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She sees the tablet in my hand.

Her head tilts as she analyzes the blank screen, chattering, “Settle down, dirty bird.”

“You’re a pretty bird,” I correct her. “Say ‘pretty bird.’”

“Pretty.” She trills before throatily adding, “Pretty dirty bird.”

Fucking Lex.

It bothers me in a way I know him and Wicker would chirp me for. It’s not just because Effie somehow adapted without me, learning new words, getting closer to my brothers while I was away. She’s always been just a little bit theirs, too. Plus, she doesn’t even really know what she’s saying. She’s just repeating back what she’s heard.

But the pang in my chest still stings, and I reach out to gently rub her head. “You’re the prettiest bird, Effie. Don’t ever let anyone say otherwise.”

It’s that she needed me, and I abandoned her.

It wasn’t intentional or voluntary, but she doesn’t know that, and now whenever I leave for class, she throws a fit. I watch her on my phone sometimes when I’m in a lecture, her beak opening wide as she calls out.

“Sorry,” I say, giving her feathers a light stroke. “It’s been a long day, huh?” First school and hockey, then the shit at the Hideaway, then talking Lex into being Wicker’s handler at the Nu Zoo party.

She preens after my touch, her yellow beak digging into her down. “I love Pace.”

I grin, remembering how long it took me to teach her that. I don’t get to hear it as often now, Wicker and Lex having filled her head with nonsense while I was gone, but the sound of it makes something settle inside of me. “Hey, look what I scored for you.”

It takes a few taps, but then the camera feed from the south upper trail fills the screen. It’s a gorgeous view, the camera mounted so high that Effie can see for miles.

She squawks, turning to the screen with her wings extended. I can tell she’s appropriately enthralled when the trill she emits isn’t followed by any curse words. I give her one last scritch and close the cage.

“You’re going to have to be quiet for a while.” I drape the sheet over her cage before turning back to my own monitors. I’ve been letting thoughts of Verity simmer in the back of my thoughts all day, my nuts aching from the chronic tent pitching at the thought of being inside her. Any other night, I’d be hunkering down for some serious isolation, but there’s one last obligation I need to attend to before the day is over.

I enlarge the screen for the bedroom and lean back in the chair.

The first thing I notice is she’s wearing the night dress as I’d instructed. It’s a tiny cotton dress with a scooped neck and little capped sleeves. The hem barely covers her thighs and my cock twitches at the sight. Baby Doll Magazine. Issue 24. April, 1978. Model Ivy Eden wore a very similar nightie.Thatmagazine is in my bedside table, not nestled away in my sock drawer like the others. It’s special to me–I traded a month of commissary funds for it. Ivy’s long red hair and pink-pale skin got me through a lot of hard nights in the Pen.

Verity sits at her desk, a thick math textbook open in front of her. Calculus is a requirement, even for an art major. She tries to look busy, but I see the impatient bounce of her leg, the way she reads the same passage three times, and the unused highlighter clutched in her hand. She’s anxious.Good.

The Princess is a fast learner, that much was obvious today. She’s waiting for my call, and I spend a long time wondering what she’s thinking. Is she hot for it? Thinking about how I’d jerked off in front of her at the ball? Is she daydreaming about the size of my cock? Thinking of how it felt under her hand in the car? Is she wondering how I’d taste?

Jesus, I thought I was hard when she was touching me, but that was nothing compared to watching her swallow my spit. I almost bent her over the edge of the fountain and fucked her right there. It would have been frowned upon, but I could’ve. It’s my day, after all.

Giving my cock a squeeze, I grab my phone.

Prince Pace: Third door down. Door’s unlocked.

I watch on the screen as she hears the notification, her whole body jolting at the sound. It takes her a moment to pick it up, her motions slow and wary. There’s a suspended moment where I’m almost positive I can see her swallow, and then:

Princess: Coming.

Not yet, Rosilocks, but soon.

Entering in a command, I queue up a new video that fills the top right screen. It’s from the day of the ceremony, from the very moment she arrived through the gates. It took me some time to hack into it that afternoon, so I missed this part–the one where she’s gliding through the doors of the Palace with her head held high. Sure, she looks different than she did back in the day. A little older, sharper. Bigger tits and curvier hips. But the red hair I’d wanted so badly to feel around my fingers is the same. Shiny and long. Rosie Red. Rosilocks.

The hair is what got my attention on that dating app in the first place, so fiery and soft-looking. Unique. Special. Before I even swiped on her, I was imagining it between my thighs as she sucked me down, the way my fingers would look tangled in it. The name she chose seared her into my memory, and as soon as she accepted, we started messaging, exchanging a few innocent pics. When I asked her to show me her tits, she didn’t quite go all the way, but still sent a fuck-hot shot of her cleavage, showing just enough of a royal blue bra to give me a raging hard-on. It was annoyingly coy, a little too innocent, but the thrill of the chase has always been just that for me.

A thrill.

I thought I’d up the ante, let her see what I could deliver if we met in person.

A girl needs to know what she’s getting, right?