Page 20 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

“Not as beautiful as you.” The prince spun me around, pushing me back against a tree and surprised the heck out of me by attacking me with tickles.

“Stop…stop,” I laughed and shrieked, feeling it down to the tips of my toes. And finally, he took pity on me and eased the tickle-fest to hold me in a close embrace.

“Does any of this seem familiar, Mils?” The prince asked.

“I’m sorry, no. Not yet. I feel you, but I can’t remember.”

“It’s okay,” he said, holding my face and staring me in the eyes. “I know it will come back to you. You’re to be moved from that horrible cell. I want you in a room with a real bed and real clothing, and a bathroom. You’re my Millie. I won’t have you treated like a prisoner, even if my father thinks you are.”

The floral scent from the platinum poppies wafted through the air. Birds chirped out their happy birdie songs and I found myself thinking more about meeting Steele for the first time at the club—or what I thought was our first meeting—and an unexpected urge hit. “Will you dance with me, Steele?”

He smiled, laughing softly. “I’ll do anything you ask of me, Mils. Out here, just you and me, you call the shots. I’m at your mercy.”

Before even finishing his thought, he spun me to face him, gripping my hips and we began to sway slowly without music. I hated that I loved this so much because I still didn’t know if I could trust him. “How long were we together?” I asked him, the fluster obvious to my voice.

“Two seasons, summer and fall. When you disappeared, I went crazy. They took you right out from under our noses.”

“Who took me?”

“The Papyrus. Hadn’t you ever noticed anything strange about the woman you lived with?”

“Aunt Cynthia? I guess. But she was my aunt. Why would I doubt that?”

“Because she was never your aunt. She and the others took you from me. They moved you from place to place, able to keep you curiously off our radar.”

“Seriously, I don’t know what to do with any of this.” Or remember it, for that matter. She moved me? How could I not remember moving all the times we appeared to have moved? “If you know me as well as you claim to, you’ll know I’m not a woman prone to freak outs. I take in my surroundings and assess. What I’m assessing includes you. And really, since she’s all I know, she’ll always be my aunt.”

“Hopefully not always,” he whispered as we continued to sway, and I knew what he meant. If I remembered, then I’d probably see her quite differently. Yet another thing to wrap my head around. I tilted my neck to look up, catching those silver-gray eyes staring lovingly back into mine and realized that even if I never sorted any of this out, in this moment, it didn’t matter. With so much looking behind and ahead of me in the future, I made a vow to live in the now while I had the chance. So that’s what I set out to do.

“Well, Prince Steele,” I said cheekily. “When I remember, you’ll be the second to know.”

“Second?” He raised his eyebrow.

I clucked my tongue and chuckled. “Clearly,I’dbe the first.”

“Clearly,” he repeated, snickering, too.

Then I breathed out slow and long laying my cheek to his chest. “Did we spend a lot of time in this garden?” I asked.

His hands on my hips pressed harder. “I would sneak you here, yes,” he answered not giving me more than that. I wanted to hear more and he kept me waiting and wondering until I thought I’d go crazy when finally, he spoke softly again. “My father, he didn’t know we kept you hidden out of your room, too. But you loved the flowers, so different from back home, you’d tell me. I couldn’t deny you then, so I would bring you here. No one else besides Korrigan comes to the garden. It’s too close to the Papyrus boarder, which I guess is how they discovered you last time.”

“Aren’t you worried they’ll find me again?”

Our bodies jolted to a sudden stop as he shook me gently and I tilted my chin to look up at him. His brushed aluminum eyes had sharpened to a polished silver. I didn’t like them polished, they were too cold, too calculating. “I’ll die before I let them take you away again,” he said, and I didn’t like that more.

If he really knew me like he claimed to, then he’d have to know how those words would chip away at my already cracking psyche. I’d been dealing with this all pretty well to my mind, but there was only so much a girl could take.

As he searched my eyes, reading something there, getting more than I was ready for him to have, I decided to move us away from this subject. We weren’t there yet. I needed more time to figure this world out, and figure out my place in it. My heart laughed at me for that thought, though my head totally agreed.

“What would be the point of that?” I asked, choosing coquettish over mental case. “If you died, what would be my incentive to stay?” I blinked my eyes and smiled, placing a hand to my chest.

“Everyone wants you, Mils. The Vráchos, Papyrus, Forfex, even the outliers. They just want you for a far different reason than I do.”

“Why?” I asked. The breeze picked up slightly ruffling his hair and filling the garden with the fresh scent of lemon balm and lavender that grew along the fence surrounding the garden. As they looked metallic, my brain told me they should’ve smelled metallic. This place was truly magic.

“Suppose I can tell you that. Because, my sweet Millie, you are the flesh.”

“And what exactly is a flesh?”

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