Page 133

“Are your decisions ever easy, Your Highness?” I asked.

The princess’s mouth tilted momentarily, then flattened when she peered at me. “Do you regret it?”

“Which part?”

“Every part,” a masculine voice said, a windstorm that swept me off the ground.

Aire stalked from the sideline, heedless of the Crown, his eyes like blue stones. I’d been preparing a concession speech, an apology for the Royals, but now I stepped back, recognizing the sight and sound of barely suppressed rage.

“What parts do you regret, girl?” he asked. “The theft? The deception? The intimacy?”

My heart dropped into my voice. “Not everything was a lie. So much of it was real. I never meant to hurt you, Aire—”

He scowled. “You are a commoner of the lower town. I am a nobleman of Mista. You will address me asSir.”

There was a time when I would have tossed him a comeback, but I had no more huffs or digs or barbs in me. Only dry sobs that came fast. “I set out to help my mother without knowing the acorn meant to change me, but wh-when it did, I-I was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed but h-happy. I just w-wanted to be real. I wanted to be every sort of real to m-myself. I wanted to be real to you—”

“Well, you’re not!” he shouted. “Woodskin or no, you’re a selfish imitation of the real thing! You’re nothing but a fake!”

“Please, Aire—”

“And nothing but a liar.”

“Please,” I implored. “Please don’t say that. I lo—”

“Stop. Right. There.”

“But I—”

He whirled on his heel, heading for the throne room doors, ignoring the calls of the Royals and clamor of our audience.

“I can’t stop,” I said as he seized the ringed handle. “Okay, I’ve lied my whole life, and I lied to you in the dungeon, but I’m not lying now. I love you!”

The words jostled the room into silence.

For a second, Princess Briar caught my eye with reluctant sympathy.

Aire spoke with his back to me, with his head bowed. “Sheloved me. And I lovedher.” His head turned slightly as he spoke to the floor. “Did you believe that I had stopped, simply because of you?”

I should have collapsed right then, but somehow, my voice grew roots.

“No,” I said. “I thought you valued that love enough to let it go.”

Aire tore open the door. Ignoring the gasps from advisors, the calls from the Royals, and the commotion from everyone else, he left the room.

He left me to my fate.

32

Fantasy

It could have been worse. They could have sent me back to the underground.

On the other hand, dangling like this gave me a crick in the neck. The chains hung from a beech tree and clamped around my wrists. Heaviness was a thing now, more so than it had been before. Apparently, my woodskin had withstood weight better than flesh, which might explain why my compact axes had never bothered me while affixed to my calf and nape.

Oh, my axes. I missed them. Whoever took them prisoner had better be doting on them.

The manacles held my arms above my head, keeping me upright, the position pulling on sockets that I hadn’t known existed—to say nothing of my inflated tits.