“We are not doing anything that will get us kicked off the ship or thrown in the brig.” Aster said firmly. He sat cross legged on his bed across from Dru, both attacking the food from the restaurant as they attempted to strategize. Well, fighting over it really. Dru was greedy and not good at sharing.

  Dru at last dropped the bite of carrot they had both stabbed with a fork at the same time, and grinned with a hapless shrug. “This is a heist. So no guarantees.”

  “Alright.” Aster amended. “We are not going to get CAUGHT doing anything that can get us kicked off the ship or thrown in the brig.” He pointed his fork at Dru for emphasis before eating the carrot triumphantly.

  “Look, listen, I’m sure that he knows he cheated! So how is he going to report the stuff he stole, as stolen from him, ya know?” Dru adjusted her round glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “I figure it will be marked down as a wash.”

  “You would be surprised at the audacity of some people.” Aster said darkly. “Actually, no you wouldn’t.”

  “Just as well you won’t be trying to win it back because to get in the game we would need a stake of our own, money. And I don’t suppose you would want to –” Dru said, her voice a gentle suggestion, a hope.

  “No.” Aster cut her off with the shortest full sentence known to man.

  “Okay. I figured!” Dru put her hands up. “Just putting it out there. Because I know your kind are way better at cheating than you think, and you would pick up the game easily. Okay, if not cheating, call it being incredibly lucky.”

  “Will you stop with this “your kind” bullshit already?” Aster said, exasperated. “I am a human person from a long line of human people and I am not good at everything or especially lucky. I’m just short, okay?”

  “Sure, just what a regular human person would say.” Dru said, a teasing twinkle in her eye.

  “You said you would stop.” Aster pointed out.

  “Alright. I know.” Dru said. “We already established I’m a liar.”

  “Not to me though!” Aster said. “If I am going to spend any more time in your . . . presence . . . I need that writ in stone.”

  “I’m not allowed to lie to you, specifically, ever again?” Dru asked.

  “That’s right, me specifically. I don’t like it and I won’t tolerate it.” Aster said.

  “OooOoo. So intimidating.” Dru said. “Okay, no lies between us.” Dru made a gesture across her throat and an x over her chest. “Cross my heart, hope to die, etc.”

  “Between us? I never said I wouldn’t lie to you.” It was Aster’s turn to tease. He winked at Dru. “But I’m basically an open book. There is nothing to lie about.”

  “Bullshit! I have an uncanny ability to tell when someone is full of secrets and you fit the bill.” Dru said, but she was grinning, all white teethed sassiness to take the edge off it. Her eyes like the cat that ate the canary behind those magnifying round lenses.

  “Maybe other people’s secrets.” Aster said, suddenly thoughtful. “I am a good keeper of them. I wonder if you can just fill up with other people’s black secrets until one day you over flow and spill them out all over the place.”

  Dru leaned back on her hands and stared up at the ceiling. “Whoa, that’s deep. Or maybe sexual. Is it sexual?”

  “Oh shut up.” Aster laughed in spite of himself.

  *

  Elwin was exhausted from the waiting. He didn’t know when the last time he had eaten was, and he had only darted off once briefly to pee and drink some water back in their room. Otherwise he tried to be inconspicuous in his waiting, which probably didn’t work. Although luckily there was plenty of traffic in the hallway.

  That is until it got to the wee hours of the morning and the gambling parlors and bars began to shut up, and the last few stragglers and employees began to disperse.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Elwin knocked again, furtively, gently, on the out of order bathroom door. He ran his hand through his dirty hair. What could he do? Unlike the wrong Prin, he didn’t think he was capable of just breaking the door, especially not without raising a ruckus. And then they would be in an easily accessible unlocked room with whatever remained . . . He shuddered. He tried to steal himself for the sight.

  Finally he heard a soft click and the doorknob slowly turned.

  The door opened the barest crack. Elwin found himself suddenly terrified, as though having no idea who or what was on the other side. He put his hand over his chest, to hold his heart in place. How could it be anyone but Prin? If not his Prin then the other one anyway, who hadn’t seemed to want to harm him early with plenty of chance to.

  “Prin?” He hissed a whisper on an exhale of breath.

  The door opened a little wider and a bloody hand reached through the crack and pulled him inside.

  Elwin stumbled through the doorway, his breath catching in his throat.

  Prin stood before him, completely naked and coated in sticky red blood, already going brown in some places. His hair stuck up in every direction and his face, what patches of skin you could see anyway, had gone pale. His eyes, wildflowers in a battlefield.

  “I think I fell asleep on the floor . . .” He said. There was a lot of blood on said floor, and some on the walls, sinks, the two stalls as well. Prin looked around in groggy bemusement. “I know what I did and all . . . but it’s always fuzzy at the beginning especially . . .”

  “Prin. Pri-iin.” Oh how Elwin had missed his prince, the real one. The imposter hadn’t fooled him for a minute but it was so uncanny and unsettling to watch him try. Elwin held out his arms and went to Prin for a hug.

  “No! Don’t – Don’t touch me.” Prin turned to face the mirror. “I’m too dirty.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Elwin wished for towels and a bathtub but what he had was paper towels, hand soap and shallow sink basins. He had done more with less.

  The bathroom was black and white tiled, with some kind of stone or marble for the sinks. It was classy. It was destroyed.

  Elwin took Prin’s hand in his, it was cold and sticky, clammy. Elwin took the other hand and put them both under the warm water tap and squirted out some soap onto his paper towel wad. “Why are you naked?” He asked the question mildly, knowing that whatever the answer would be was making him anxious. He tried to act neutral.

  “My clothes didn’t get dirty.” Prin said. “And . . . in here? With the tiles? He planned it this way. He p-planned this.”

  Elwin kissed the back of his hand. “Lean down.” When Prin didn’t move he reached up and lowered Prin’s head toward the sink. “I’m just glad you’re back.” He scrubbed the blood from Prin’s beautiful face. “So glad. You have been gone for a while.”

  Prin was silent for a long moment, leaning down and allowing Elwin to wash the blood from his neck and chest.

  Elwin wondered if he thought Elwin meant just gone in the bathroom, which was several hours.

  “I was still in there the whole time.” Prin looked at Elwin with the eyes of a startled rabbit. “It’s always been me the whole time, you know.”

  “Shh, no, what are you talking about? I . . . I met him, and believe me, he isn’t you.” Elwin tutted. He kissed Prin’s hand again and then took his face in both his hands and pulled it close, kissing the corner of his mouth. “My Prin is kind and gentle.”

  “Yes.” Prin’s eyes fluttered closed and opened to half lidded sleepiness. “Yes.”

  “Sweet and wonderful.” Elwin added.

  “You’re too good to me.” Prin said.

  “You don’t deserve this.” Elwin said. “It’s not your fault.” He wiped the rest of the blood spatters off Prin as best he could, this would have to do until a proper bath could be arranged.

  “I don’t know what I would do without you.” Prin said. His voice was flat, near emotionless with the effort of just staying awake and upright. Elwin knew he meant it though.

  “We have to get back to our room. Somehow.” Elwin looked around the bathroom, as though an answer would jump out and grab him. He couldn’t see what was in the shadows of one of the stalls, door half closed, just an increased pool of blood on the floor, seeping out over the tiles like an overflowing lake.

  Elwin washed his own hands and picked up Prin’s clothes, neatly folded in a stack by the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Prin’s eyes shot open wide and he stared at himself in the mirror, as though seeing something different there than what Elwin could see. “No, we have to clean all this up. No trace, no trace. He had a plan for this too. It must be nice, to take off as soon as you’re finished and leave us with all this mess to clean up.” It sounded like the mumbled ranting of a mad man, if you didn’t know any better.

  “What plan?” Elwin gestured around them. They were stuck in a small room, in the middle of the entertainment area of the ship, with no choice but to be seen going back out the way they came in and leaving all this . . . wrongdoing behind for the staff who came to fix whatever had broken to see. Luckily it was the wee morning hours and there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic on the other side of the door. But that was all he could feel lucky about. “How would we even clean all this or get rid of that.” He gestured toward what he knew without looking was behind the stall door. Red bones. He didn’t need to see it again but he knew it was inevitable.

  “Well.” A little smile creased the corner of his mouth. “Apparently, there are staff passageways.” Prin went to the corner of the room and pressed on a section of tiled wall, which popped open revealing a dark corridor with a jaunty little metal cart loaded with a mop, rags, cleaners, buckets, everything one could need. “I wasn’t meant to fall asleep for so long. Because the one problem in the plan, is what if someone had come in through here, you know? But they didn’t, they didn’t. Maybe he wanted them to? But they didn’t.”

  Elwin couldn’t tell if he was more impressed or more disappointed. Disappointed that he had the things on the cart and would now have to use them.

  “No one will ever know what happened to him.” Prin punctuated those ominous words with a wider smile, as though expecting Elwin to be impressed. At least a little bit.