A Fool’s Love
Heavily inspired by @karolineprihodko princess x jester series on tiktok, her art is AMAZING!!! And I have been reading a lot of romantasies/romance books lately… uh, so this is my self indulgent WIP because of it, okay?
Princess lost her lady in waiting in the garden, cleverly pointing out Sir Matthew’s rapturous, meticulously styled golden hair that made her Lady in waiting swoon and start batting her eyes at the knight like a lovesick puppy.
There wasn’t anything inherently wrong about this; Lady Lillian was a fine looking lady, her blood noble enough, and once one overlooked her rather buggy eyes, very pretty. She should marry a knight, there were on almost equal standing in society. Except for the codes of honour that bound Sir Matthew.
And the fact that it wasn’t ladies he was interested in, but well… Lady Lillian didn’t know that. And despite her wide eyes, she wasn’t observant enough to care.
Plus, it wasn’t really Princess’s fault that she mentioned that Sir Matthew was looking over at them. So what if she exaggerated the look, and gently suggested that Sir Matthew was looking at Lady Lillian like she was a fresh platter of Chef’s famous cloud cakes.
It was no harm, no foul.
And this was the only time that Princess could manage to steal herself away from the palace grounds. From the mindless frivolity, and decorum, and politeness of the court.
She kicked off her slippers and picked up her skirts once she got to the forest trail that she adored. The sun beamed onto the canopy above the tall, thick elder trees, casting spotlights of warm sunlight onto the forest floor. She loved it.
The wind blew her perfectly styled hair back, her skirts bunched in her fists, held over her knees so she could sprint towards her safe haven of the grove. Her magical spot that didn’t see her as a princess, didn’t expect anything of her. Just peace and solitude and nature around her.
She skidded to a stop once she reached the small clearing, panting heavy as she stepped into the soft bed of white and blue flowers underfoot. The soil was softer here, the sun warmer, kissing her skin as she let out a soft laugh and tilted her head back to let it shine it’s light upon her.
She let out a soft laugh and a hum as she let her skirts drop and started towards the benbow tree, standing old and proud towards the end of the grove, like an guardian looking over the entrance. She only stepped one foot on the trunk when she heard a snap of a twig behind her.
She gasped and jumped back, spinning on her heel with wide eyes at the intruder. Nobody ever comes here. Nobody has ever come here when she was here. This was her spot.
Her eyes settled on smiling dark ones that pierced her throat with a bolt of fear at being caught somewhere she shouldn’t be. She froze under the gaze, swallowing as the court Jester stepped into the grove, the glint of secrets buried in the corners of his lips.
“My, oh my,” he began as he strut into the clearing like he owned the place, her place, “I came in search of solitude from the court and have found myself wanting.”
Princess blinked at him, at his words, before she remembered who she was. Her chin jerked up as she straightened.
“As have I,” she replied, not meaning for it to come out as cold as it did. “And I was here first, so you shall have to find another spot.”
Jester laughed, a warm, happy sound, one she heard so many times as he entertained the courts. He continued to swagger closer, much to Princess’s dismay. The closer he got, the brighter his eyes seemed, delighted with his familiar mischief. A scheme cooking behind them.
“You do not want to claim the forest as part of your dominion, little monarch,” he hummed in warning as he got closer and closer. Princess’s eyes widened a fraction as he stepped too close for propriety to demand, and she stumbled back into the trunk of the tree. He matched her step, coming even closer, and planting his palm to the side of her head on the trunk. He leaned in, the stored secrets glinting like razors in the depths of his dimples as he smirked down at her. “It is wild, and cannot be owned, and takes insult at being claimed as such.”
Princess swallowed as she looked up at him, momentarily stunned. It wasn’t the only wild thing she had to contend with in that moment.
She knew Jester, knew him to play and to pounce on unwitting creatures cruelly. He would have delighted at her suggestion that Sir Matthew was interested in Lady Lillian, would have encouraged it, and delighted in revealing that Sir Matthew would be more interested in him, given his gender. She watched him destroy people in court like that, humiliating for the sport of it, uncaring of people’s reputations or status.
To have him of all people find her here in her safe place, her sanctuary… her stomach twisted at the thought of what he would say to her father, to her brother. Of the ways he could spin this.
Despite the way her heart jumped in her chest at having him so close, she straightened, standing as tall as she could, and met his eyes with her stare.
“I wouldn’t dream of offending nature like that.”
Jester tilted his head, his dark hair falling over his forehead. Lips tugging at one side.
“No?” He asked innocently. “What about offending the nature of a woman?”
Again, Princess’s heart stammered at his words. “Excuse me?”
“A woman,” he continued, “of your age being out here in the middle of the woods, alone, not a chaperone in sight, and with a man.”
Princess stiffened at his insinuation. She couldn’t help the thinning of her lips as she searched his face for the threat. His other hand came up, caging her back against the tree, blocking any escape. She stifled the gasp and pushed her back flush against the Benbow.
Jester leaned further down, as if he planned on stealing the oxygen from her lungs. “And a Princess no less,” he tsked. “The scandal. What would your darling brother say?”
Her brother? Why would be say that and not her father? Unless he didn’t plan on telling him that she was here in the first place.
“He’d probably have your head if you suggested such a thing of his sister.”
Jester chuckled. The sound sent shivers down her spine.
“Would he, I wonder, when he is so just, and good, and righteous?”
Princess swallowed as Jester leaned impossibly closer, his lips going to her ear. She couldn’t stop her breath from hitching that time.
“I think,” he purred, “he would be more concerned with the wildness of his twin.”
Princess couldn’t help the shudder that went down her spine and twisted her stomach into delightful knots at Jester’s breath against her cheek, her ear, her throat. Gods, what was wrong with her?! This was entirely inappropriate and yet she wasn’t pushing Jester away, wasn’t threatening the guards or telling her father.
Jester’s eyes were mocking, yes, glinting like twin coals in moonlight, and yet, there was something in them, something burning behind that wasn’t the same mockery he showed the court.
He called her wild, he saw her as nobody else ever has, save for when she was a child and carefree of court decorum. Her pulse throbbed against her throat as Jester pulled back to catch her eyes in his, his smirk sly as his thumb ghosted along her lower lip.
The slightness of the touch burned, sending shivers of fire down her spine. His smile widened, as if sensing the effect he was having on her. The way the corner of his lips tugged harsher on one side to a smirk made her stomach swoop.
He incited too many feelings in her, she could hardly think.
“How rare a sight it is to see you speechless, Princess,” he murmured. Princess swallowed, her eyes rounding slightly as she looked up at him, frozen. “I think I like it very much.” His eyes flashed with that cruel mocking then and Princess’s stomach swooped for an entirely different reason. “And this adorable blush on your cheeks, you’re like a rose.”
That snapped whatever trance he had on her and she batted his hand away with her own. His face brightened with interest, at having his spell be broken so suddenly.
Princess narrowed her eyes.
“How typical of a man to compare a woman to a flower,” she scoffed, taking a step forward, expecting him to take one back. He didn’t. His smirk plain on his face. “As if poisons and poultices come from anything else. But men don’t say it as a compliment, and you certainly didn’t mean it as one, did you?”
He cocked a brow in reply. Annoyingly, he seemed to be urging her on, rather than wishing her to stop admonishing him.
“You want to reduce us to something as simple as beautiful, like we have no minds of our own.”
Jester chuckled. The sound was anything but friendly, anything but fire, and forbidding and enticingly ruinous. Princess should leave. She should be walking away before she gets burned. This was madness. She saw what he could do to people in court… antagonising him wasn’t wise.
“What a riveting speech, Princess,” he purred, his voice like melted chocolate over strawberries. “Bravo for the performance. However, I would never want to merely reduce you to your beauty.”
He steps forward, forcing her back against the tree. Again. His expression dark and something she was too frightened to name. When he spoke again, his voice was a rapturous whisper of a thing, like sin wrapped in something dazzling.
He took her chin in his hand and tilted her head. Their eyes met and it almost crumbled the ground beneath her feet. She knew that look. She saw it many times on other people in court, something decadent and too luxurious for a woman of her status.
Want.
He speaks low, his voice soft, his words burning. “I want to reduce you to moans and whimpers under my hands. I want to see how your pretty little mouth speaks when you are in private."
Princess searches his face, for any signs of deception, but all that was there was a dark, overwhelming intensity that stole what little breath was left in Princess's lungs. His hand slides down her neck, his finger and thumb pinching the sides over her pulse and eliciting a gasp.
He leaned in closer, his lips brushing hers as he said, "I want to hear what your mind thinks when allowed to express itself freely."
Somehow, that was the most intimate of the three things he wanted. Princess's knees felt weak at the confession, because that's what it was, wasn't it? Or was he toying with her? Was this going to be next week's material for the court? How easily he seduced Princess and -
Wait a minute. Seduced?! What was she thinking? Gods she can't think when his lips were not an inch away from hers, so close, and he wasn't kissing her. They were soft, that much she knew and she wanted to close the distance.
As if reading her mind, the very same soft lips spread into a smirk, his eyes darkening. He squeezed his fingers lightly, drawing another gasp, and Princess's hand shot up to grab his wrist.
"What do you want, Princess?"
God. What did she want? What didn't she want? What an utter stupid question to ask a Princess. Though she must look like she wants for nothing, her life of luxury and comfort was a gilded cage; stifling, rotten, claustrophobic. She wanted to be free. She wanted to be able to be a normal person for once.
She wanted to want.
She wanted to be foolish and self-indulgent.
"Kiss me," her voice was soft, breathless, and she only caught a hint of the darkness that brightened his eyes before he obliged and his lips were on hers.
And it didn’t feel ruinous because the kiss was so sweet at first. And then passionate. The way Jester held her against the tree, the bark pressing into her back like hands to hold her up while Jester’s lips teased, and his teeth nipped playfully, and his hands were everywhere. Everything heightening his expert mouth as his tongue swept over hers and she couldn’t breathe.
And she never wanted to breathe again.
Jester pulled away, his eyes ravaging her flushed cheeks and red lips, cataloguing the effect he had on her. Princess never felt so exposed. She knew Jester could wring anything out of anybody, but she was careful around him. Always so careful, so as not to be his next victim.
Her breath hitched for an entirely different reason when he caught her chin in his hand again, tilting her head back so she met his smirking eyes that swirled with all kinds of malice and triumph, and something else that sent heat straight to Princess’s core.
“You are bewitching, Princess,” he murmured thoughtfully, a little rueful, as he traced his thumb over her bottom lip. “And I am trapped in your snare.”
Princess swallowed. The air in her lungs couldn’t regulate her breathing properly, so every inhale felt like a desperate clawing for, and every exhale a punch in the space between them.
Another confession. Princess did not notice any of this in court. It felt like a prank, a cruel, delicious dangerous joke for him to perform. But she felt him watching her at times, usually when some pompous lord or baron was speaking nonsense and she had to work to compose herself. Or sometimes after his performances she would catch his gaze, either disapproving when cruel, or with tear filled, crinkled eyes from laughing too hard.
Jester took a deep breath, pulling Princess from her jumbled thoughts and back into her body, with him inches from her again.
He stepped back suddenly, his expression guarded now, the desire she saw in his gaze shuttering into his more cruel expression.
“This was a mistake,” he said, and, it shouldn’t have, but it felt like he shredded her with a wolf’s claws. “Forgive me, Princess. This is improper.”
Princess searched his expression. “I- I asked you to kiss me.”
“Which is improper.”
“But you kissed me.”
“Which is improper.”
“You’re not a knight,” Princess scoffed, throwing a dismissive hand in the air. “There is no code of chivalry for court Jesters.”
Jester’s jaw ticked at that. He bowed deeply, and she knew he was about to leave. “I will take my leave now.”
She didn’t know why she did it, but she caught his wrist as he came up from the bow, her expression painfully vulnerable for someone as dangerous as Jester to see.
“Do you regret it?”
Did she do something wrong? Was it bad? Was she bad? Did he regret it? Did he enjoy it? His face was maddeningly neutral.
He stood, withdrawing his wrist gently from her grip. The corner of his mouth curled into the sharp edge of his smirk, and he winked. Her heart fluttered in reply.
She was in trouble.
“Until next time, Princess.” He bowed his head and turned on his heel, leaving her unraveling.
*****
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