Page 34 of The Wicked Prince

“Ah!” John snatched the paper she’d been about to sign out from under her quill. The order to shutter the fifth floor’s west wing and reduce the staff accordingly. She blinked up at him as he slid another piece of parchment back in its place. The order to find new positions for those let go by the palace among the nobles’ estates. With a list of those estates and the current vacancies.

John shook the order to let staff go and said, “I sign these.” He gestured to the order in front of her. “You sign those.”

He seemed to have meant everything he’d said, including taking the blame for the problems and giving her the credit for the solutions.

Most of her time she spent reading reports and relaying the information to John. But it seemed there was always someone interrupting them and keeping them from making a dent in the paperwork. Usually it was an in-person visit to get in their demands even though their paperwork was somewhere in the mountain that Robin and John had to get through.

Well, Robin was never the one truly interrupted as the nobles and courtiers pled their case to John. At least, she wasn’t until one afternoon John had stormed off in a huff, throwing over his shoulder an order for her to deal with it. Robin had listened to the noblewoman’s request, permission and assistance from the crown to repair the dam that fell within her province—specifically, she needed workers and money to pay them. She could pay for the supplies, barely.

Robin had stolen the last round of taxes the noblewoman had collected—she still wasn’t sorry. One of the problems she and John needed to address were the nobles over-collecting the taxes in comparison to what they were required to send to the crown. But that was a different day’s problem. Today’s problem was the dam. If the dam wasn’t repaired it could ruin the fields and crops when spring and the spring storms came after winter.

Robin put together why John had stormed off. She told the noblewoman she would make sure she got the men and the loan but warned there was going to be little she could do about the terms John would impose on it. The noblewoman had shaken her head and said it would be better they be able to pay the crown back with that harvest than not have it at all. Even if the interest was high, it was better than losing half of the people, first in the flood and then to starvation. And she’d expected it to come at a high cost. It was Prince John; no one expected anything less from him.

So it quickly became their routine as well. When officials and nobles caught John’s ear, he handed them off to her, faking disapproval when he wanted her to give approval or sending her out of the room when he refused.

It was a strange thing, almost feeling like a game with exceptionally high stakes, but one where they were on the same team.

Robin’s work didn’t stop when the two of them did for dinner. Well, neither of them did. After a brief quiz on her morning lessons, she and John continued working, discussing the next day’s issues, the next problem to tackle, who they were going to upset next as they tried to find solutions and how to mitigate it. John would then go back to the study to finish what he could while Robin went back to her room to complete any assignments or reading her tutors had given her.

She didn’t know when she had stopped locking the door between their rooms, but one night she heard John moving about in his room, and since her question wasn’t answering itself, she rapped her fist on it and received a bewildered, “Yes?”

She opened the door and peered her head around it to see John standing by an easel, dressed in a paint-stained undershirt with his sleeves rolled up like the night they’d come to a truce. The canvas on the easel was a half-finished recreation of Lathe at sunset.

Robin had been so distraught and sick with everything that she’d barely registered his appearance that night, but now? It was… strange. She was used to seeing him perfect in his extravagant finery in his purples and golds. Here he looked… like a man.

A real man, not a name people spat and cursed when they spotted the tax collectors. Not the distant figure she had cursed during long winter nights when her aches, new and old, kept her up at night and all she could see were gaunt, hopeless faces.

Now she was just staring at him. Well, his exposed forearms.

She didn’t know where the heat crawling up her neck came from as she took him in. She tried hard not to think about him like a man. But he was. He was also a very handsome one. It had little effect on her most of the time because of how polished his veneer always was. It was always so obviously fake and put on. But tonight he was dressed down. Messy. His hair wasn’t perfect, a little ruffled. There was a tiny smudge of paint on his strong jaw that she was struck with the urge to try to wipe away. His brown eyes were lighter and warmer—

And real.

And she didn’t like it. She didn’t like the idea that there was something real under it all—something that didn’t actively repel her, and maybe something she was even—No. She wasn’t going to even let herself think that. But she also could not deny what she’d seen the night of their truce. And those doubts started to creep back in.

She quickly shook it off and held up the book she was reading. “I had a question about our wool exports.”

John raised an eyebrow and said, “Ask away.”

Thankfully he didn’t seem to be aware of the… whatever that had been that she’d just experienced at the sight of him like this.

“Why don’t we make our wool the center of our trade with Glaciar? With their weather, they need all the warmth they can get.”

After John gave an abridged explanation as to why that had fallen by the wayside, Robin took a step into his room and started pushing him on the subject. Why couldn’t they bring it back into focus? The more trade on that end, the more taxes they collected without having to raise the percentage.

Robin never in a thousand years thought she’d be standing in front of Prince John trying to find a way to collectmoretaxes, but there she was. If it meant getting the money the army needed without taking it directly from their people’s pockets, it was worth it.

John abandoned his painting and darted into her room, grabbing her materials and then spreading them out over his table as they resumed the discussion and began to make plans. Robin hurried to take a seat across from him.

Now that they’d both crossed it, Robin never thought about locking the door again. And after that, she almost never went a night without flinging open the door, an armful of books and papers to dump onto his table and continue their work from the day.

As autumn faded, Robin dimly registered that she’d been married to John for six months, half of a year.

Robin hoped she’d hear something from her men soon, but until then… She supposed this wasn’t the worst way to spend her time.

Robin watched the candlelight frame John’s face as he jotted something down.

Maybe John wasn’t the worst person to spend time with.

---