I watch them go and then turn my attention to Valerian. He sits cross-legged, sniffing the sauerkraut on his hotdog and looking incredibly disdainful.

“You don’t have to eat it,” I finally say.

He sets it on the grass for Phalanx, looking relieved. “Thank Titania, that’s quite possibly the foulest thing I’ve ever encountered.”

“Fouler than the mushroom meatloaf the academy makes?”

“Fair point.” He smiles, and a part of me celebrates. Things have been strained between us after the gauntlet, and we’ve both been too busy with school and my extra training to hang out.

On a whim, I say, “Hey, why don’t we do the truths game you promised me?”

“Now?” He pointedly glances over the crowded park.

I shrug. “No one’s listening.”

“But they are staring.”

He’s right. That’s the other thing I wasn’t expecting. How much people stare at Valerian and Asher. The men mostly glare, while the women don’t even try to hide their attraction to them. I nearly tackled a middle-aged woman on the subway after she tried to grab a handful of Valerian’s ass.

Thankfully, Asher wasn’t too overwhelmed by the New York subway experience to protect the prince, and he sent the woman scrambling back.

But everywhere we go, women throw themselves at both men, especially Valerian.

I also wasn’t expecting how much that would bother me.

“They’re staring because you’re different,” I insist.

“Different? They’re drawn to me for evolutionary reasons. Deep down, the men recognize what I am, an ancient predator who once snuck into their lands and stole their women.”

“And the females?”

He flashes me a lazy grin. “Oh, they simply want to sleep with me.”

I roll my eyes. “Not everyone wants to sleep with you.”

“No?” He turns his head, making eye contact with a pretty brunette walking two Yorkies. The brunette’s eyes light up, and she makes a beeline for us.

Lord help us all. I catch her eye, glaring until her perky smile fades and she storms in the other direction.

“That was cruel,” Valerian says, resting on his elbow, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

“No, that was a mercy. Now stop trying to distract me and get ready for my inquisition.”

His eyes go dark and all liquidy and then he crawls over and lays his head in my lap.

His lips twitch mischievously as he stares at me, one hundred percent aware of how irresistible he is. “I’m ready now, Princess. But beware, this truth thing goes both ways.”

Valerian Sylverfrost, Prince of the Winter Court and possibly the most lethal Evermore I know, just crawled over and laid his head in my lap.

Whoa. A thrill of . . . something shivers down my spine. We could be two college lovers enjoying the park after work. The thought dredges a sharp pain in my chest as I realize how much I want that.

A normal, easy, human relationship defined by mundane things like the first time we meet each other’s families or share an apartment key.

That’s the opposite of what's happening here but . . . against my better judgement, I run my fingers through his dark blue hair, startled by its silkiness.

A puff of air escapes his lips at the contact, and then he closes his eyes.

“You smell divine,” he murmurs.

Dangerous territory, I remind myself, but I don’t remove my hand, and he doesn’t remove his head. Both of us testing how far we can take this new form of intimacy and still control ourselves.

“So,” I begin, carefully weighing my questions. We only get four apiece. “You hate hotdogs, you hated the gourmet mac ’n’ cheese we found at the flea market—”

“That vile yellow stuff?”

I tug on a strand of his hair. “No interrupting while I have the question leaf.”

“The what?” he demands, his eyes flashing open.

I grab a golden leaf and wave it over his eyes. “This. Just go with it.”

“Fine. You have the dead leaf, now please. Ask your question.”

“So, you hate our food, even the amazing stuff. What do you like?”

Relaxing, he closes his eyes again. “Are you asking what my favorite meal is?”

“Yes, I guess I am.” I can’t stop staring at the dark blue curtain of lashes resting against his ivory cheeks. The swell of his bowed lips, parted slightly.

“Every year in the Winter Court, we celebrated the ice maiden with a festival. There’s this treat called snow candy made from maple syrup. I rather like it.”

“Wait? That’s your favorite food? You won’t touch a taco or deep dish pizza but you’ll eat candy?”

He shrugs. “My father never let me have any, so I’d sneak away from the royal entourage and eat so many I was sick.”

Whoa. “So you rage ate candy to piss your dad off? That doesn’t count as your favorite food. Okay, that’s it. I’m making it my mission to find something from the mortal world that you love.”

“Never going to happen. Now, my turn.” He opens his eyes, those silver irises like trapped mercury as he holds my stare, and takes the leaf from my hand. “What did you want to do with your life, before I dragged you to the Everwilde?”

Okay, he went serious right off the bat. I chew my lip, trying to remember my dreams before all this started. “I don’t know, I was so focused on keeping everyone fed and safe that I didn’t have time to think about much else. College, maybe? So I could do something that helps people.”

“That’s very noble of you.”

“What?” I bristle at the hefty dose of sarcasm in his voice. “You think helping people is naive?”

“No, I think it’s very human, and also useless in the Everwilde.”

This guy. I’m so tired of the Fae using the Everwilde as an excuse for their bad behavior. But I don’t want to argue, not when he’s being truthful, so I blow out a breath, snatch the leaf away, and continue. “What was the first thing that drew you to me, before?”

“Your smile,” he says immediately. “You were always grinning like you knew a secret, and I wanted desperately to know what that secret was.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, you’re deeply obsessed with me. Now, my turn.” He takes the leaf before I can argue, twirling it above his head. “Have you ever had a boyfriend, Summer?”

I nearly choke on air. “In the human world? No, I mean—no. A few guys asked me out, but I was too busy for that.” I reclaim the leaf. “When we were together before, did we, you know . . .”

As understanding dawns, a devilish smile overtakes his face. Slowly, he arches an eyebrow. “Did we make love?”

Holy crap, his voice just lowered two octaves, and he’s doing that magnetic thing where he looks me in the eye like I’m the most important person in the world.

Heat stings my cheeks, but I refuse to avert my eyes from his simmering stare. “Yeah.”

“No, we never had the chance. You wanted to get married first.”

“I did? That doesn’t sound like me at all.”

He reaches up, toying with an errant strand of my blonde hair. “What can I say? You wanted to lock me down as quickly as possible.”

Snorting, I almost smack his head and then think better of it, trailing a finger over the tip of his ear.

He freezes, a tremor wracking his body as a low groan slips from his lips. “You fight dirty.”

“And you’re a bastard.”

A wolfish grin curls his lips, showing off those perfect white teeth. “But you wanted to marry this bastard.”

Shimmer save me, I’m torn between strangling him and kissing him right now.

He chuckles, and we continue like that, interrogating and teasing one another until the sun sets. By the time Mack returns with Asher, we’ve gone well beyond the four questions.

Mack’s eyes widen when she spots Valerian’s head in my lap. “What the heck are you guys up to?”

Valerian glances up at me. “She doesn’t have the question leaf. Should we let it slide?”

We burst into laughter as Mack and Asher exchange puzzled looks, and I have the sudden, alarming realization that I could fall helplessly in love with this Valerian.

Not the Winter Court Prince. Not the heir to the Winter Throne. Not the Evermore I’m bound to by magic.

The beautiful, sarcastic, funny Valerian who bites his lip when he’s about to say something vulnerable and beams when I laugh at his jokes.

I don’t care what Eclipsa said, this Valerian could dare to love me.

And I him.

27

After the field trip, the weeks fly by, and Valerian finally agrees to using some of the time trying to conjure my magic to just hanging out. We ask questions. We flirt but never go far enough to lose control. We tease but don’t judge. And slowly, like flowers that only bloom in full sun, we open up to each other.

I learn things about him. Like that he prefers dark chocolate, cats over dogs, and books over movies. That he adores fashion week in New York City and tries to sneak away every year to attend. I discover he watched a forbidden Marvel movie once in the Winter Court on a bootleg iPad and was afraid to enter the mortal lands because he thought the Hulk was real.

Apparently, the prince has a dark sense of humor. He named his owl familiar Phalanx after a finger bone because the creature kept biting off the digits of Valerian’s tutors.

His favorite color is black. Not because he’s trying to be cool, but because his first memory in life is tugging on the striking onyx strands of his mother’s hair and then watching her laugh.

Slowly, the divide between us begins to disappear. It’s funny how learning little things about someone makes them more real, more imperfect . . . yet somehow that’s attractive.

Like finding out Valerian hates cheese. I should see that as a red flag, because only a psychopath would hate cheese—but instead I find it weirdly adorable.