Sage went to bed that night thinking about what Taro had said, what Oxley had said, and how disgusted and angry his parents had been. He woke at the first light of dawn, tossing and turning. He eventually rose to brush his teeth and ended up back in bed until Taro changed into his human form and slipped under the duvet beside him.
"Are you going down for breakfast?" Taro asked against his ear while coiling arms around Sage's silk pyjamas.
"I'm not sure, it's going to be really awkward." Sage's heart fluttered when Taro squeezed the warmth into him with a tight hug.
"Avoiding them will get even more awkward. This is your home too." Taro gently kissed his jaw.
Sage turned around and stretched against him. "You're right." As soon as Taro could reach, he kissed his lips. At first, their affection was slow and gentle, until their legs twisted together, and Taro pulled Sage on top of him. Their hands soon tangled in each other's hair. Passion fuelled kisses heated the air around them as they buried themselves under the duvet.
Sage felt hands running up and down his back as the kisses deepened into gentle pleasured moans. They rolled in the bed and Taro's hand shot up the front of Sage's silk shirt. His hands were warm and eagerly welcomed.
They kissed more and rolled again and fell off the bed tangled in the duvet. Sage landed on top of Taro with a hefty thud, clunking their foreheads together. "Ow," they whined in unison, and laughed on the floor until their stomachs hurt. Sage unravelled them and squinted at the clock on the wall. "We can still make breakfast if we get ready now," he said, grinning.
On the walk to the dining room, they passed cleaners and guards and servants and even the Queens own secretary, Finley Wainhouse, who double glanced in their direction with his black beady eyes. He quickly lowered his head and scurried by, mumbling, "Your Royal Highness."
"I should visit Osier and make sure he knows I'm actually not working here anymore," Taro said with a chuckle, walking so closely to Sage that their shoulders fought against each other.
"We'll visit him together after breakfast." Sage slowed when they reached the dining room. One glance at Taro's fierce expression told Sage that he was trying to look anything other than afraid. Having breakfast with the Queen probably wasn't on his to-do list.
"If your mother doesn't devour us," Taro muttered before the guards bowed extra lowly and opened the grand double doors.
Sage swallowed thickly and tried to hold his parents' gazes for as long as possible. Don't be intimidated. His mother, dressed in a burnt orange blouse and a burnt orange silk hair wrap. She stared back without blinking. Her dark eyes followed him to his seat, and then settled on Taro. They shaped with anger and bore into him until Sage started to feel annoyed too.
His father had been mid-conversation with Oxley when they entered. Only silence followed. His parents both stared at Taro, trying to make him uncomfortable. Sage was served tea and toast. He gripped his cup as the awkward silence continued, feeling more and more frustrated that his parents were acting so childish.
But Taro was tough, and his polite smile was more of a smirk, and that made his father's neck turn red.
"What are you two doing today?" Oxley asked as if nothing was out of the ordinary in their perfect world of royalty and riches.
When Sage faced him by the head of the table, he could only think of Patrick. "I don't know," he said honestly, and then turned to his mother. "Why don't you like the green?" He had expected to act normal, to see if there was a chance that his parents would have calmed down after a night's sleep. But returning to normal wasn't an option. Taro Vinea sat next to him as a boyfriend, and his parents hated him.
"They're not royals. We are the royals, they are the protectors, that's all," Marigold replied sternly. "The ancient agreement was a call of desperation from Taro's kind. They work for us because they need us, and they always will. We do not invite them into our homes to date."
Sage scowled. "So, you don't like them because you think you're above them? You're royal, but you're still human, no crown can change that." His mother had not always been so conceited. She revealed a side that distorted her beautiful face into jealousy.
Marigold linked her fingers together. Her long red nails glistened against the light from the chandeliers. "You're my eldest son and I love you, but we're not happy about this, and we will not support it. No amount of talking about it will change our minds."
"Well, I'm not hiding who I am," Sage said bitterly. At least she still loves me. But what a funny way of showing it. "If I'm an embarrassment to you, then I'm past caring." Sage ate his breakfast and went as far as to have another cup of tea. His father soon left in a stomping rage, and his mother floated off, declaring that she had more important things to deal with. Oxley stayed for a while and tried to make conversation, but Sage struggled to look at him. He's a murderer.
Soon, he and Taro and two guards were the only ones left in the room. Sage had never met those guards before, though they smiled warmly when he made eye contact. Sage knew they were like Taro. He had started to notice how they differed from those who were only human. The greens had an aura of serenity around them. Their eyes were bright with a distilled stare of wisdom. Their green nails were mostly covered by golden gloves, but there was something different about the way they looked, something Sage couldn't put into words. It sometimes felt as though he looked at them through a reflection, and their knowledge of the world separated their mental planes.
He wondered how much it hurt to hear the Queen speaking about them in such a demoting way.
They soon paid Osier a visit who was hidden away in his office, writing up the royal engagements for the coming months, so the staff could start planning ahead of schedule. Sage knocked on the door and Osier didn't even look up when he said, "I'm busy, if it's urgent then-"
"Osier," Sage interrupted.
The butler abruptly lifted his round head. The light above shone brightly on his bald scalp. "Your Royal Highness!" he spluttered, standing, and bowing so quickly, everything on his desk wobbled. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Sage motioned for Taro to follow him inside and he closed the door behind him. The room smelt of wood and wine and damp soil from the overwatered plants above the fireplace. "We wanted to make sure that Taro was no longer logged as a worker here."
"Ah, yes." Osier hesitated, then bowed at Taro too. "I removed you as a worker the day the papers leaked that picture . . . Sir."
Sage eyed Taro who was unimpressed by the etiquettes. "Oh good. Just make sure he still gets paid for the hours he has worked this month."
"Of course, Your Royal Highness." Osier bowed as they turned towards the door. "Will you be needing a new Valet?"
"No." Sage nudged Taro who smirked.
"Oh and . . . " Osier stalled, and they stopped again. "Can I just say . . . Prince Sage . . . " Osier cleared his throat. "You're very brave. I assume Mister Vinea isn't a favourite candidate among your family and um, forgive me if I'm speaking out of term here, but I do believe that your father wasn't the favourite candidate for your mother either. Don't let them forget the meaning of a hypocrite, sir."
Sage smiled, and Osier stopped nervously gripping his desk. "You make a great point. I won't let them forget, and I think they need a little reminder. Thank you."
As they climbed the steep servants' stairs, they were so narrow that they could only go up in single file. Taro gripped the back of Sage's jumper and asked, "Is that true about your parents?" he linked arms with Sage once they were in the corridor.
"Yep. He was a cousin of the man with the title and the charm. Though my mum chose my dad because they fell in love. Her parents still don't like him, especial Granma Jasminda."
"She was the one talking drunk gibberish at Arum castle, wasn't she?"
"Yep." Sage marched to his bedroom and opened his laptop. "Would you mind if we left the Palace today?"
"No." Taro sat on the windowsill and looked beyond the glass with a content smile. "Where do you want to go?"
"If she's home, I think we should pay my dad's mother a visit, granny Dalia. She was always really nice to me, even after everything that happened with the tabloids and stuff. It would be nice to know that at least one family member is still on my side."
"Oxley is," Taro mumbled. "As long as it benefits him."
The crowd beyond the Palace wall was so congested, that travelling ten metres took them almost twenty minutes. Sage didn't mind. But he was pleased when they started moving again and smiled all the way to his grandmother's house. Taro had also been smiling, and nudging him with his knee, and absentmindedly tugging at his sleeve on their journey.
Sage accepted all their small touches. He enjoyed the way his heart fluttered, and the way his skin tingled with excitement, and the way he no longer had to hide it.
Dalia waited for them outside her stately home which was gifted to her by the Queen almost twenty years ago. The house was infested with Ivy with grey stone peaking through a gap near the thatched roof. A huge old extension shaped the house into an L. Her driveway was cobbled with a circle water fountain. In the middle was a rose, leaking water from its petals.
"My darling grandson," Dalia said when Sage nervously stood in front of her. "Give your grandmother a kiss."
Sage kissed her soft cheek and hugged her tightly. She always smelt like sweet flowers, and the scent reminded him of fun childhood visits to her home during school holidays.
"Before you say anything," she whispered into his ear. "I've seen the photos and I've read the news articles about you and your boyfriend." Sage pulled back. His once fluttering heart thumped viciously in his chest. She looked up at him with her old blue eyes that were so hooded, her eyelids hid her eyelashes. "I support you," she said lovingly. "And I always will."
Sage exhaled a sigh of relief. "I knew you would."
Her attention then turned to Taro standing awkwardly behind him. "Well, young man, it's a pleasure to meet you!" she hobbled towards him and shook his hand, staring curiously at his green nails. Sage then noticed that her nails were green, too.