AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ainsley,” he said, and she lit up like a spark. “If I ever saw a girl as bright and beautiful as you at a barn-raising, it wouldn’t matter if you were a goose girl or a baker’s daughter. I’d push myself through a crowd of your beaus and ask you if you wanted to take a walk around town. And if you were still smiling at me like that, I’d take you to the river and pick you the prettiest flower I could find. And then, when I was handing it over, I’d see if you’d let me hold your hand all the way back.” It wasn’t quite Anderdolf, but the way Ainsley’s amber eyes were still brighter than a flame, it seemed she hadn’t minded.
She leaned into him, offering her hand eagerly. “And then what? Would you kiss me again?”
Archie stared down at their joined hands, still feeling a bit guilty. “Perhaps. If we were courting. If I had spoken to your father first.”
“I see,” Ainsley said, her words soft but accepting. “Yes, you would be the perfect gentleman. And if I were a goose girl, I’d drop my handkerchief for you to find. If I were a baker’s daughter, I’d save my last slice of pie so you would come see me at the end of the day. But I’m a princess, and I pushed too hard. I’m sorry for that, Archie. And if you were to talk to my father again, I want to promise you that I would let you say whatever you wanted. Everything you think is true and needs to be said. I just worry—Well, you have a way of seeing yourself that isn’t the same way I do. And really, that’s the only part I wish I could change.”
They stood together for another moment, everything else fading away to silence.
“And you think I’m a gentleman?” Well, not too long ago he would have agreed.
But maybe both of them were wrong.
Because if he was about to talk to the king about courting his daughter properly, then he might lose his head, and there were a few more things he wanted to do before he died.
Archie found his old bow and turned to the princess’s guard, refusing to shrink. Like he was a lord in truth. Ainsley had always insisted her guards were only there to deter bandits, and it seemed it was time to put that theory to the test. “Sir Callum, I know I haven’t learned all that I could from you yet, but I wonder if I could still beg for the honor of seeing the princess home.”
The knight gave a solemn nod, faster than Archie would ever have thought possible. “See that you get her there safely.”
Archie smiled, ready to take Ainsley on that walk by the river, try to find a flower that could possibly measure up to her own beauty, and then find a new use for the arrow-scarred oak tree—pressing his princess up against the bark and kissing her until the moon came out.
Chapter 23
Cat’s Out of the Bag
Before the kissing started, Leo had already left the city of Castletown far behind. He might have resigned himself to the inevitability of his sister’s preference for the miller’s son, but he still had no interest in watching it all play out.
Especially now that he had his sister’s words ringing in his acute and pointed ears.
Ainsley had said Leo was arrogant. Reckless. And fair enough. The trials of the last few years were more than enough to inspire some more critical self-reflection. A few memories might still be out of reach, but Leo had been born knowing that one day he would be king, and it seemed it was the sort of knowing that could never be entirely erased, something that he would know long after he had forgotten his own name.
He didn’t need anyone else to recognize his birthright and inherent greatness for him to see it inside himself.
So, perhaps he was arrogant, but it had come to him with an equal measure of duty and obligation. The best way to keep himself on top was to please the men below him. By using a carrot far more than he used a stick. This ideal came to him more from practicality than simple affection. A man who beat his horse (or human pet) to death didn’t get very far, and no one should claim to rule a land or people they weren’t willing to defend—even risk their life for.
And four years ago, the healers had been at a loss. His kingdom and even his own mother had fallen to a new plague, and he had to be the one to stop it. The thought was so natural he almost didn’t need Ainsley to confirm it with words. When any mysterious and dangerous threat appeared, Leo had always been the one to run directly toward it.
He saw his younger self stealing out of the castle in the dead of night, the image clear enough for him to retrace the same path even as a cat.
Deeper and deeper into the heart of the Darkwood.
The kingdom’s healers had said there was nothing more they could do about the plague; the matrons and holy oracles called it dark magic. They were working on a cure, but it was taking so long, and he had a story in his head from his uncle Keagan’s last visit, only days before his mother and many others in the castle first caught the deadly curse.
“I hear you’re quite the little hunter now,” he had said, like he still thought Leo was a boy ten years younger. “Have you ever tried one of the Wild Hunts? They say there is a white stag who grants a wish to any who catches him, and it’s not as hard as you might think.”
Keagan continued his story, boasting of a time he had supposedly shot a fae man with iron and trapped him in his own ring. He had even told Leo where the young prince could find the ring himself, “If you think you’re brave enough.”
Sixteen-year-old Leo had shaken his head and dismissed the story. Only half the things Uncle Keagan said were ever true, and there had been nothing Leo wanted to wish for. Nothing worth tempting fate.
But now . . .
His paws stopped short of a faerie ring of silvery white mushrooms similar to the one Ainsley and Archie had found on their hunt. His fur stood on edge. It felt so right but so wrong. Leo knew about fae—and not just from his uncle’s boastful stories of the Wild Hunts or even the drunken tavern songs about the elusive Fae Queen. And when Archie had first suggested the idea of making a bargain together, it had teased at Leo’s missing memories and intrigued him.
But they still hadn’t gotten it right. In fact, it seemed that they had gotten it exactly backward. Archie thought Leo was a fae—the ruler and master of all bargains. And perhaps Leo merely wanted that to be the truth, rejecting what should have been plain as day.
When it came to the fae, Leo wasn’t the master. He was the dope. The victim.
A cursed animal who should have been a prince.
