Page 154 of Settle Down, Princess

She smiled at me, but not unkindly, because who knew a thing about longing but the sister?

“Perhaps you need to ask them yourself,” she said.

There they stood. Three of them, not four, my heart noted with a wrench. My lips fell open to demand an explanation why, but words stuttered in my throat, because my eyes had control of me. They raked over Arik, Silas, and Roan, taking in their armour, their dust-stained cloaks, the dirt of the road heavy upon them.

“Lass…”

How had I forgotten how greatly I liked to hear that simple word uttered, with so much need and desperation hidden within it? Roan shouldered forward, and something deep inside me flared to life at the sight of him. Was he always so damn big?

“You…” I tried to trace every muscle, every line of him, of Silas, of Arik, as if I could store the sight of them away inside my mind, to be pulled out again and again and pored over. The fact that I was just standing there staring finally occurred to me, so I straightened up and flicked my hands down my nightgown. “You had better come in.”

This was a mistake, I knew that the moment they entered my room. Selene left us to it with a slight smile and a nod, but that didn’t prepare me for the sight of the three of them filling my room with the stink of horses and a cloud of dust.

“Where have you…?”

The words were out of my mouth before I could think twice as my hand jerked up in response to try and stuff them back in. Too late for that, I winced, both due to my bluntness and the stinging cut on my finger. A tiny trickle of blood had slid free, so I was forced to pull a handkerchief from my pocket and wrap it around it, right as I turned to face the lot of them.

“What’s that?” This wasn’t Arik, but the commander, his military bearing forcing his spine ramrod straight as he stormed over, taking the kerchief and my hand before inspecting it closely. “How the hell did you…?” He didn’t wait for an answer, his head whipping around so he could glare at Silas. “This is that bloody knife you gave her. A few hours of foreplay masquerading as a lesson in handling a knife does not warrant leaving a weapon in her hands.”

“So leaving her feeling helpless as she faced down a death sentence was preferable?” Silas snapped.

“Not like we didn’t cut ourselves plenty when we were learning weaponry,” Roan reasoned, but I ended the debate with the most persuasive of arguments. I pulled my hands free of Arik’s, even as I missed the heat of his touch. It felt like it warmed me down to the bone, far more thoroughly than the fire that crackled in the grate. Instead of letting myself enjoy that, I opened the slit I’d cut into my nightdress and jerked the knife from its thigh sheath.

Now I had their attention.

Arik frowned, those brows drawing deeper as I raised my weapon. Roan grinned, his thick arms crossing his chest, but Silas gave me the sweetest of gifts. His eyes lit up with that same green fire as they followed my hand, my knife, as I threw it almost negligently towards the wall. Silas’ sharp hiss had my eyes whipping around, his self-congratulatory smile echoing my own when I turned to see the blade had buried its point into the wood.

“Clever girl…” That little scrap of praise made my body flush hotter than any amount of roseblood could do. I didn’t have the haze of the drug to dull anything, including the smile Silas gave me, nor that grin. I let out a tiny strangled sound, all my mother’s training feeling like it was imploding by the second as he crossed the floor to stand before me. “You’ve been practising?”

“What else can I do?” I said, staring into his eyes, willing him to answer that question the way I needed him to. “How would you propose I spend my time, holed up in here?” I felt a pang of guilt as I gestured to the room. It was a perfectly pleasant space to sleep in and far preferable to anything the palace might have to offer. “What the hell do you expect me to do when you….?”

I blinked and blinked, my eye sockets aching as I stared at each one of them, as if they were the three suns I was doomed to orbit around and I couldn’t stop looking into their bright rays. Instead, I sucked a breath in and stood tall.

“When you disappear for days, leaving me to wonder what the hell had happened to the lot of you.”

Oh, that got all three of them grinning then. Arik drew closer, Roan appearing by my side seconds later.

“Were you worried about us, lass?” Roan asked, tilting my chin up and his way.

Admitting that seemed a very bad idea, so I jerked my face clear and looked at him straight in the eye.

“You’re my only allies in this godforsaken country. Of course I was concerned when I didn’t hear from you for days.”

“Oh lass…” Arik’s smile slowly widened. “That was not why. You lie so very badly for a princess, your nose twitching when you tell a falsehood.”

My hand slapped over my nose, but it was reassuringly still when I touched it.

“It does not. I lied most convincingly that night at the inn.”

“When you tried to escape us?” I couldn’t have told you who growled that, each man moving closer, forcing me back until I was pressed against the wall, the three of them surrounding me. A hand found the slit in the nightdress, my breath sucking in as fingers traced the place where the sheath was strapped to my thigh. “Best not to bring that up again. A bad business that was.”

“There’ll be no need to drug us and sneak off in the night with men who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as you.” Silas settled against the wall beside me. “No need for plots or feints.”

“We left you to try and orchestrate the death of the king,” Roan told me earnestly, those amber eyes pleading for my understanding.

“For you.” Something harsh and naked burned in Arik’s eyes, all traces of the arrogant prince gone, revealing lines of pain, of exhaustion, in his face. “We disappeared for days, Princess, to try to keep you safe. To stop…”

Did he mean for his hand to rise, for his fingers to flex in the air between us, all of his focus and ours on his hesitation? Did they feel a moment of relief when he finally touched me, one that was short lived? Taking roseblood with the four of them had robbed me of something because I was sure I hadn’t felt every whorl of his fingertips as he slid them down my neck to thumb my pulse. He felt the rapid beat there, caught the way my chest heaved because I was suddenly breathless. I had been worrying about what the hell they were doing only minutes before, and now I couldn’t help but focus on what he would do next.

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