Page 74 of The Princess's Chosen

"Because that was…that was for me." I frowned and glanced down at my feet, nearly flinching as she strode to the middle of the room with quick long steps.

"Come here."

I moved closer, aware that she had to tip her chin up to look at me and still feeling as though I were the smaller of the pair of us.

"Tell me of Emory."

I said it all with a compounding and heavy relief, offering more than she rightly needed to judge me. From scrambling for connections with legitimate sons as peers in school, to Emory's quick cultivation of a friendship and subsequent boost into Roderick's circles. The quick call for me to take this appointment as her steward, the meeting at the Yawning Pig, the night of the festival.

"You knew none of Emory's plans?"

"Not unless they wanted me involved in them," I said, jaw ticking. I didn't expect her to believe me, I sounded like I was trying to dig my way into her favor. But all I had was the truth, even if the information was a weak offering.

"He's your friend," she said, and some of the smooth steeliness of her expression faded, revealing a hint of the woman I recognized beneath.

I gaped, puzzled at the word. "He's…something." Emory was as close as I'd come to a friend in life, as was Jonathon. But I was aware they both might have been poorly applied to the word.

"Why did you intervene?"

"He was going to hurt you," I said, frowning. Of all the questions she'd asked, I thought that one had the most obvious answer.

"And if I kill him?"

Not 'If he's put to death.' IfIkill him.

"Would you wish to intervene then too?" she asked, head cocking. There was a scratch on her throat that hadn't been healed yet, and I wanted to cover it with my hand, feel her pulse under my palm and reassure myself that this wasmyprincess and not some mystical predator from the woods.

"No," I said. I frowned and then shook my head. "Yes. I would wish to, but I wouldn't."

Emory was an ass, and his ambitions had always been assisted by a violence I'd found distasteful. But there was some laughter, and some rare moments of feeling understood by someone mixed in with my memories of him. I hadn't lied thus far with Bryony, and I didn't want to start, even for as small a one that would be.

"What do you want, Daniel?" she said, a little ragged sigh in her voice, an echo of the question she'd left me with before.

And just as it had before, my head spun at the words. Since when did I haveoptions, damnit, and why hadn't anyone ever prepared me to make a choice? Bryony frowned at me and started to draw back, and there was one small, crystalline fragment of understanding that I could grab onto.

"You."

At last, Bryony appeared in earnest, with an irritated puff of breath and a roll of her eyes. I sank to my knees and risked the integrity of my hands by reaching them out to take hers.

"I am not asking to be Chosen, or steward, or even trusted. I am not the council's man. You can have my neck in a noose, or you can use me against Emory, Roderick, any of them."

"What do youwant?"

"Your mouth on mine!" I stared up in the wake of the words bursting out at me. She was frowning down at me, which felt more right somehow than being above her. "Iwantto be yours. In every way, but I know that—"

Her hand pulled free of mine and dug into my hair, and my words froze, eyes falling shut as she pulled me forward. My face pressed to her stomach and I groaned at the scent of her, still full of violets but mixed with sweat and the damp richness of the woods and the smoke of the fire. Her fingers combed steadily through my strands, gently tugging at my roots, fingernails scratching at my scalp.

My arms rose slowly, circling her hips and squeezing around her. She was quiet, and I had a sudden moment of disorientation, feeling small and young, soothed. Then she pulled on the back of my neck, and I leaned into the touch, shivering as she scratched through my beard.

"What if I asked you to be my spy? To try and keep the council as far from knowing any details as you could for me?"

"Then that's what I'd do," I said, shrugging.

She frowned, and I thought I'd answered wrong, until she slowly sank down in front of me, the pair of us kneeling on the carpet together again. "And what if I never wanted you to contact Roderick again? That I'd be forever suspicious of you. That you would always be on the fringes, kept at arm's length?"

I blinked, studying the sinking weight in my stomach at her words.

"I would still be yours," I said, slightly disgusted with myself for knowing it wastrue.

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