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What was the point in being Prince Regent if he had to do things instead of make someone else do them?
It was good to be king. Well, regent.
And people thought he was prideful. They weren’t wrong, but still.
Perfect.
“The game is lunch, you savage.”
John looked up from the letter and right at Robin, saying in his regular voice, “You are the situation, by the way.”
John also didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, and he couldn’t throw anything very far, much less her.
“Hmm. Maybe I value my life so much and hate you just as much that I could think of no better revenge than to condemn you to me until we die. Maybe I’m marrying you to make you as miserable as you’ve made me.”
If the dress was purposefully designed to be difficult to try to run away in, well, weren’t all wedding dresses? It was no less magnificent.
Like every intelligent man, when any sign of danger appeared, John immediately turned tail and ran in the opposite direction as fast as he could to the safest place in the city. The castle. But not before grabbing the golden arrow. There’d been no winner of the competition, and he wasn’t going to lose it to some backwater uppity peasant who’d crawled out of the forest and was too good with a bow for John’s own good.
“I should break your leg for that. I told you not to move.” “You told me not to scream.” “Not moving was implied.” “You’re going to kill me over an implication?” “You’re Prince John. There are plenty of reasons to kill you.”
Robin could have the golden arrow. John was going to have Robin.
Prince John’s eyes weren’t on her face as he said, “Wow, you really showed me.”
Why was this table so long? And how long would it take Robin to notice if he had new tables commissioned an inch shorter in descending increments and every day had the table replaced with the next smallest until she was no longer what seemed like miles away?
“How was your day?” John only realized he’d spoken after the words had left him. Robin narrowed her eyes so they were slits. “What are you doing?” “I’d hoped that you’d have acclimated to polite society by now enough to recognize a simple pleasantry when it’s presented to you.” John was excellent at recovering even when he was the one who took himself by surprise. “You might be simple, but you’re not pleasant.” Oh, she knew how to wound a man. “Cute, but you know I’m anything but simple, and I’ve been very pleasant to you.” This was more fun than silence at least. “Being pleasant to your
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“How was your day?” “You don’t care.” “That’s presumptuous of you.” And again. “How was your day?” “Ask me that again, and I’m throwing this apple at you. You’ll see my aim isn’t constrained to just arrows.” Her aim wasn’t constrained to just arrows. Luckily for John, he was good at running away and dodging. “How was your day?” “Boring. Will you let me eat in peace now?” “What did you do?” “I went to the stables during lunch and fed your horse a bunch of carrots and sugar cubes to make him fat.”
No, she wasn’t going to figure it out sitting at the other end of a banquet table—one that felt somewhat shorter than it had the first time she’d sat down at it, but it had to be her imagination. She needed to go into the monster’s den.
“My righteous outlaw, my brave princess, my hateful wife, save your people from their greedy, wicked tyrant.”
“Gladly, my cowardly husband. Sit back and watch the people’s hero save them again.”
He called out, “Have a good day, my darling wife?” “A most productive one, my loving husband!”
As he stared at Robin in the candlelight, he had a strange realization. He didn’t want to win if it meant Robin lost.
He’d be the most hated man in the world twice over for her sake.
The original banquet table that had them sitting on opposite ends of the room had been exchanged at some point for a much shorter table that would have allowed them to actually reach out and touch—if they were both standing up and were stretching their arms as far down the table as possible, so not actually all that different from the original distance since they weren’t really at risk of bumping elbows, but it still felt far less formal than their original meals had been. She couldn’t recall when it had happened, but her focus was on her lessons, not the furniture.
It didn’t really motivate him to grip the weapon properly if she was going to do that when he was wrong.
“If I’m going to help you with your bad leg, reason suggests I might need said bad leg.”
So he couldn’t love her. Because he couldn’t bear what would happen if it slipped out. He couldn’t lose what little he did have with her. No matter how much he wanted more. He was the scheming villain who’d caught her in his trap, and she was the righteous hero making the best of her fate. They were a noble tragedy, not a love story. Robin shifted in her sleep, stretching her other leg out and onto his lap as she relaxed even further. Her hair had fallen out of the pins and was spilling over her shoulder. John rested his hand on her leg again and closed his eyes, unable to pretend he didn’t
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John leaned on his own hand, staring Robin down. “Because I’m not going to let anyone leer at or get a handful of my wife.”
Robin rolled her eyes. “This. This is why you’re spoiled. So it’s fine for you to watch me train and put your hands on me but no one else?” “I’m your husband.”
You fail to actually go through with executing your only friend a few times and it loses its power.
John leaned his head against Robin’s, taking in the feeling of her hair against his cheek and in his hand. It was a horrid thing, to be trying to memorize what it was like to hold her while she cried, but John could not help his greedy, wicked heart. If this would be the only way Robin would ever be close to him, he was going to take it and engrave it into his memory.
Then he saw the most incredible thing.
“All of it because I did not know how to tell you I love you. But I do. I love you, and if I must lose you, I will have you face me.”
