Page 17 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

Neither of us moves for a spell, then we both pull away at once.

I glance around, finding Isolde across the garden room, too deeply invested in her book. Ren places the cup back on the table tray. He rises to his feet, his gaze cast on the floor where the puddle of tea still stains the stone.

I can feel my pulse in my fingertips. My hand still buzzing from his touch.

“Apologies, Your Highness,” he murmurs, his voice rougher now.

“Sera,” I hear myself say.

He looks at me. Those arresting eyes startled, searching.

“When we’re here,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel. “When it’s just us, I’d prefer for you to use my name, Ren. It’s nice to feel normal sometimes.”

A long beat pulls taut in the air between us. The bells on his discarded hat catch the sunlight from where he tossed it on the bench, and the garden whispers with its poisonous life, and he—this man with a dangerous scar, whose intensity withers most others—looks at me the way he looked at me in the throne room: like he’s just been struck.

“All right.” He swallows. “Sera.”

My name in his mouth is a sound I’ll think about tonight, alone in my chambers, with the tallymarks hidden in my wardrobe and the wolfsbane and belladonna growing wild outside my window.

I will think about his rough fingers against my skin.

About the warmth of his skin beneath my touch.

Isolde will later ask me, when she comes to undo my hair: “How was your jester today?”

And I will say, “Fine. He told a story about a cat.”

And she will look at me with those sharp, knowing eyes and say nothing, because she will see the flush I can’t quite hide.

I’ll add another scratch to the wardrobe to strike through the newest mark.

Returning the tally back to zero.

Because right now, as Ren meets my eyes, with my name still soft on his full lips, his mouth tips into a beautiful smile that reveals a dimple.

And against my will, abandoning my desire to remain unmoved, I smile back.

Chapter 6

Renick

It’s been nearly a week since that moment in the garden room. A week of afternoons spent in the princess’s personal chamber, with the sun dancing over her fair skin and the garden just in view. A week of sitting across from Sera—Sera. The name she gave me like a gift wrapped in a dare—something far too tempting to tear into.

I scrub a hand down my face, banishing the unsavory thought.

She’s a princess—a fucking princess. Soon to be thequeenin less than a month. Betrothed to that bastard of a king, and I need to be careful. This isn’t why I came here, what forced me through the throne room doors, with murder gnashed between my teeth and no thought of surviving beyond that one vicious act.

But ever since, time has been bleedingaway the way ink bleeds in water, dissolving until you can’t tell where the stain began.

It’s been nearly a week of wanting—wanting something that I haven’t allowed myself to want for far too long. I didn’t know wanting could be a physical thing. I’ve wanted before plenty. Starved for food, the smallest sustenance for mere survival.

I thought I understood hunger.

Yet this… This is a different kind of hunger entirely. Something ravenous that consumes my thoughts, this ache that has set up residence behind my sternum and refuses to vacate, a violent burn in my blood every time she tilts her head and studies me with those bottomless dark eyes.

Gods, I’m fucked.

I think about that accidental touch constantly. Our hands colliding over a teacup, the graze of her fingers, the way her pulse fluttered in her wrist as I dared to clasp her hand. I’ve replayed it so many times, the memory is wearing thin at the edges, and still my skin buzzes where we made contact.