Page 31 of The Wicked Prince

And then he looked at the empty hallway. He hadn’t had a morning free since he’d been eighteen, before Richard had left Lathe for war six years ago. What washegoing to do with his time now?

Maybe he hadn’t thought this through as much as he should have.

Hopefully Robin would crack before the first day was up so he wouldn’t have to figure it out.

But until then, he figured it would be nice to read something that wasn’t an accounting document or a whiny demand from a noble. Prince John spent his morning in the library, perusing the shelves before settling on reading an old favorite of his mother’s. He had fond memories of her reading it to him as a child. She would have read it to Richard as well if John’s brother had been able to sit still for longer than a minute.

That occupied him until about lunch.

He spotted a few nobles in the hall and as they bowed while he passed, he raised an eyebrow and waited for them to start making demands, but they just scurried away. Good. They’d gotten his orders: they weren’t to bother him but instead go to Robin with anything and everything.

Afterwards, he went back to his room and started to head for his sketchbooks, but when he looked at his trunk all he could see was Robin’s horrified, repulsed expression. It made his stomach turn, and he couldn’t even bear to look at it.

John set out to locate his trunk full of his other work. When he found it, in a storeroom with a bunch of antique furniture from royals past, he found a set of paints and an easel in the trunk.

John hadn’t painted in years. Not since the conflict at the border started.

Sketching he could get away with. It wasn’t as time consuming and his excellence only served to increase his speed. But painting took far too much time.

He spent the afternoon leafing through his old sketches and paintings of Astren’s landscapes. He went to dinner and ate alone. He was informed Robin was taking dinner in her room as she still had some urgent work to finish. He grinned for a moment until he realized how much emptier the room was without her.

When he went back to his room, for the first time since they were married, he approached the door connecting their rooms and knocked. The sound of papers shuffling on the other side stopped. He called out, “Have a good day, my darling wife?”

“A most productive one, my loving husband!”

John could practically see Robin’s sneer on her face.

She didn’t break on the first day.

Or by the end of her first week.

It became a ritual of sorts. John was always dressed and ready to watch Robin rush out of her room in the morning, struggling to keep up with her new entourage. There was a brief moment before she spotted him when he could see how overwhelmed she was. It was only a matter of time until she admitted she had no idea what she was doing.

But then, every single time, John was left unsure what to do with himself. Robin wasn’t cracking as quickly as he’d anticipated. He’d also thought it would be more fun to watch her struggle. Of course he got smug satisfaction out of it, but he didn’t actually get to watch Robin much. He needed something to do.

John went back to the storage room with his landscapes, grabbed the paints and easel, and ordered the first servant he saw to locate some canvases for him.

He set it up in his room, changing his silk shirt to an old, ratty one that he had, which was still immaculate, but it wouldn’t matter if anything ruined it. Once he had his canvas, he rolled his sleeves up and started painting.

For the first time since he had laid eyes on Robin, his hands created something that had no connection to her at all.

First, he painted his mother—reading from the book that had also taken up a permanent residence on his nightstand since he’d handed off his duties to Robin had inspired him. Then he painted a memory of when he would watch Richard and their father, using the private training grounds, swords clashing before he’d been written off as a lost cause. Then he painted Lathe. His city, the capital, full of people who used his name as a curse while he desperately tried to keep the country together. And finally, he painted the desert three weeks after handing his duties off to Robin.

He knew what had landed on Robin’s desk first thing that morning. It always arrived on schedule. First day of the month every other month.

The most recent report of the casualties at the border.

How many men were dead. How much money they needed for more men, for more food, for more weapons.

Those worthless sand dunes made up an abyss that swallowed any resource sent its way.

He hadn’t realized how late he’d stayed up, painting by candlelight until he was finally done. The painting was also a useful distraction from the rumblings he’d heard in the castle about how horrible Robin was at being regent and why hearing that had made him feel a strange flash of… concern. The few times a noble or courtier had been brave enough to try to tell him to his face that his wife was ruining everything, he’d snapped at them and threatened them with the stocks for insulting her and him. Hopefully she would finally crack so he could get back to being the one ruining lives.

His back ached as he finally pushed himself off his stool. His fingers were stained in a multitude of colors, and there was a swatch of yellow on his forearm. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, and he wiped at his forehead, holding his brush and palette in his other hand.

He glanced at his candles; they were all burning much lower than he expected. It had to be past midnight. Well past.

He started to move to put them out, and when he bent to blow one out, he spotted a little bit of light at the crack of the door connecting his room to Robin’s. Was she still up?

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