Page 36 of The Wicked Prince

And he was pleased to see her guards never appreciated her unconventional outfit the way he did.

Good. He would hate to have to have their eyes cut out.

One morning, he was running a little behind, thanks to how late he and Robin had been up the night before arguing over her idea to still give a speech to try to rally people and show them how much they’d done, but it was routine now, so he didn’t think twice about rushing out to see her off like he always did. Once he had, he stepped back inside to finish his preparations for the day. As he finished, he passed by his curtain, still drawn back from the night before to let in some moonlight. He paused by the window, unable to resist the draw despite the trouble it had gotten him into before.

He hadn’t picked up any of his sketchbooks since that night. He’d spent what little time wasn’t devoted to work and working with Robin on painting, occasionally painting while Robin would work on assignments from her tutors on the sofa. He didn’t know why she kept working in his room when she didn’t need him, but he certainly wasn’t going to raise the issue and send her away.

Robin released an arrow, watching it sink into the bullseye before turning around, but before she made it all the way, she froze and locked eyes with him. She made a gesture with her arm toward her.

John carefully pushed the window open. Robin yelled up at him, “If you want to join me, you don’t have to just stand there and watch like a creep from the window!”

Well… John supposed they’d been making excellent progress on the never-ending pile of work. He gave into the strange impulse. He had no idea what he was going to do, but Robin had invited him, so he went.

When he passed Robin’s guards and stepped into the private training grounds—he hadn’t set foot in them in years—he was hit in the chest and had the wind knocked out of him. He scrambled to catch the object and saw it was one of the staffs he’d seen her practice with.

Robin held a second in her hand. “You’ve taken it upon yourself to give me an education. Now I think it’s time I return the favor.”

He gave her a blank look as he weakly held the staff. “I don’t need to know how to fight.”

Robin scoffed. “Yes, you do.”

“Why?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you planning on changing your mind and killing me?”

“I might be.” Robin raised an eyebrow. “And I want you to be able to at least give me a challenge.” Robin shook her head. “It was rather embarrassing for you.”

Being soundly pinned down and threatened wasn’t exactly the height of pride for him, but John knew what he was and what he wasn’t.

A fighter of any kind, he wasn’t.

John narrowly avoided the swing of the staff with a yelp, stumbling back on his feet. He glared at Robin. “Are you insane?”

She grinned. “Come on, don’t be so dramatic. I was moving like a snail.”

John paused. It was a grin, not quite a smile. But still… this might be the only way to get the real thing.

John reluctantly gripped the staff. “Alright, if you insist on us beating each other with sticks, I at least need to make sure you don’t get my face. It’s my best feature.”

Robin’s eyes flickered to his arms for a moment before she looked back up and said, “We’ll see. Now, you can hold it that way if you want, but I’ll warn you, one hit and I’ll send it flying across the grounds.”

“There is no—”

Oh. There it went.

John held his arms up in surrender as Robin held the end of her staff up to his throat.

That was the beginning of John joining Robin at the training grounds every morning and letting her spend an hour beating him half to death. If he’d known this was where he’d have ended up, he would have thought twice about marrying her.

He still would have.

Because when she’d had enough of his poor grip and posture, she’d come over to him, rolling her eyes as she wrapped her arms around his and manually adjusted his grip, her front pressed to his back, sending a rush down his spine. She would murmur in his ear about the placement of his hand, curling his fingers around the quarterstaff, and it was all he could do not to lean back into her. And then she was gone after just a moment, never lingering. It didn’t really motivate him to grip the weapon properly if she was going to do that when he was wrong.

Every bruise he got was worth it for moments like that.

Winter had arrived, and when the first large cold front came in, Robin still insisted on her hour of training, so John abandoned the dying warmth of his fireplace and bedding and trotted out after her.

Although, as they stretched to warm up—Robin insisted it was important—he noticed there was something about the way she was moving that was different. He paid more attention as Robin took her stance with her quarterstaff; it was off balance, not enough that it would really make a difference against his inadequacies, but enough he could tell. It was her left leg.

Before John could go any further with his observations, Robin had started. Hitting thecoldhard ground was so much worse than hitting the normal hard ground.

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