Chapter 3 — Looking
Pairing: Jason Todd/F!Reader, Roy Harper/F!Reader
Word Count: 7.4k
Rating: Mature
Warnings: objectification, anxiety/panic, sexual tension, non-explicit nudity, consent and boundaries, purity culture, references to past violence
Summary: No one touches her in this chapter.
Somehow, that does not make it less intimate.
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By the third fitting, you had decided Prince Adrian deserved to drown at sea.
It was not a serious thought. Probably. You had never met him, and murder before introduction was the sort of thing your mother called politically inconvenient. Still, as you stood on a low platform in the center of your dressing room with three seamstresses kneeling at your hem, two ladies-in-waiting watching from the cushioned bench, Mistress Alis holding a folio like a weapon, and the royal dressmaker frowning at your waist as if it had personally complicated diplomacy, you felt the idea had merit.
Prince Adrian was not even in the kingdom yet, and already he had become everyone’s favorite excuse to torment you.
“Lift your arm, Your Highness,” Madame Isera said around a mouthful of pins.
You lifted your arm.
“Not so high.”
You lowered it.
“Now the other.”
You gave her the other.
“Shoulders back.”
“My shoulders are back.”
“Softly back.”
You looked down at her. “Is there a court version of softly back, or am I meant to guess?”
One of your ladies made a strangled sound behind her hand. Mistress Alis did not react. She had been standing near the full-length mirror for the better part of an hour, making notes about fabric, posture, presentation, and several other subjects that would have been improved by her absence.
Your chambermaid, Elowen, stood near the wardrobe with a bundle of rejected sleeves over one arm and deep sympathy in her eyes. She was wise enough not to speak. She had been with you since you were twelve and knew better than to interfere once you began losing patience with clothing.
The gown was beautiful, which made you resent it more.
It was deep green silk threaded with gold at the cuffs and bodice, designed to complement the blue-and-silver banners of Veyr without looking as if your family had surrendered taste at the harbor. The skirts fell in heavy, elegant lines that made every step feel ceremonial. The bodice shaped your waist with ruthless competence and lifted your breasts in a way that had made Madame Isera hum thoughtfully and made you threaten, very calmly, to climb out the nearest window.
The nearest window was too narrow.
You had checked.
“You are slouching again,” Mistress Alis said.
“I am breathing.”
“Both can be managed.”
You turned your head slowly. “Do you breathe by appointment, Mistress Alis?”
This time, Lady Tamsin laughed before she could stop herself. She was the younger of the two ladies-in-waiting, recently married, pretty, and prone to looking guilty whenever she found you funny. The older one, Lady Veyna, gave her a disapproving glance that made her sit straighter.
Madame Isera tugged gently at the side seam. “The princess has a naturally athletic carriage. It can be accommodated.”
Athletic carriage.
That was a kinder way of saying what half the court muttered when they thought you could not hear. You had shoulders from swordwork and thighs from riding. Your waist was strong from hours in the yard, your arms shaped by years of drills, your palms marked in places no amount of rose oil could fully soften. You had curves too, because the gods had apparently enjoyed contradictions when making you: breasts the bodice insisted on presenting like diplomatic assets, hips that made formal skirts fall dramatically, and an ass Roy had once referred to as “strategically noticeable” before Jason kicked him under a banquet table hard enough to make him limp for ten minutes.
None of this had bothered you much before.
Your body was your body. It climbed, fought, bled, healed, carried knives, took bruises, and kept surviving. You had spent more hours in trousers than gowns by choice and had been called unladylike so often the word had lost all sting. If courtiers wanted a princess who moved like porcelain, they could commission a statue and let it bore them.
But this was different.
This was your body being adjusted for a man you had not met.
“Perhaps a narrower line through the waist,” Mistress Alis said. “Something to emphasize maturity without boldness.”
Madame Isera’s hands tightened very slightly in the fabric. “The gown already emphasizes Her Highness’s figure.”
“Yes, but Prince Adrian’s court favors refinement.”
You looked at Mistress Alis through the mirror. “How fortunate that my waist may assist with foreign policy.”
Lady Tamsin choked again.
Lady Veyna murmured, “Your Highness.”
“No, I am fascinated. Please continue. Shall we ask my ribs to sign a trade agreement?”
Mistress Alis closed her folio. “No one is objectifying you.”
The room went quiet.
It was such a foolish sentence that for a moment you only stared at her reflection. The seamstresses lowered their hands. Elowen’s mouth tightened. Even Madame Isera, who had survived royal tempers, court fashions, and one infamous winter when the queen declared orange silk unacceptable under any circumstance, looked abruptly interested in the carpet.
“No?” you asked.
Mistress Alis seemed to recognize, too late, that the ground beneath her had become unstable. “I mean only that these preparations are ordinary. Every princess who receives a suitor must consider how she is seen.”
There it was again.
Seen.
The word slid beneath the too-tight lacing and pressed against your lungs.
“How I am seen,” you repeated.
“Presentation matters.”
“To whom?”
“To everyone.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the truth.”
You turned carefully on the platform, ignoring Madame Isera’s alarmed gasp when one of the pins tugged free. “To Prince Adrian, then.”
Mistress Alis held your gaze. “Yes. Among others.”
“And how should he see me?”
The question hung in the dressing room like a drawn blade.
Lady Veyna looked at her hands. Lady Tamsin had gone pink. Elowen’s eyes flicked toward you, worried. Madame Isera began gathering loose pins with intense focus, as if she might escape the conversation by becoming very small and useful.
Mistress Alis lifted her chin. “As a suitable match.”
You smiled.
It felt ugly.
“Suitable,” you said. “Refined, mature, soft enough not to frighten him, modest enough not to challenge him, shaped correctly enough to interest him, and covered carefully enough to protect him from believing I knew what my own breasts were before he arrived.”
Lady Tamsin whispered your name.
Mistress Alis went pale. “Your Highness, that is vulgar.”
“No,” you said. “It is accurate. You dislike that more.”
Madame Isera stood quickly. “Perhaps we should pause.”
“Yes,” you said.
Mistress Alis stepped forward. “The fitting is not complete.”
“It is for now.”
“The prince arrives in eleven days.”
“Then he has eleven days to develop better eyesight.”
You reached behind yourself for the lacing at your back, found only knots, pins, and the infuriating architecture of the gown. Your fingers caught on silk. A seamstress made a distressed noise. You did not care. Panic had begun coiling low in your chest again, smaller than the day before but hotter, sharpened now by embarrassment.
You were suddenly aware of everything.
The mirror. The watching women. The shape of your waist. The lift of the bodice. The weight of skirts around your legs. The cool air touching the upper swell of your breasts where the neckline sat lower than anything you would choose for yourself. The knowledge that this gown had been designed so a foreign prince could look at you and find meaning in what he saw.
You had faced men with knives and felt less exposed.
Elowen moved first, setting the sleeves aside and stepping toward you with practical urgency. “Let me help, Your Highness.”
You let her. Barely.
Her fingers were quick with the worst of the pins, freeing the overskirt and loosening the back of the gown enough that you could breathe. Madame Isera murmured something about creasing the silk, but she said it softly, and when you looked down at her, she stopped saying it altogether.
Mistress Alis drew herself up. “You cannot simply walk away because a discussion has become uncomfortable.”
“I can do several things because a discussion has become uncomfortable.”
“Princess.”
That did it.
You stepped off the platform, skirts dragging, bodice half-laced, hair coming loose from its pins. “I have spent my entire life being taught to withstand discomfort. Hot baths. Long sermons. Court dinners. Broken fingers. Men explaining naval strategy badly. I can withstand discomfort. What I am finished with is standing still while you discuss my body like an embassy table.”
“You are overreacting.”
“You keep saying things as if they become true because you dislike my tone.”
Mistress Alis’s mouth pressed thin.
Your mother would have told you to breathe. Jason would have told you to lower your shoulder before you left yourself open. Roy would have said something ridiculous enough to make the room survivable.
None of them were in the dressing room.
Jason and Roy stood outside the main doors to your apartments because even your freedom from propriety had limits when seamstresses were pinning silk around your underthings. They had not seen the fitting itself, but they had heard enough. They always heard enough. That knowledge burned through you as you pushed past Elowen, through the dressing chamber, and toward the inner corridor of your apartments.
“Your Highness,” Elowen called, “the gown—”
“Can suffer.”
You swept into the hall, nearly tripped over the loosened hem, caught yourself on the wall, and kicked the nearest length of silk out of your way.
The two guards posted at the outer doors straightened when they saw you. They were palace men, not yours, and their eyes widened at the sight of you half-dressed and furious, which was the last mistake they made that afternoon.
“Look at the wall,” Jason snapped.
Both men looked at the wall.
You had not seen him move from the antechamber, but suddenly he was there, broad and dark and furious in a way that should have reassured you. Roy came a step behind him, his easy expression wiped clean. His gaze flicked over you once, not lingering, taking inventory the way guards did when something was wrong: no blood, no visible injury, no attacker, gown compromised, princess livid.
Then he looked away.
So did Jason.
That should have pleased you.
It did not.
You walked past them into the private wing of your apartments, dragging half the dignity of the court behind you in wrinkled green silk.
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Your private solar had never been what royal decorators wanted it to be.
They had given you a pretty room when you moved into the adult apartments at sixteen. Pale walls, delicate chairs, embroidered cushions, a harp you had touched exactly twice, and a little writing desk positioned to catch the morning light. Within three months, the harp had been relocated to a cousin who actually liked music, the delicate chairs had been replaced by heavier ones that could survive boots, and the writing desk had become a place to lay maps, knives, and unfinished books.
Now the room was yours in a way few parts of the palace were.
There was a hearth along the inner wall, usually unlit in summer. A long couch sat before it, wide enough for you to sprawl on while reading reports you were not supposed to have. There were shelves of books and treaty maps, a locked cabinet containing contraband sweets and several excellent throwing knives, a low table scarred by blade marks, and a pair of doors leading to a balcony that overlooked the old rose court. Roy had once claimed the room looked as if a scholar, a soldier, and a spoiled princess had fought for custody of it, and all three had won.
You loved it.
At the moment, you loved it because it had a door you could close.
You did close it, though Jason and Roy followed you inside before you could shut them out. That was their right and their duty. It also irritated you, which meant you did not know what feeling to put down first.
“You are bleeding?” Jason asked.
“No.”
“Did someone touch you?”
“No.”
“Threaten you?”
“Only with sleeves.”
Roy exhaled, slow and controlled. “Do not joke yet.”
You turned on him. “I will joke whenever I please.”
“You usually do.”
“And?”
“And when you joke like that, it means you are deciding whether to stab someone or cry.”
The accuracy of it was insulting.
You crossed the room and stopped near the hearth. The gown moved awkwardly around your legs, half-loosened and still too heavy. You reached behind yourself again, trying to find the remaining laces. Your fingers brushed knots, stays, fabric, and more pins. A sharp point caught your thumb.
You hissed.
Jason stepped forward before he caught himself. “Let Elowen help.”
“No.”
“Princess.”
“Elowen will fuss. Madame Isera will mourn the fabric. Mistress Alis will hover in the doorway like a judgmental ghost. I would rather be swallowed by the floor.”
Roy glanced toward the closed door. “That can probably be arranged if we ask the masons what happened in the east corridor last winter.”
“Not helpful.”
“I was trying to be comforting.”
“You are bad at it.”
“Only under pressure.”
Jason had turned partly away from you, which made anger flash hot through your embarrassment. His eyes were fixed on the balcony doors. His jaw was tight. The muscle near his temple jumped once.
Roy was looking at the rug.
You knew why. Of course you knew why. The gown had been loosened enough that the structured bodice sat improperly, one shoulder slipping lower than intended. Beneath it, your shift showed white against your chest and collarbone. Your hair had half fallen from its pins, your feet were bare because you had abandoned the formal shoes somewhere between the dressing platform and your private corridor, and the skirts were caught up enough to show a glimpse of ankle, calf, and the knife sheath strapped just below your knee.
It was not the most undressed they had ever seen you.
Jason had seen your back bare to the waist while a physician stitched a slash beneath your shoulder blade after the east tower attack. Roy had carried you through a rainstorm in a shirt soaked nearly transparent after your horse broke its leg on a ravine path. They had both seen you in training trousers torn at the thigh, in bandages, in blood, in armor half-fastened over your night shift when alarms rang before dawn.
You had never cared then.
You cared now.
The realization infuriated you so much that you yanked at the lacing again and nearly tore the bodice.
“Stop,” Jason said.
You froze.
He did too.
The word was not sharp this time. It was quiet, almost pained, but it still landed between you with the memory of the terms from the night before.
You released the fabric. “I am allowed to undress in my own rooms.”
“Yes.”
“Then stop looking like I have done something to you.”
Jason’s head turned slightly, though he still did not face you fully. “I am trying to respect you.”
“I know what respect looks like.”
“Do you?”
That struck harder than it should have.
Roy muttered Jason’s name, but Jason did not take it back.
You stood in the middle of your solar, half-trapped in silk and fury, and felt the panic of the fitting shift into something more complicated. “You have seen me in worse states.”
“This is different,” Jason said.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“Because it is.”
“Why?”
Roy rubbed both hands over his face. “Gods.”
You looked at him. “Do not ask them for help now. They let Mistress Alis exist.”
Despite himself, Roy laughed once. It broke some of the tension, not enough to make the room easy, but enough for him to look at you again. Carefully. His gaze went to your face first and stayed there.
“It is different,” he said, “because no one is bleeding, dying, freezing, or trying to kill you.”
“An improvement, surely.”
“Usually.”
You crossed your arms and immediately regretted it because the bodice shifted in a way that made both men look elsewhere again. Heat climbed your throat.
Roy noticed. His face softened.
That was worse.
You lifted your chin. “If either of you pity me, I will throw you from the balcony.”
“We are not pitying you,” Roy said.
“You look like you are.”
“I look like I am trying not to make anything worse.”
“That is a kind of pity.”
“It is a kind of terror, actually.”
Jason shot him a look.
Roy spread his hands. “What? She likes honesty.”
“I like useful honesty,” you said.
“Then yes, Princess, this is different because you noticed us noticing.”
Your breath caught.
Roy’s expression remained gentle, but he did not soften the words further. Jason had gone still beside the balcony doors.
You looked down first because, for once, you needed the reprieve. The gown looked ridiculous from above: expensive silk pulled askew, pins missing, laces loosened, the elegant line of the skirts ruined by your own hands. Beneath it, your body was the same body you had carried into a hundred training sessions, the same body you had refused to let court shame into stillness.
The same body that suddenly felt like a question.
“I hate this gown,” you said.
Roy accepted the change in subject with more grace than you deserved. “The gown has committed several crimes.”
“It makes me look like someone else.”
“No,” he said.
You looked at him.
His gaze flicked briefly over the dress, then back to your face. “It makes other people think they have succeeded in making you look like someone else. That is not the same thing.”
You did not know what to do with that.
Jason’s voice came from near the balcony. “The waist is too tight.”
You turned toward him. “That is your contribution?”
“It is restricting your breathing. The left shoulder is pinned badly. The hem is dangerous near stairs. You would have trouble drawing the blade at your back if the overskirt stayed fastened.”
Roy stared at him. “That is what you noticed?”
Jason looked back, flatly. “Yes.”
Liar.
The thought arrived so quickly it startled you.
Jason’s eyes returned to the balcony doors, and that was when you understood. He was telling the truth, but not all of it. Jason had noticed the dangers because Jason always noticed danger. He had noticed the fit because restrictive clothing could get you killed. He had noticed the knife access, the stairs, the bad pinning, and the breath trapped in your ribs.
He had noticed everything else too.
That was why he would not look.
The knowledge moved through you slowly, almost delicately. It did not feel like the fitting room. It did not feel like Mistress Alis’s notes or Madame Isera’s measuring tape or Lady Veyna’s careful warnings about presentation. This felt more like the moment before a practice bout turned real, when both fighters understood the next move would matter.
You drew a breath.
The lacing stopped it halfway.
“Help me out of it,” you said.
Jason’s answer came at once. “No.”
Roy’s came nearly on top of it. “Elowen can—”
“I am not asking Elowen.”
“You should,” Jason said.
“I am asking you.”
“No.”
You smiled without humor. “Was that your refusal or your panic?”
Jason turned then. Fully.
His eyes met yours, dark and controlled and furious with himself for reasons that were beginning to make sense. “It is my answer.”
The terms. Always the terms.
You pressed your lips together, then made yourself nod once. “Fine.”
Some of his tension eased. Not all of it.
You looked to Roy. “You?”
Roy’s throat worked. “I can help with the outer laces if Jason stands by the door and glares at the furniture.”
Jason’s face tightened. “Roy.”
“She is trapped in a gown and will rip it off with a dagger if nobody helps.”
“I was considering that,” you admitted.
“I know. That is why I am being practical.”
Jason’s gaze moved from Roy to you. “You are sure?”
The question was directed at you.
It should not have mattered as much as it did. You had asked. Roy had offered a limited answer. Jason was confirming, because the act itself was small and the context was not.
You swallowed. “Yes.”
Roy approached as if you were a skittish horse with a knife habit, which was unfair but not inaccurate. He stopped behind you, far enough away that you could still change your mind.
“Outer laces only,” he said. “Then I step back.”
You rolled your eyes because you needed to. “Yes, Sir Virtue.”
“Sir Virtue died in a dice game. I am his disappointing cousin.”
A laugh escaped you, thin but real.
Roy’s fingers touched the laces at your back.
They did not touch skin. They did not need to. The first gentle tug seemed to travel through every place the gown held you too tightly. Silk loosened. The bodice eased by a fraction. Air slipped deeper into your lungs. Roy worked quickly, his hands deft from years of bowstrings, bandages, knots, and the small, practical tasks guards did without ever being thanked for.
Jason stood near the door now, facing outward. His shoulders were rigid.
“You look ridiculous,” you told him.
“I am not looking.”
“That is the ridiculous part.”
Roy’s fingers paused. “Princess.”
“What?”
“Do not bait him while I am untying you from expensive diplomatic silk. My nerves are loyal but finite.”
You held still, though the temptation was severe.
The last outer lace gave. The gown relaxed around you, no longer a cage so much as a very costly inconvenience. Roy stepped back at once and came around to face you, stopping beside Jason rather than behind you. There was color high on his cheekbones.
You felt better.
You also felt more exposed.
The gown had slipped lower at one shoulder. The stays beneath remained firmly in place, plain cream fabric against your shift, structured but far less formal than the court bodice. Your collarbone was bare. Your throat was bare. The linen of your shift softened the line of your chest without hiding the shape the dressmaker had been discussing all afternoon. The heavy skirts still covered most of you, but the undone gown changed everything.
You were not naked.
You were not even indecent by the standards of a battlefield, a sickroom, or an emergency. By court standards, however, you had moved beyond presentable and into the dangerous territory of private.
Jason still faced the door.
Roy looked at your face.
You hated that you liked the difference.
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The next silence lasted long enough for the old solar clock to mark three uneven ticks.
You gathered the loosened gown in one hand and crossed to the couch, sitting with less grace than any princess in formal silk was meant to manage. The skirts pooled around you. You curled one bare foot under the edge of the fabric and left the other on the rug, ankle visible, knife sheath still strapped just above it.
Roy’s gaze dipped there for half a second.
You noticed.
So did he.
He closed his eyes briefly. “This chapter of my life will end with Jason murdering me.”
“You are assuming I will wait my turn,” Jason said.
You smiled despite yourself. “You are both very dramatic.”
Jason finally turned from the door, though he kept his gaze above your shoulders. “You wanted help out of the gown. You have it.”
“I wanted help out of the fitting.”
“That requires arson,” Roy said. “We can discuss logistics after supper.”
“I do not want logistics.”
“You always want logistics.”
You looked from one to the other. The charged air from before had changed, not vanished. It had stretched itself thinner, woven through the room until everything familiar felt newly dangerous. Roy by the table, Jason near the door, the blades in the cabinet, the books on the shelves, the couch where you had fallen asleep a dozen times with one or both of them standing watch nearby.
All of this had existed before.
The difference was that now you knew where to look.
“You said there are different kinds of looking,” you said.
Roy’s humor faded.
Jason’s eyes moved to yours.
You ran your fingers over a fold of green silk, smoothing it flat over your thigh. “The court looks to measure. Guards look to protect. Enemies look for weakness.”
Roy nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“And desire?”
Neither answered at once.
That silence was answer enough to make your pulse change.
You sat straighter. “That is the next lesson.”
Jason’s face closed. “No.”
“You have been saying that often. It has become less impressive.”
“Good. Then you can hear it without flinching.”
You glared at him. “I did not flinch.”
“You did yesterday.”
Roy looked between you. “This feels like the kind of argument that starts with wording and ends with furniture damage.”
You ignored him. “I am not asking either of you to touch me.”
“I know,” Jason said.
“I am not asking you to undress me further.”
“I know.”
“I am asking you to explain the thing everyone keeps pretending is either too shameful to name or too delicate for me to understand.”
“You are asking us to look at you.”
The bluntness of it made heat rise beneath your skin.
You forced yourself not to look away. “Yes.”
Jason’s gaze held yours for a beat, then lowered no farther than your mouth before snapping away again. That tiny failure did more to you than a compliment would have.
Roy saw it. His expression turned careful.
You drew a breath and corrected yourself because the terms deserved it, and because you hated that Jason had been right about how easily you hid behind command. “I am not ordering you to look.”
Jason’s attention returned to you.
“It is a request,” you said.
Roy’s eyes softened. “That was well done.”
“I am not a dog learning to sit.”
“No,” he said. “You would bite the trainer.”
“Only if the trainer were slow.”
Jason exhaled, almost a laugh.
The sound steadied you. It made the room feel less like a cliff and more like a place where falling might not kill you.
Roy came around the low table and sat in the chair across from the couch, not too close. Jason remained standing, which surprised exactly no one.
“Then we answer first,” Roy said. “Before anything else.”
You nodded.
“There is looking that takes,” he said. “You know that kind. Men in court do it when they think rank makes them invisible. They look at your title and your body at the same time, and you can feel them deciding what each part might be worth.”
Your fingers tightened in the silk.
Roy saw and continued carefully. “There is looking that measures. Tailors, advisors, painters, ambassadors, the whole cursed palace before a formal event. Sometimes they mean no harm. Sometimes harm is not the point. They still make you feel like a thing being arranged.”
You thought of Madame Isera’s pins, Mistress Alis’s folio, Lady Veyna’s quiet concern, your mother’s unfinished apology.
“Yes,” you said.
“Guards look differently.” His mouth quirked. “Mostly. We look for danger. Hidden hands. Strange movement. Bad exits. Poison. Archers. People standing where they should not stand. Whether your hem will trip you near stairs.”
Jason grunted.
“You look for knives,” you said.
“I look for everything,” Jason corrected.
“You missed my eighth dagger yesterday.”
Roy pointed at him. “She did get you there.”
Jason ignored both of you. “Desire is different.”
The word settled over the room again, heavier than silk.
Roy glanced at him, then took over when Jason did not continue. “Desire notices without needing an excuse. It notices because looking feels good and dangerous and sometimes impossible to stop. It can be gentle. It can be greedy. It can be respectful. It can be a warning. The difference is what the person does after they notice.”
You looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“A decent man can want and still keep his hands to himself. He can look because he has been invited, and stop when he has not. He can admire without collecting. He can be affected without making that your burden.”
The words sank into you slowly.
You had been admired before, or at least praised in ways meant to sound like admiration. Court compliments were rarely simple. Men told you your gown suited you when they meant your family’s alliance would suit them. They praised your wit while hoping you would use less of it. They admired your spirit until your spirit inconvenienced them. Even kind compliments came wrapped in expectations, as if beauty were a room someone else had built and you were merely expected to stand in it correctly.
“What if I want it to be my burden?” you asked.
Roy’s eyes darkened. Jason went very still.
You realized what you had said a breath too late.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Roy said, although his voice had changed.
“Do you?”
“I think so.” He leaned back in the chair, not closer, never closer. “Sometimes being wanted feels powerful because someone sees you and you choose what to do with it. That can be good. Very good.”
The last two words were quiet enough to make your stomach tighten.
Jason’s jaw flexed.
You looked toward him. “Do you disagree?”
“No.”
“You look like you disagree.”
“I look like I am thinking.”
“You look like you are being executed by thought.”
Roy nodded. “Common Jason expression.”
Jason gave him a look, then returned his attention to you. This time, he did not look away from your face. “Being desired can feel like power. It can also make you vulnerable. Both matter.”
“You are very committed to ruining everything pleasant with warnings.”
“I am committed to you surviving pleasant things too.”
The sentence caught you unexpectedly.
Roy went quiet again.
You studied Jason, trying to understand the line of him in the low light: the broad shoulders held too stiffly, the crossed arms, the guarded face. The careful distance. Always the distance. If Roy made desire sound like warmth and laughter and the delicious danger of being admired, Jason made it sound like a blade laid gently in your hand, hilt first, edge turned away from your skin.
You understood why you needed both.
“All right,” you said.
Roy tipped his head. “All right?”
“Look at me.”
Jason’s answer was immediate. “No.”
You threw a cushion at him.
He caught it one-handed.
Roy coughed into his fist.
“I was asking,” you said.
“You were provoking.”
“I am capable of both.”
“We know,” Roy said.
Jason set the cushion on the nearest chair with ridiculous care. “Why?”
You blinked. “Why what?”
“Why do you want this?”
You almost snapped because snapping was easy, and because questions like that felt too close to being denied. Then you remembered the night before. Terms. Truth. No hiding behind the crown. No turning fear into command.
You looked down at the gown around your body. “Because they looked at me all afternoon like I was not inside the body they were discussing.”
Neither of them spoke.
Your voice steadied as you continued. “Because they kept saying Prince Adrian should see me properly, and what they meant was that he should see whatever version of me makes him interested without making him cautious. Because I have been seen by painters, advisors, tutors, guards, enemies, physicians, and half the court, and all of them were looking for something. Lineage. Weakness. Health. Threat. Obedience. Marriageability. Trouble.”
Roy’s mouth curved faintly at the last word, but his eyes stayed serious.
You lifted your gaze. “I want to know what it feels like when the looking is mine too.”
Jason’s expression changed.
It was very small. The kind of shift someone else might mistake for nothing. But you knew his face in the way one learned weather before battle. Something in him softened and tightened at once, an old instinct striking a new wound.
Roy drew a slow breath. “Then yes.”
Your eyes moved to him.
He did not look away. “I can look.”
You swallowed. “You can stop.”
“So can you.”
“I know.”
He smiled. “Good.”
Then Roy looked at you.
At first, it was almost disappointing.
His gaze stayed on your face, warm and familiar, the same kind of attention he gave you when you were speaking in council and he wanted you to know he had caught the insult hidden in a minister’s polite phrasing. Then his eyes lowered, carefully enough that every movement felt offered rather than taken. He looked at your hair, half-pinned and messy around the sharpened hairpin. He looked at your throat, your bare collarbone, the shoulder where the gown had slipped, the structured line of your stays over the shift, the place where the loosened silk folded over your waist.
You felt each glance without being touched.
It should have made you want to cover yourself.
It did not.
Your hand curled in the silk, and Roy saw that too. His mouth softened. “You look like you fought the entire court wardrobe and won by dishonorable means.”
A laugh burst out of you before you could stop it.
His smile widened. “There she is.”
“That is your compliment?”
“It is my opening compliment. I was building momentum.”
“You need momentum to compliment me?”
“Princess, complimenting you honestly while Jason stands there looking like a thundercloud with murder training requires courage.”
“I am not stopping you,” Jason said.
“You are spiritually stopping me.”
You laughed again, and this time it came easier. Some of the tightness in your chest unwound. Roy looked pleased, but not triumphant. That mattered too. He had made you laugh without turning the moment into a joke.
His gaze dipped again, slower this time, and the humor in his face gentled into something else.
“You are beautiful,” he said.
The simplicity of it almost made you flinch.
Court men had said it before. Visiting lords, poets, cousins by marriage who drank too much wine at feasts. Beautiful princess was one of those phrases the world produced without thought, as meaningless as lovely weather or fine music. But Roy said it like he had considered other words and decided this one was true enough to stand alone.
“You say that like it is obvious,” you said.
“It is.”
“I was covered in sand yesterday.”
“You were beautiful then too.”
Your throat went tight.
Roy’s voice remained light, but only because he was choosing to be kind with it. “Infuriating, armed past reason, and one wrong step away from giving the captain of the guard a permanent headache, but beautiful.”
You looked down, overwhelmed by the tenderness of being insulted accurately.
“And now?” you asked.
Roy’s smile changed. “Now you look like someone tried to make you soft and only managed to prove they have never understood what softness is.”
You did not know what to do with that either.
He continued, quieter. “There is nothing wrong with the silk. There is nothing wrong with the shape of you in it. That is not the part they ruined.”
Your fingers loosened in the gown.
“What did they ruin?” you asked.
“They tried to make you feel like being seen meant being handed over.”
The words landed exactly where the panic had lived.
Your breath went thin.
Roy leaned forward, just a little, then stopped himself. “It does not.”
You believed him.
Not completely, perhaps. Not enough to undo years of silence in a single afternoon. But enough that the room felt steadier. Enough that you could sit in half-laced silk under a man’s admiring gaze and understand that nothing had been taken from you.
You looked at Jason.
He was still standing. Still controlled. Still watching Roy as much as he watched you, perhaps because it was easier to assess another man’s desire than admit his own.
“You are quiet,” you said.
“I know.”
“Are you angry?”
“Yes.”
Roy sighed.
You lifted your chin. “At me?”
Jason’s eyes cut to yours. “No.”
“At Roy?”
“Always a little,” Roy said.
Jason ignored him. “At the room they put you in. At the things they said. At the fact that you had to ask us because everyone else failed you first.”
The anger in his voice should have made the room colder. Instead, it warmed something low in your chest, dark and unsteady.
“And at yourself?” you asked.
Jason’s mouth tightened.
There it was.
Roy looked down.
You stood before you could think better of it.
The loosened gown fell around you with a heavy whisper. Roy straightened but stayed seated. Jason’s attention sharpened at once, alert to movement, to imbalance, to every possible danger in a room that held none except the one all three of you had invited inside.
You stepped out of the worst tangle of skirt and let the overdress slide from one shoulder. The fabric slipped lower, still caught at your waist, leaving you in the stays and shift beneath, the green silk gathered around your hips and trailing behind you.
Jason looked away.
It hurt.
That startled you more than anything else had.
“Do not,” you said.
His eyes closed.
You did not move closer. “That was not an order.”
“No,” he said, voice rough. “It was a request.”
“Yes.”
“Then do you understand what you are asking?”
The question scraped against your temper. “Do you understand how tired I am of being asked that?”
His gaze returned to yours, and this time there was no distance in it. “Yes.”
The honesty stopped you.
Jason took a breath. “I am not asking because I think you are foolish. I am asking because if I look at you now, it will not be the way I looked when you were bleeding, or cold, or half-conscious after an attack. It will not be security. It will not be duty. It will not be something I can pretend is clean because I am your guard and you are my responsibility.”
Roy was motionless.
Your heartbeat struck hard once, then again.
Jason’s voice lowered. “If I look, you will know.”
The room seemed to narrow around him.
You felt the choice with terrifying clarity. It was not theoretical now. It was no longer a discussion of men, desire, courtship, and Prince Adrian. It was Jason standing in your private solar, asking whether you understood that his restraint had never been indifference.
You could tell him to stop.
You could tell him to leave.
You could put the gown back over your shoulder and summon Elowen and let the day retreat into something manageable.
Instead, you stood with your bare foot on the rug, silk at your hips, knives hidden beneath the remnants of formal clothing, and made yourself answer without crown or command.
“I want to know,” you said.
Jason went still.
Roy whispered a curse under his breath, not at you.
Jason looked.
It was not like Roy.
Roy’s looking had been warm, careful, admiring in a way that gave you room to laugh. Jason’s gaze moved over you like the first touch of a storm before rain, slow and charged and almost unbearably controlled. He looked at your hair, your throat, the line of your shoulder, the place where the shift softened against your chest above the stays. He looked at your waist, the loosened silk gathered there, the strength in your arms, the bruising near one elbow from practice, the knife strapped at your calf where the skirt had fallen open enough to reveal it.
He saw all of it.
That was the difference.
Not your breasts, your hips, your skin, or the parts of you the court had spent the afternoon trying to arrange into invitation. He saw those too; you could tell, because he was a man and because the air between you changed where his gaze went. But he saw the rest of you at the same time. The bruises. The weapons. The stubborn line of your jaw. The fact that you were frightened and refusing to retreat from it. The spoiled, sharp-tongued princess who had demanded sword lessons until the palace surrendered. The woman standing in silk she hated because everyone else kept trying to decide what her body meant.
Jason looked at you like leaving the room would cost him something.
And because he had taught you the language for it, you knew.
Your breath came shallowly. “Is that desire?”
Jason’s eyes lifted to yours.
“Yes.”
The word was quiet and absolute.
Roy looked at him, then at you, and something in his expression made your chest ache. He was affected too. You could see it now, knew how to read the care in his posture, the tension in his hands, the way humor had become something he held back for your sake.
But Jason’s yes had shifted the room.
You swallowed. “It does not feel like I thought it would.”
Roy’s voice was gentle. “What did you think it would feel like?”
“Smaller.”
Jason’s face changed.
You looked down at yourself, at the exposed shift, the stays, the silk caught around your hips, your bare foot against the rug, the knife at your leg. “I thought being looked at this way would feel like losing something.”
Roy said nothing.
Jason’s voice came low. “And does it?”
You considered lying because the truth made you feel unsteady. Then you remembered the terms.
“No,” you said. “It feels like holding a weapon I have not learned how to use yet.”
Roy’s mouth curved, slow and bright with something like wonder. “That sounds like you.”
You smiled back before you could help it.
Jason did not smile. He looked as though your answer had hurt him and relieved him in equal measure.
You shifted your weight, and the silk rustled around your legs. Both men noticed. This time, neither pretended they had not.
A strange confidence moved through you, thin but real. It was not the brittle confidence of rank or temper, not the kind that made ministers stumble and servants hurry. It was quieter than that. More intimate. A choice settling into your body.
You lifted the fallen edge of the gown and let it slip another inch down your arm.
Jason’s hand flexed at his side.
Roy breathed out through his nose.
You stopped there. Not because you were afraid, though perhaps you were that too. Because you wanted to see whether stopping could be part of the lesson.
It was.
Neither man moved toward you. Neither asked for more. Neither filled the silence with hunger and called it permission.
Roy’s gaze returned to your face. “You can put it back on.”
“I know.”
“You can take it off.”
Jason’s eyes cut to him.
Roy did not look away from you. “With Elowen’s help. Or alone. Or with no one. Or later. Or never, if you decide to burn it.”
“I like that option.”
“I thought you might.”
You gathered the loosened gown against yourself, though not as quickly as you might have before. “What am I supposed to do when someone looks at me like that?”
Roy’s answer came after a pause. “Decide whether you want him to stop.”
The simplicity of it struck harder than all of Mistress Alis’s careful warnings.
You looked at Jason.
He was not looking away now.
“And if I don’t?” you asked.
The silence that followed was no longer empty. It was full of every rule from the night before, every line drawn and redrawn, every word the court had refused to give you and every truth these two men had placed carefully in your hands.
Jason’s gaze held yours.
“Then you decide what you want him to do next,” he said.
Your pulse jumped.
Roy closed his eyes for one brief second, then opened them again, warmth and warning both written across his face.
You held the gown against your body and smiled despite the heat in your cheeks. It was not your court smile. It was not the pretty thing tutors had trained into you, measured and polished and safe enough to offer visiting princes.
It was yours.
“Then I suppose,” you said, “the next lesson should be about asking.”
Jason looked as if the gods had personally abandoned him.
Roy laughed, low and helpless, and the sound moved through the room like sparks catching in kindling.
Outside your private solar, the palace continued preparing for Prince Adrian. Somewhere, Mistress Alis was probably recovering her dignity. Madame Isera was grieving over creased silk. Your mother was perhaps planning another conversation she did not know how to begin.
Inside, no one touched you.
No one needed to.
The lesson had already changed everything.
🛡️⚜️👑⚜️🛡️
credit to @uzmacchiato for the cherry divider ❤️💛