“The name has always angered you.” Nathaniel angled his head to the side then sighed and wiped a hand over his mouth.
“Was it supposed to make me happy?” Timothy’s voice continued to rise. It always did in Nathaniel’s presence. Everything Timothy’s uncle tried to instill in him, diplomacy, tact, manners, always disappeared when faced with this one man.
Timothy vividly recalled trying to scale the castle walls at twelve and getting caught in a nest of thorns. He’d been rescued by a knight and his entourage who had been approaching the castle. Timothy had thought the knight the most handsome man he’d ever seen. The knight had wiped the scratches and blood from Timothy’s arms and face, and laughed in a gentle way that had only convinced Timothy the knight was the shining epitome of chivalry.
Then Timothy had noticed the Neri crest of a black wolf and the emblem of the royal house on his knight’s shield and realized he was in the hands of his future captor. He’d nearly thrown himself under a horse in his efforts to escape the Prince’s care and had burned with humiliation when the Prince had saved him from that as well.
Nathaniel had only deepened the wound by revealing he’d recognized Timothy from his family’s famous blue eyes and dubbing him, “Little Prince.” Timothy would have resented him for that alone even if he hadn’t been destined to someday take Timothy in marriage.
“I know I’m little,” Timothy snarled at him. “I don’t need you making me into more of a joke.” He was very aware of the fact that he was saying this while wearing a stolen, ill-fitting dress.
“I never meant it as a joke. At least, not a mean-spirited one.” Nathaniel kept himself still, the way one did around stray dogs and wild animals. “You were frightened. I was trying to calm you. Then it just… became my name for you.” He took a breath. “I will stop calling you that if it bothers you this much.”
Timothy flicked a cautious look in Nathaniel’s direction, warmed and upset about it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, if it bothers you,” Nathaniel insisted, exactly like the shining prince he was.
Timothy crossed his arms again. “It doesn’t. If what I wanted mattered, I wouldn’t be marrying you, would I?”
Nathaniel flinched.
He always seemed taken aback by Timothy’s blunt attitude toward their betrothal, although Timothy couldn’t understand why. Nathaniel was generally polite about it, but Timothy knew someone like Nathaniel had his choice of anyone if he wanted a lover, and he certainly could have commanded a better husband-to-be from any of the other nearby kingdoms, even if their two countries did share a border and were traditionally allied with each other.
Besides, if Nathaniel had a friend who warmed his bed, who cared for him and got to claim him as their own, then they wouldn’t want him marrying Timothy. Nathaniel could be infuriatingly polite about it until doomsday but Timothy knew there wasn’t much about him that would to appeal to Nathaniel. Timothy wasn’t tall and breathtakingly handsome. He was less than tall, and rather than handsome, he was, well… Nathaniel had once told him he was charming, and though that had likely been more of Nathaniel’s courtly manners, Timothy hung on to the memory.
In truth, Timothy was far from charming. He spoke loudly and out of turn, all his knowledge came from books, and his dancing skills were abominable. At the ball for his eighteenth birthday, he’d discovered that, with Nathaniel distractedly close to him, he lost his ability to move his body with anything resembling grace.
After one too many times tripping forward into the warmth of Prince Nathaniel’s chest, Tim had bolted from the ballroom. To the sound of titters from the watching crowd, he’d run into the garden, startling several couples taking advantage of the dark. From the garden, he’d gone to the stables, hiding himself away in one of the stalls in a pile of soft hay and falling asleep not long after. He’d woken to Nathaniel’s worried face and the knowledge that he’d chosen the stall holding Prince Nathaniel’s horse.
It wasn’t fair. All Timothy wanted was to not be trapped in this agony alone forever. But there seemed to be no escape, and tonight was further proof.
He sighed and flopped down into a nearby chair. “How long until my uncle’s men arrive? Shall I be spending the night?”
His uncle was going to tighten the restrictions on Timothy’s behavior for sure now, although he might be slightly mollified to learn Timothy had not endangered his life this time. Then again, he might not see it that way if he knew about Timothy sneaking past the armed guards in the guardhouse. The next two months were going to be difficult. Two more months and then Tim would turn twenty. The throne would be his. So would Nathaniel.
It was terrible how often Tim had that thought, and how not-terrible it was. That was the danger of the curse.
“The night?” Nathaniel asked, ending Timothy’s thoughts before they would inevitably spiral to panicked, flushed visions of their wedding—and of their marriage bed. Timothy would have been grateful to have been spared the embarrassment, but he tried not to allow kind feelings toward Nathaniel to take root. They bloomed into fondness too easily, and that wasn’t fair to Nathaniel. Although, of course, Nathanielwouldtake Timothy’s question the opposite of how Timothy had intended it. “You won’t be spending the night.”
Or not.
Timothy had been wrong. His face grew hot even without dreams of wedding garlands.
“Fine.” He didn’t want to spend the night in Neri, even if there were fewer guards around him, and Nathaniel was too kind to lock Timothy away somewhere as Timothy’s uncle would have done. Nathaniel likely couldn’t wait to get back to bed, anyway. With whoever. Which was— “Fine,” Timothy said again, trying not to gnash his teeth or snarl or do anything else too revealing.
Though deception had never been a particular skill of his, and he seemed to have once again won Prince Nathaniel’s enraptured attention.
Timothy swallowed and risked another glancing study of the other prince. Nathaniel remained on his feet, watching Timothy as he always did, as if he’d never seen anything like him. It made Timothy remember his diplomatic trips to Neri to present himself—be forcibly presented by his uncle—to Nathaniel’s parents and siblings.
He didn’t know who had been more surprised when Timothy had tried to conceal himself in a rolled-up rug only to be unrolled in the throne room in front of the Queen, the King, Nathaniel, and Nathaniel’s brother and sister—the royal family, or himself.
Timothy had stared at the family in horror and then immediately turned to Nathaniel and that carefully blank expression of his. He’d been startled when Nathaniel had smiled. Nathaniel’s siblings, both younger, had seemed to find the situation equally funny. Timothy’s uncle, however, had been convinced Timothy had offered Neri a monstrous insult, and Timothy had spent the rest of the visit surrounded by guards when not in Nathaniel’s presence.
The Queen and King had been polite about the whole thing. As polite as their eldest son, in fact, which only further convinced Timothy that he would be ill-suited to be Nathaniel’s husband. What would Nathaniel want with a husband who never failed to speak his mind? Yes, Timothy had studied estate management and maths and languages, but so had many other nobles and royals. There was nothing special about him to recommend him to someone as great as Nathaniel of Neri. They were a poor match. Nathaniel would be miserable, and it did neither of them good to pretend otherwise.
Timothy tugged at his dress, wishing for a change of clothes, or at least better shoes. The dress, unfortunately, had required slippers of silk and his feet were now blocks of ice. He tried to curl his toes and made a pained noise when he couldn’t because they were frozen. “When will my uncle’s men be arriving?” he inquired quickly to mask his discomfort.
“They won’t.” Nathaniel let out an impatient, almost furious, sound and ripped a fur throw from the bed. He stormed across to Timothy with such energy that Timothy remained stuck in his seat, unable to move as Nathaniel approached. Nathaniel tossed the fur at him and held up a hand before Timothy could think to form words. “Just use it. You’re obviously cold. It’s not going to make us more betrothed than we were yesterday.”
