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Princess Odette who had not at all been happy to welcome the young prince back this early June, though the whirlwind that was Queen Uberta, who held her tightly and had squeezed her cheeks even tighter in disbelief at time, was a welcome addition to the lonely castle, had grown unhappier still when Bromley had uproariously laughed at her after some comment that Prince Derek then refused to repeat back.
It was not the first time, the Princess fled from the terrible duo and found asylum in the empty ball room, which was the sort of thing that could fill her head with childish daydreams of romance. It was the first time she had attended dance lessons however, and so it came about that once she entered the room, she held up her arms stiffly as she was taught and tried to follow the rhythm from memory. She had let herself get swept away in the fantasy of being in the arms of a phantom prince, who would obviously adore and admire her unconditionally, and never laugh at her, and as she glided across the floor she hummed a happy tune.
She did not notice Prince Derek, watching her with a smirk, until he made his presence known in the most Derek-way that he could:
“You waddle like a duck.”
“I do not,” she squeaked, outraged, as she threw him a dirty look. If he had not been halfway across the room, like a coward, she would have done the unladylike thing and hit him. Hit him hard, because he was expressively not allowed to hit her back after the bloody-nose debacle of two summers ago (it was actually a miscalculation with a wooden sword, but fair was fair). “What do you know about dancing anyway?”
“I had the best tutors. And none of that two-left feet business,” he said meaningfully, and crossed his arms as if he was above it all.
Odette huffed. “Well, I’m sure you practice with Bromley all the time, when you’re holed up together in that shoddy tree-house.”
“At least I’m not hiding away somewhere, dancing alone because no-one else wants me around,” he shot back nastily.
Odette looked back at him with wide blue eyes, that turned glassy when she fully took in his words. She took a small step back and her bottom lip started to do that trembling thing that his mother had perfected. Derek felt an instant pang of guilt, and his mind scrambled as he tried to think of ways to backtrack.
When Princess Odette took another step back, he realized that he had to interfere before it was too late for mercy and he quickly ran up to her.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, trying to sound soothing. “Princess Odette, please don’t cry. I want you around, truly.”
“You always do this,” she told him with a small voice. “You come out to find me, provoke me, and then get mad when I tease you back.”
‘’I know,” he agreed, frustrated, as if he himself did not really understood why he tried to find her at all. “I’m sorry.”
“Your mother would not like to hear about it,” she said, trying to sound threatening. “She would be most disappointed, don’t you think?”
“Odette, come on, please don’t tell her!”
She grinned self-satisfied, Derek might have brought her to the brink of tears but she somehow had ended up with the upper hand. It was an arrangement she liked after all.
“Silence comes for a price,” she said loftily. Straightening her posture, she tried to look regal and poised with all the gravitas her eight year old body allowed, though she felt the frilly puffy pink dress took away from the image she tried to exude.
“You’re a menace,” Derek accused, but the words had no bite and he smiled at her in relief. It felt rather like a compliment. He then held out his hand for her to shake. “Name your price.”
She considered him, and considered the clear marble of the floor. “You laughed at me, you called me clumsy. I’m not a duck,” she told him very seriously, and looked at him sternly as if it was a sensitive point. “As you are the expert, you will prove your claim and teach me how to dance.”
Derek was not altogether surprised at the request, because nothing grated the young girl as much as not being able to keep up with him. His hand was still hanging in the air, and so he used it to gently grab her small hand.
“First rule, the man leads the dance.”
Odette pulled a face, but followed his movements intently; face scrunched up, wispy blonde curls swaying.
A foundation had already been laid down by her dancing tutor, but she found that being led around by Prince Derek, who was much closer to her own height, was the preferable way of learning. He moved with all the boyish assurance that he possessed in his usual behaviour, and for once she could not resent him for it. It was a nice half an hour, that passed by much quicker than she wanted it to. This peaceful bubble was something that only came along once in a while, and it was not a coincidence that it happened after he ditched Bromley.
“Step forward, and back again,” he told her after a while of shuffling purposefully around the ball room. “Good. Now twirl!” And he spun her around until she was dizzy with both the speed and their shared peals of laughter. She let herself fall down in a dramatic fashion and vainly tried to drag him down with her. He finally let himself collapse too, and rolled around until he lay down on his belly some distance away.
With his elbows on the floor, he propped up his face with his hands and looked at her from under his tousled brown fringe. “Well, you took to that like a duck to water!”
She tried to take offence to that, but was still too filled with the unexpected lightness of this afternoon. “Prince Derek,” she said. “You’re not half-bad when you want to be.”
Prince Derek had the grace to look ashamed at that, and his cheeks flushed. “Don’t tell that to mother, it would make her unbearable. More unbearable than usual, that is.” He visibly shuddered at the thought, because while Queen Uberta doted on her only child, almost to the point of smothering, she was not afraid to discipline him with an equal balance of disappointment and guilt.
“If you practice with me sometime this summer, so I can impress my tutor,” she bargained, sticking her chin up with a perfectly unaffected air. “I won’t say a word.”
Before he could take the deal, they heard Bromley calling for ‘Prince Derek!’ like a lost puppy in his grating, nasal voice (if Odette would say so herself). And they exchanged a brief look of camaraderie, in which she fancied she could read an embarrassed sort of apology. He shot out of the room, and she could hear him walk into the other direction, herding his friend away.
That summer they didn’t dance again, though she did push Bromley in the pond one afternoon. That was the second best moment of that summer.