Page 53 of Spearcrest Prince

But I’m not happy about it.

Because if I can do what I want, then she, too, can do whatever she wants. Or whoever she wants.

And I realise with stone-cold certainty that I will break someone’s hand from their body before I ever let them touch her.

Anaïsbringsourfocusback to the assignment after that, and I let her. Now is not the time or the place for me to process the painful realisation that I want to keep Anaïs to myself when she doesn’t feel the same way about me. I’m going to need to wrestle with that particular problem later.

Anaïs turns her laptop to me and shows me her gallery of work. I scroll through it, scrutinising her sketches and paintings in the hope of distracting myself.

Her art is the opposite of her: bursting with life, with emotion, with creativity. Her outward appearance, that plain shoulder-length hairstyle, her neutral features, bare of make-up—they’re all in stark contrast to the complex, ornate quality of her work.

I stop on one of her paintings.

It’s a huge, complex image. Mountains and a sky swirling madly with stars and a lake, all merging one into the other in rich shades of blue, purple and indigo. In the centre of the painting is the silhouette of a face, almost ghostly. Dreamy eyes in a bed of thick eyelashes and a mouth fallen half open and smeared with stars.

“What’s this one?” I ask Anaïs, unable to tear my eyes from the image.

She leans a little closer to look over my shoulder. A strand of her hair brushes against me.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s the painting I did on the balcony.”

“The one you were working on when I was there?”

“Mm-hm.”

“You went back for it?” I ask, remembering how we left it behind when I took her to my room.

“Of course.”

I finally tear my gaze from the image and turn to look at her. “Is this… is that supposed to be me?”

She lets out a low laugh. “Yes. I suppose you could say that’sAletheiayou.”

I look back atAletheiame. The dreamy eyes, the sensual mouth, the smear of stars on the lips and chin. There’s even a faint outline of bruising on the cheek—the marks her fingers had left on my cheek that day. Her brushstrokes are so expressive, and the beauty in the image is breathtaking.

My chest constricts; my heartbeat quickens.

“It looks nothing like me,” I say, clicking away from the image.

“It’s not meant to look like you,” she says serenely. “It’s meant to look the way you felt to me that night.”

I click back to the image. “What, like some sort of feral fairy prince?”

She bursts out laughing. A real, genuine laugh, where she covers her mouth and her eyes crease.

“That’s—” She interrupts herself with another peal. “That’s exactly it, yes.”

“You’re just trying to mock me.” I glare at her. “Is this payback for… for what we did? Or for the thing in the forest? The stupid stolen fucking kiss?”

She shakes her head, and her laughter fades from her face. “No, don’t worry. I still owe you for that.”

I pull a face at her. “I’m shaking in my boots.”

“Youshouldbe shaking in your boots.” She smirks. “Your pointy boots.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “Your sense of humour is fucking trash.”

“At least I have one.”

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