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I left the garden outside my palace and went to visit the mortal prince, who was standing on the bench beneath his window, hands wrapped around the bars.

“I will give you anything you desire if you tell my father where I am being held prisoner,” he was saying.

“Careful of offering desires,” I said. “That is a good way to end up giving away your firstborn.”

The prince froze and turned toward me, his eyes wide with fear.

“Don’t…don’t kill me.”

“I will not kill you,” I said. “But I will settle for stripping you of what you hold most dear.”

“You mean my hair and the red feather in my hat?”

“I have not yet taken the feather in your hat,” I said. “But I will take it now.”

The mortal was wearing his hat over his shorn hair, and the feather vanished from it with a pop. He did not take it off to check that it was gone.

“So you saved her from danger, and she still does not love you?”

I knew she did not love me, but there were moments when she looked at me differently since last night, and I did not know what they meant or if they were even real.

“When you rescued your princess, what happened?”

The prince shrugged. “She was grateful.”

“And?”

“And?” he repeated, confused.

“What else happened?”

“We returned to her kingdom where her father declared that we would wed,” he said. Then he asked, “Did you rescue your princess?”

“I did,” I said.

“And what happened?”

“I fucked her in the woods all night long.”

The prince gasped and his eyes widened. “You… Are you married?”

“Do Ilookmarried?”

“Well, not exactly, but you cannot…fuck…a lady until you have married her. You will ruin her!”

I raised a brow. “Have you never had sex?”

“Not with a lady. I amhonorable.”

The prince might be many things, but honorable certainly wasn’t one.

I frowned. “How is sex not honorable?”

The prince hesitated. “I…I don’t know.”

“Then why do you speak on things you do not know?”

The mortal was quiet and then he asked, “Do you love this woman? The one you fucked in the woods?”