“Ready,” I whisper.
He looks at me, his ice blue gaze seeking the answer to some question. “Why?— “
Just then, a paintball whizzes by his head, landing on the tree with a hard splat. “Get down,” he whispers, crouching. I mimic his movement, although I’m so much tinier than him that his version of crouching evens out with my actual height.
“Come on,” he says, running full speed away from the direction that the paintball just came. I hurry after him, looking around with my senses on full alert.
One of the guys that was in the van with us pops outfrom behind a tree. He aims straight at me, firing but missing. I panic, shooting my gun off a couple of times. The paintballs soar into the air way over his head.
Stellan turns and sees what’s going on. In one swift motion, he fires twice. The paintballs explode as they hit the man in the chest. Two giant blots of bright orange paint blossom over his heart.
“Ah, fuck!” he yells, turning to start walking toward the geo-dome.
Stellan hisses at me and I scurry over to him. He grabs my hand and pulls me behind another tree. For a few seconds, my heart rate picks up. I look up at him, at how fierce and protective he is at this moment.
I know that it’s cheesy to find that appealing, but I do. Despite my resistance, I really, really do.
“You are terrible at this game,” he says, scowling down at me.
Stellan releases my hand and sweeps the scope of his paintball gun in a semi-circle. I shrug a little, trying to keep the fact that I’m obviously turned on by this kind of behavior under wraps. It’s just…
I can imagine that, in a scenario where the end of the world has arrived and everyone is out for their own interests, I would want to have this guy in my corner.
God, I need to say something. Anything to change the topic in my brain.
“I don’t like guns!” I blurt out.
He gives me an odd look. “It’s just a game, Margot.”
My cheeks heat. “I know…”
Stellan’s nose wrinkles. “You know what? I think you are a snob.”
My jaw drops. “Me? How am I a snob? This whole thing isyourevent, your highness.”
“So what? It’s something new. And I think thatsomething new totally scares you. So you turn your nose up at it without even trying it out. That makes you a snob.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Are we still talking about paintball? Or are you just taking what you feel about everything and projecting it onto this topic?”
He rolls his eyes. “Do you have to read into everything, Margot? Can this not just be about shooting people with paint?”
Adjusting my gun, I size him up. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Stellan sighs, scrubbing his hand through his dark hair. “Why don’t we declare a truce? Just for today. You and I will just be on the same side for long enough to dominate this game. Then we can go back to full out class warfare tomorrow. Okay?”
The corner of my mouth kicks up. I give him a sly glance. “Yeah, okay.”
He looks a tiny bit surprised that I just agreed. “Okay,” he repeats. “Okay, good. There’s a spot that we want to get to over there.” He nods. “A… I don’t know the right word. Where you are protected but you can shoot at targets?”
I scrunch up my face. “Um… I think that’s called a blind, maybe?”
“All right. Let’s run over to it.Ja?”
This time, he looks to me, waiting for my reply. I can’t help but nod. He bolts toward the blind and I run after him. We make it there safely and peer out from behind the trees, sniping anything that moves.
I can admit it; I have kind of a good time, shooting people and yelling when unseen people shoot through the trees. While we have this truce going on it is easy to forget that he’s Prince Stellan Løve, heir to the throne of the kingdom of Denmark. I’m not a commoner that he looks down on, either.
Just now, he grins at me in a way that makes me shiver. I bite my lip and grin back at him. We even high five when I duck and roll to narrowly avoid a paintball to the chest.
