I lift my chin. “Of course not. Stepfather always said a lady doesn’t roam outside, except in the rose garden and the maze, and only when there is a banquet, in the company of other ladies and?—”
“I got it.” He lifts his hands. “That sounds… sad.”
“It’s not,” I assure him. “I was happy to stay inside.” A delicate shiver travels down my spine. “I feel safer indoors.”
He arches a brow. “Yet, here you are, under the open sky.”
“Indeed. Not by choice, as you know.”
“You were supposed to travel, though,” he remarks.
“By carriage,” I clarify. “Inside it, preferably.”
“As opposed to lying on top of it?”
I snort before I can stop myself at the image because… because I can imagine lying on the roof as the carriage rattles on, staring up at the sky as I did twice already today, and that’s more times than I have in my entire life. I have a feeling it would be a fun thing to do. A pleasurable thing.
Why am I entertaining the thought at all? A thought that feels like a half-forgotten dream, the dream of a girl who laughed a lot, ran about shrieking as she played with her cousins, imagining the days ahead full of light and carefree joy.
“You and I have nothing in common,” he says. “I can’t stand being stuck indoors. Locked up, tied up.” He scowls. “Muzzled.”
“Why do you hate it so much? Being indoors, I mean.” I wince. “Not the rest.”
His square jaw clenches. “Long story. You’re not the only one with bad memories, Princess.”
“Says a lord of the dark fae.”
“You’re shocked we have princes and kings, princesses and queens, aren’t you? That’s what bothers you. You thought we moved in packs, our routine of hunting, fucking, and tearing our prey to pieces directed by an alpha wolf, the only hierarchy in actual wolf packs. It bothers you when you find equivalents to your own culture and people.”
“What if it does, Lord Valerian?”
It’s his turn to wince. “It’s just a title. I’m as far removed from the dark fae throne as you are.”
I shake my head. “Debatable.”
A shadow of a smile tugs on his lips, gone the next moment. “Time to climb.”
“You’re crazy,” I mutter after a lot of swearing and sweating, halfway up the trunk, my skirt a torn and mangled thing around my legs. The branches sway, and I choke on a shriek when I lose my footing for a moment. “I should have you tied up again.”
“Don’t mind me,” he calls out from below, scaling the trunk after me. “I have the best view.”
“What?” Mortified, I scramble higher while trying to look down. “Don’t?—”
“Eyes on the target, or we both fall to our deaths.”
“You’re not helping!” I shout.
“No? Funny, I thought I was. Don’t worry, Princess, I was teasing. Nothing worthwhile to see, with the amount of underskirts and undergarments you’re wearing.”
“You’re a barbarous peasant,” I seethe, “a beast?—”
He wraps a hand around my ankle, and I yelp. “Keep going. Almost there.”
The uncontrollable, pleasurable shiver coursing through my body at his touch isn’t helping matters. “Don’t touch me!”
“Just giving you a hand up, as it were.”
“Don’t…” Gritting my teeth, I grab the next branch and haul myself higher, refusing to look down again, at the distance from the soil and his smirking, insufferable face. “Let go.”
