Page 35 of The Wicked Prince

Chapter14

John had known that at some point working with Robin was going to return to bite him in the rear.

“It’s a bad idea,” John said, without even looking up from the papers he was signing. He could still feel Robin’s gaze on him from the other side of the study. “They don’t want to see me; they want to see you, and we can’t risk you having to say no to someone. It’s out of the question.”

Robin wanted him to accept petitioners again. While it was impossible to avoid the officials and nobles begging for his attention—although Robin’s assistance made it more bearable—that didn’t mean he had to open the castle doors to the rabble, and he wasn’t going to.

“Fine. But we should still do something. It’s going to be a hard winter. The people need to know we’re trying to lessen the impact as much as possible.”

“If it involves ‘the people’ and me, it’s a bad idea.”

It had taken weeks for John to get the smell of rotting fruit out of his hair, and he’d had his clothes burned after the last speech he gave three years ago. That had been the last straw. He knew when he wasn’t wanted.

“You think most of my ideas are bad.”

“They are. I just keep you around because you occasionally have a good one.”

“I’m saying if you just… owned up to your mistakes and you were honest and fought to show everyone you’re not what they all think you are… maybe people just might surprise you.”

John laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. “Little Birdie, you understand nothing of politics.”

“You told me yourself the other day that you know some of your early decrees backfired in effect. Why not publicly announce you’re rescinding them and fix them to give the people hope for the future?”

“Any sign of weakness is a mistake. Leaders can’t admit to any error outright. It would be like throwing open the castle gates and putting my neck in the noose for them.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“I mean, what if I go address the people without you?”

It was a reasonable suggestion.

But there was something in the back of his head that he still didn’t like about it. The idea of Robin giving a speech alone… too much could go wrong. The whole reason he had her was because she was universally beloved, but she was a princess now. What if something happened to her? When she’d run out into the main square, people were already turning on her just for that. What if they turned on her while she was speaking to them? What if they treated her the way they treated him?

No. It was too risky.

“We should stop your morning lessons. Clearly they’re doing you no good if you’re not paying attention and instead coming up with these ideas. You need a hobby.”

“Well, if you’re going to give me time in the mornings, I am starting to get rusty.”

She wanted to go back to the training grounds?

“What does it matter if you get rusty? You have three personal guards.”

“You’re right, I’ll go ahead and start preparing my speech.”

“Training grounds it is.”

John gave the instruction to reduce Robin’s lessons so she would have an hour each day to go to the training grounds and beat a dummy with a twig to her heart’s content. As long as it meant she didn’t do something stupid like try to reason with a mob that would sooner behead anyone that had a crust of bread they didn’t.

It seemed to do her good because by the time she joined him for lunch and their afternoon work, she had a bounce in her step and a pleased look in her eye.

Although he still hadn’t wrangled a wretched smile out of her.

He’d gotten smirks. Tiny grins, but nothing close to that bright, blinding thing he’d glimpsed. If the training grounds were the way to get it, it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

It also didn’t hurt that he and Robin left their rooms at the same time in the morning, so he always spotted her in said training outfit—she still had not simply justaskedfor a set of training clothes—as she pulled her cloak over her shoulders, so he usually got to admire it for a full second. Even though it was looser than most of the dresses he saw her in, there was something more appealing about it because of that fact. Maybe he just liked the reminder of how feral she really was. Her handmaids had been instructed to come later in the morning since John knew they would have a conniption if they saw her in it. John wasn’t complaining.

---