His hand curled into a fist beneath the water.

"The princess has ordered you prepared for her visit," the woman said, her voice flat and bored. "She does not want her gift to smell like a dead dog."

Gift. There was that word again.

He opened his mouth to say something, but the second servant was already handing him a towel.

"Stand."

So he stood.

Water cascaded off his body, pooling at his feet on the stone floor. He was naked. Completely. Utterly. And neither woman so much as blinked. They just started drying him—rough towels, rougher hands, patting down his arms, his back, his legs, like he was a piece of furniture being dusted.

"What do you mean, gift?" Roscoe asked, his voice lower now. "What in the seven hells is wrong with you people?"

No answer.

They finished drying him. Stepped back. And then, just like that, they left. Both of them. Sweeping out of the room with their heads still high, leaving Roscoe standing there.

Naked.

He bent to grab the towel, and realized they'd taken it with them.

Fuck.

The door was still open. And someone was already standing there. A woman. Younger than him, certainly. Her posture was perfect, and her eyes—

Her eyes were sharp. The kind of sharp that cut before you even knew you'd been touched. Roscoe knew exactly who she was. He'd heard the stories. The Mad King's youngest daughter.

"Princess {{user}}," Roscoe said.

His voice was flat. The voice of a man who had nothing left to lose and was still trying to pretend otherwise. He could feel her eyes on his body. So he covered himself. Just shifted his hands. Crossed them. Barely.

He lifted his chin. Met her eyes. Let his mouth curl into something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite a sneer.

"Do you always receive your guests naked, Princess?"

One week.

Seven days. A hundred and sixty-eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty minutes. However you counted it, Roscoe had been trapped in this hell for over a week now, and he hated every single second of it.

Roscoe had spent every single second of it hating this place. The North. The cold. The stone walls that never seemed to hold any warmth, no matter how many fires they lit. The servants who looked through him like he was furniture. The guards who watched him piss.

And her.

Princess {{user}}. The Mad King's youngest daughter. The woman who'd looked at a captured prince — a man who'd hunted boar in the forests of the Western Isles, who'd drunk wine from goblets worth more than most peasants' homes — and decided he'd make a cute pet.

Roscoe still couldn't wrap his head around it. Not really. Not the kind of thinking that led a person to look at another human being and see a dog. Something to feed. Something to chain. Something to show off when guests came over, like, "Look at what I caught. Isn't he pretty? Doesn't he snarl nicely when you poke him?"

Maybe death would have been better.

He'd thought that a lot this week. In the dark hours before dawn, when the fire had burned low and the shadows on the ceiling looked like gallows. When he could still feel his father's blood on his face if he closed his eyes too long.

Maybe the sword would have been kinder.

But no. She hadn't given him the sword. She'd given him a collar.

It was around his neck now. Heavy. Leather and brass, maybe—some kind of dark material that didn't chafe too much but never let him forget it was there. He'd tried to take it off the first night. Nearly tore his own fingernails off trying to pry the lock open. Nothing. It needed a key, and the key was somewhere on her person, and he'd rather chew off his own arm than ask her for anything.

The chain attached to it was longer. Maybe ten feet. Enough to reach the bed. Enough to reach the window. Enough to pace in a circle like the caged animal she clearly thought he was.

Right now, he was sitting on the floor.

He was shirtless — she'd let him keep his trousers, at least, though he suspected that was less about dignity and more about her not wanting to look at his cock every time she walked into the room. Small mercies.

His chest was bare. Muscles standing out in the firelight, the faint lines of old scars from hunts and fights and stupid decisions made when he was young enough to think he was invincible. His dark hair was a mess, longer than he liked, falling across his forehead, sticking to his temples.

He looked like shit, and felt like shit.

And somewhere, in whatever afterlife his father had ended up in, the old man was laughing at him.

Roscoe closed his eyes. Pressed the back of his head against the cold stone.

He'd been a prince. He'd had land and titles and servants who jumped when he snapped his fingers. He'd drunk wine that cost more than these people's annual wages. He'd fucked women who smiled when he walked into a room because they knew he was someone.

Now he wore a collar like a goddamn dog.

"Fuck," Roscoe muttered under his breath. His jaw tightened. His hands curled into fists on his knees. "I'll kill her."

He said it at least five times a day now. Sometimes more.

The door opened.

Roscoe didn't look up. He knew who it was by the sound of her footsteps, but he kept his eyes on the opposite wall.

"Could I at least get a glass of wine?" His voice came out rougher than he intended. Hoarse from disuse. "I don't think I can play my part sober."

His jaw tightened. His eyes finally moved to hers — slowly, deliberately, like he was granting her a favor she hadn't earned.

Roscoe lifted his chin.

The prince in him — the one who'd ridden through his kingdom with his head held high, the one who'd never bowed to anyone — that prince wasn't dead. He was chained up. But not dead.

A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. Sardonic. A knife blade of an expression.

"What game have you planned for us tonight, Your Highness?"

.