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Her answer was to launch another shoe at me, and I brought my arm up in time to block my face.

“You should be grateful?” Naeve said, quoting me. “Could you be any less romantic?”

“That is not what I meant!”

I meant that she might understand how grateful I had been when she’d knelt before me and took a part of me into her mouth, and I was desperate to return the favor.

Naeve searched for something else to hurl at me.

“What else was I supposed to say?”

“Anything else! Anythingkind!” she said. “If she is going to love you, she has to like you, and there is nothing about you that is remotely likable.”

She plucked a pillow from behind her and pitched it at me.

“Stop throwing things!”

“You have five days!Five!”

“I can count!”

“Then make them count!”

“I’mtrying!” I yelled. “Do you imagine this is somehow easy when I have had no love in my life?”

Naeve froze, the candlestick she’d chosen to throw at me next poised in her hand like a spear.

“Do you imagine I understand kindness when none has been given to me?” I continued. “Do you imagine it is easy to be anything other than what I am?”

“Easy? No, I do not imagine so, but change never promised to be, and if this is what you want, then you must do more thantry.”

I glared at her and then left my room, slamming the door behind me, begrudgingly returning to the prince who lived in the depths of my castle. He lay on his thin bed beneath the window, one leg hanging off and scraping the floor. The strange hat he usually wore covered his face, and his hands lay folded atop his stomach.

“Your advice did not work,” I said.

The prince startled and sat up, his hat falling into his lap.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

“I told her she was beautiful, and she did not fall in love with me.”

“Well, how did you say it?”

“Why does everyone keep asking that? I just…saidit!”

“Did you mean it?”

“Yes!”

“And she didn’t fall in love with you?” He seemed confused.

“I ripped the head off a selkie today. Do you really want to toy with me?”

“Of course, she must be playing hard to get,” said the prince quickly. “Perhaps you should save her from danger. She will be so grateful, she will realize her love for you instantly.”

“I did. Today. I saved her today.”

I’d killed the selkie for what he had done to her. She had seen me holding his head and his skin.