Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
I blinked, distracted by how gorgeous Bear was when he smiled. “Uh… no?”
“One of Asger’s sisters broke down and admitted she’d been engaged in a serious flirtation with a foreign prince who was already promised in marriage to someone else.”
“Oh. Wow. That’s kinda—” I began.
“And another of Asger’s siblings confessed that he’d fallen in love with a local schoolteacher—a commoner.”
“Wait, what?” I frowned. “There were two scandals?”
“Annnnd—” Bear grinned openly. “His other sister admitted she’d been writing some pretty well-received racy books under a pen name. And his cousin confessed that he’d been paying a kid to do his homework. And the queen admitted she was pregnant again—”
“No way!”
“Yup. And little Asger himself admitted he’d adopted a stray cat and was keeping it hidden in the barn.”
Against my will, I laughed out loud. “So which was the real ‘secret scandal’?”
“Who knows? Eventually, all of them might have come to light since the truth has an annoying habit of doing that. But Asger’s father consulted the winds of fortune…” Bear rolled his eyes at this. “…and determined that the best way to deal with multiple potential scandals was to let them all blow free at once. The palace released five simultaneous statements, effectively overloading the Ventdestinian gossip networks. With so many salacious revelations to ponder, nobody got too excited about any one story… and soon, all the scandals were old news.”
“Oh my god.” I clapped a hand to my mouth. “Perfect.”
“It was pretty smart, actually,” Bear admitted. “But while that was an effective strategy for dealing with tabloids, privately, the family realized just how much they’d been keeping from one another, so they came up with a way to share their private truths while keeping them in the family. Hence… Secret Sauce. It’s kind of like Truth or Dare. Or maybe more like… Truth or Horseradish.”
I shook my head. “This might be the wildest thing you’ve ever told me about Ventdestine… and that’s saying something, given the story about the weaver and the possessed carpet. How do we play?”
Bear quickly explained the game. Each bowl on the table held a different sauce Lou had ordered from a local place—some mild, some that might make your sinuses weep—all of which had their labels hidden under the bowl.
We’d take turns asking each other questions, and if we answered truthfully, we got to choose which sauce we’d eat, with the only caveat being that you couldn’t choose the same sauce twice in a row.
If we avoided the question or lied, as judged by the other player, we had to eat a sauce of the other person’s choosing and had to answer a second question.
After explaining, Bear moved over to the fridge. “What drink do you want to go with it? I’m having water, but you can have beer or soda or—”
“Beer,” I said quickly. I needed my shoulders to come down away from my ears, but I didn’t want to get drunk and say something stupid. Hopefully, beer would split the difference.
He brought our drinks to the table and sat down while I perused the sauces. A white sauce that looked like ranch dressing seemed safe. A violent red one looked like it might blow my head off, and I planned to avoid that one… at least until Bear tried it first so I could gauge his reaction.
“Okay,” Bear said. “Since you’re a newbie, you decide whether you’d rather ask or answer first.”
“Answer,” I said promptly. “Go ahead. Do your worst.”
He smiled softly. “Why do you have long hair? I noticed it was short in your old pictures.”
His question surprised me. I didn’t think anyone had ever asked me that. “My cousin Pearl had always cut my hair in high school, so it was military-short. But when I got to Yale, I didn’t have anyone to cut it, and I couldn’t fathom paying fifteen bucks for a quick-cut place, so it got shaggy. I couldn’t afford to go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas that first year, and by the time I got home the next summer, my hair was wild. But I liked it. Liked running my fingers through it when I studied. So I decided to keep it.”
“Good choice,” Bear said gruffly. He pointed at the platter of sauces. “Take your pick.”
I dunked a carrot stick in the white sauce and found that I’d been correct—the horseradish was mild and mixed with a lemon-and-dill flavor that was delicious.
I took a sip of beer to wash down the food while I tried to think of a question for Bear as he grabbed a pita triangle and waited.
“What’s the scariest situation you’ve ever been in?” I asked, choosing something related to his job.
He wrinkled his forehead. “Got stuck in an unexpected blizzard on a training run one time. I was alone overnight in dangerous temperatures. If I hadn’t read an article a few days before that mentioned winter survival gear, I wouldn’t have had a survival blanket in my pocket that day, and I might not have made it. I was so grateful I tracked down the guy who wrote the article and emailed him my thanks. Never done a run without one since.”