Page 53 of The Wicked Prince

It made it incredibly hard to figure out what game he was playing now.

Robin sighed and buried her head deeper into her pillow. She didn’t want to wake up and have to deal with everything. With all the paperwork that haunted her. With whatever John was up to. She just wanted to stay right where she was for the rest of her life. Warm and comfortable and away from it all.

She took a deep breath—if there was one thing she didn’t miss about living in a forest it was the smell. The smell of clean sheets and a soft mattress would be enough to make anyone reconsider a life of crime—but it wasn’t quite what she was used to. With the smell of the soap the laundry girls used there was also the smell of parchment and paint.

Robin then realized there was a weight on her hip, above her thick woolen dress—she must have forgotten to change—something resting there.

Robin opened her eyes and froze when she saw she hadn’t just forgotten to change out of her clothes from the day before. She’d forgotten to go back to her room, period.

Her foot twitched, knocking into the papers she and John had been looking at that were still on the foot of the bed. They’d needed more space than his small table provided, so she hadn’t thought much about spreading it all out on the bed and sitting on it to get a bigger picture. She hadn’t imagined she’d stay there.

At the sound of paper fluttering to the ground, the hand on her hip flexed, sinking into the fabric of her skirts.

Robin forced herself to look at John, and there was almost no space between them. He was lying on his side, facing her, his head buried in a pillow and one arm underneath it with the other on her.

Robin didn’t think her heart had ever beat faster than it did right then. No desperate chase through the forest where a single mistake meant her capture had her heart pounding like it did while she lay still beside John.

“Must be nice not to have to worry about staying warm this winter since you’ll be warming Prince John’s bed.”

A freezing cold sensation went down her spine and stopped her heart.

This. This shouldn’t have happened. She’d gotten too comfortable. She’d let her guard down. So much so that she apparently trusted him enough to fall asleep right beside him in his own bed.

When Robin started to push herself away, the hand on her hip tightened even further, bunching her skirts desperately, and there was a whisper, Robin barely heard it. She pretended she didn’t. She slipped off the top of the covers and rushed back to her room, John still too out of it to be aware.

“Stay,” he’d whispered.

Instead, she ran.

* * *

Marian laughed at her.

“It’s not funny!” Robin grabbed the nearest throw pillow and chucked it at her cousin who caught it and simply dropped it to the ground beside her chair.

“Rob, you could have hit the tea set and made a mess,” Marian said, still laughing.

“We both know I have better aim than that. And stop laughing! I knew I shouldn’t have told you any of this!” Robin crossed her arms and pouted at her cousin. She’d spilled every detail she’d been holding onto about John’s strange behavior recently to Marian, desperately hoping she would have some insight on what John could be up to.

“I’m only laughing because it amazes me how clueless you are about men despite the fact that you ran around the forest with three of them for years!”

“I’m not clueless! Those men I know. Prince John is a whole different kind of creature! He’d be insulted to even be considered in the same realm as my men.”

“Trust me, Rob, he’s not that different. You are a little clueless, and that’s just what happens when you spend the years you should be courting escaping dungeons and shooting at guards.”

“What are you talking about?”

Marian rolled her eyes and reached for her tea. She took a sip and said, “I’ll rephrase. Didn’t you say once that Alan told you the story of how he became a hunter and joined up with Little Jon and Will?”

Robin furrowed her brow. “Yes. He was a minstrel, but since that wasn’t exactly providing a steady career and he was in love, he became a hunter to make himself a better suitor so he could court her. But she chose someone else, so he left the village rather than watch her marry someone else.”

When Robin had first heard the story as a twelve-year-old, she had been so offended on Alan’s behalf, she tried to get the girl’s location out of him so she could go leave a bunch of dirt in the girl’s bed and teach her a lesson. Alan had reached over, roughly mussing her hair and laughing while telling her that her loyalty was appreciated but unnecessary.

“And when he was courting her, what did he do?” Marian spoke to Robin like a child. It had her looking for another throw pillow.

“He gave her things, trying to show her he could provide. Gave her a deer pelt as a rug for winter. Used the money he got for the venison to buy her a bracelet. He saved up and got her a new spinning wheel since hers constantly broke down and made it so she couldn’t spin yarn.”

Marian simply raised an eyebrow like that had somehow made a point.

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