Page 14 of This Is Not True Love’s Kiss

I stood and stretched my arm across my body. “Then it’s a good thing I don’t care what Lor thinks, and since when do you?”

Ambrose walked toward me through the tall trees with a lazy smile on his face, his hands shoved in his trouser pockets. He was beautiful with his bronze skin and golden eyes, his face and body that looked like it had been chiseled from stone.

Whereas Ambrose was all muscle, toned waist and arms, I was thick everywhere. I loved my wide hips and tree-trunk thighs and thick arms and round stomach. Despite all my curves, all my softness, I’d always felt like my body was strong, and it made me feel strong in turn.

I bent my front leg until I was in a warrior position, arm stretching out.

“Want to spar?” Ambrose asked, and I raised a brow.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting in trouble with your king?”

He just shot me a smile and assumed his fighting stance, legs bent and braced, arms crooked, entire body taunt like a bowstring about to release an arrow.

“I’m surprised you remember how to fight like this.” I so often saw Ambrose with the other Fair Folk, training in the courtyard with weapons I refused to touch. Not when they’d been forged by the godwitch of war, the one who’d created those weapons to use against us in war. Just another thing my people had forgotten.

“I remember well enough,” Ambrose said.

I mimicked his stance. I was done stretching and ready to fight.

Lightning fast, his arm struck out toward my head, and I blocked the movement with my own arm.

“Why don’t you just use the training courtyard like everyone else?” Ambrose asked, using the strength of his arm to turn mine downward, the force of it spinning and pushing me a few paces from him.

“Because I don’t want to,” I said. “All the Fair Folk train with weapons now. It’s like they’ve forgotten our beginnings, how we fight with our bodies, not with metal.”

The godwitches hadn’t allowed us to have weapons, so the Fair Folk created tachika kan, our own way of fighting. We’d practice in forests just like this, where we were hidden from the eyes of the godwitches. I didn’t want to train in that courtyard, the same courtyard the godwitches used to train in. It was another prison, and my people didn’t even recognize it anymore.

Ambrose lunged for me, and we sparred with our arms jabbing, blocking, striking. “I think you’re not training in the courtyard because you like defying Lor.”

“Maybe that too,” I said. “But there’s no one out here at the top of this mountain. I’m being perfectly safe.”

I spun so my back was to the faerie, then kicked back, my bare foot landing right in his stomach.

He let out an “oof” sound as he stumbled back a few paces. “He’s just trying to protect us, lovely.”

I softened at his use of the nickname he’d adopted for me thousands of years ago.

“He’s just trying to keep everyone safe. The brotherhood are out there. They’re powerful. And they’re a threat if they find us.”

Anger shot through me, bright and hot like the sun, as I whirled to face Ambrose, assuming a fighting stance. “So you’re on his side?” I asked. I was so sick of everyone agreeing with Lor, thinking that he knew best. Especially Ambrose, possibly my only friend, the faerie I’d always been closest with. Things had changed between us after I got married, and Ambrose had been more distant. Just another thing I’d lost because of Lor.

“Come now, lovely,” Ambrose said as I lunged with a series of attacks, my arm chopping right in the crook of his neck.

He winced and tried to defend himself as I fought him backward right into a tree, my hand slicing toward his Adam’s apple but stopping short of actually closing his airway. He held his hands up. “I’m not on anyone’s side. Sometimes I think you’re too stubborn, too proud, to understand that Lor is trying to do good. You’re so afraid he’s going to control you that you won’t give him a chance to be your partner.”

Meera had said something similar, and it irked me that nobody could see my side of things.

I turned, crossing my arms tight. “Doesn’t he control me? I can’t even come out into the forest to train without someone reminding me how it will displease Lor Wolfgang, like he rules over me.” Just like Fairwitch ruled over me. Just like the curse ruled over me.

I felt the heat of Ambrose’s body behind me, and he put a hand on my shoulder. I leaned into his touch, and he stepped back, his warmth gone.

My jaw clenched. “Why did you come out here? Was it just to lecture me?”

“No.” He walked around me so that I was facing him as he pulled a scroll out of his pocket. “I actually came because I have some good news.”

I gasped. Was it my schedule change? Had Lor changed his mind after our fight the other day? Hope sprang up inside of me as I took the scroll, frowning as I clumsily read the words. I didn’t recognize all of them, but I knew enough to see this wasn’t my schedule change proposal. It was something else entirely.

An edict? From who?