Chapter 53: You Can Ask Nicely

Naya woke with every intention of making the most of her prize. She found Ronan already dressed in the sitting room, a stack of reports spread across the table in front of him.

“We’re going riding,” he said, not looking up.

She stopped in the doorway. “Was that an order?”

He paused, his pen hovering mid-sentence.

“No.”

“It sounded suspiciously like one.”

He set the pen down and straightened. “Would you like to go riding with me?”

“I would,” Naya said, delighted that she was already making him work for it.

Mira helped her dress shortly after, teasing her the entire time about making the King obey her.

“It’s not obedience,” Naya said. “It’s a perfectly reasonable wager.”

“Of course,” Mira said, grinning as she fastened the last clasp.

Ronan took her outside the palace grounds along a quiet route overlooking the countryside, a small escort trailing at a respectful distance without hovering. Naya noticed almost immediately how different it felt.

“I haven’t spent a day without someone reminding me of my title since I arrived here,” she said.

“I rarely leave the palace without a reason,” Ronan admitted.

“Do you ever do anything simply because you enjoy it?”

“I used to.”

He didn’t elaborate further, and Naya didn’t push him toward Seraphine or whatever else sat behind that quiet admission. She let him decide how much to give her, and the conversation drifted naturally into childhood memories instead, the things they’d both enjoyed before duty had taken over their lives entirely.

They stopped at a small roadside inn for lunch, unpretentious and quiet, nothing like the elaborate dining halls Naya had grown used to.

“You chose this on purpose,” she said.

“I used to come here as a boy. Sneaking out of lessons to ride with other young wolves.”

“You got caught, didn’t you?”

“More than once.”

Naya laughed at the image of a younger Ronan being scolded by some exasperated tutor, and he asked, in turn, what she’d been like as a child.

“Climbing trees. Racing the other children in the territory. Getting into trouble whenever I refused to back down from an argument.” She smiled faintly. “Elara always managed to look innocent afterward. I never could.”

The old hurt flickered briefly behind her words, but Ronan didn’t turn it into another investigation, didn’t ask a single probing question about her sister or her family. He simply listened, and Naya realized, partway through the story, that she was talking about her life before him without feeling the need to defend herself at every turn.

A small child approached their table shyly as they finished eating, tugging at her mother’s sleeve and whispering something before working up the courage to ask Naya directly whether she was really the Queen.

Naya crouched down to the girl’s eye level. “I am. Though I think you might be braver than me. I was terrified of strangers at your age.”

The girl giggled, and her mother apologized nervously for the interruption.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Ronan said.

Naya watched him with the mother and child afterward, easy and unguarded in a way she rarely saw inside the palace walls, and she filed the observation away for later.

“You’re good with children,” she said once they were walking again.

“You sound surprised.”

“I haven’t yet decided what you’re good at.”

He stepped closer. “Would you like to make a list?”

“Perhaps,” she said, pretending to consider it, though the moment had already turned flirtatious before either of them could laugh it off.

On the ride back, Naya found herself asking something she hadn’t planned to voice aloud. “Did you ever imagine what your life would look like if you weren’t King?”

Ronan considered the question seriously rather than brushing it aside.

“For years, I stopped imagining a future that wasn’t dictated by duty,” he said. “There wasn’t room for it.”

“Do you regret marrying me?” she asked.

“No.”

“Our marriage began as punishment,” she reminded him. “Political necessity.”

“I can’t change how it began,” he said. “But I can choose what I do with it now.”

He didn’t promise her love, didn’t offer some grand vision of a perfect future neither of them could guarantee.

“I want to keep discovering who you are,” he said instead, “now that neither of us is fighting to survive the marriage itself.”

Naya let the words settle, something warm and steady taking root in her chest.

Back at the palace, Ronan reached for her hand while helping her dismount, and neither let go immediately once her feet found solid ground.

“Did you enjoy your day?” he asked.

“I did,” she said. “You also managed to survive several hours without ordering me around. I’m impressed.”

“It was exhausting.”

She laughed. “Would you like to go riding with me again sometime?”

“I would.”

She noticed the deliberate care in how he’d asked rather than assumed, and something in her softened further. “You can ask nicely whenever you want my company.”

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, the gesture unexpectedly intimate, and neither of them rushed to fill the silence that followed.

That evening, they shared dinner in their private sitting room instead of attending another formal function, and Naya discovered, halfway through the meal, that the dish set before her was the same one she’d mentioned loving as a child during their lunch at the inn.

“How did you remember this?” she asked.

“You told me.”

“You remember an astonishing amount for someone who used to act like he couldn’t stand me.”

“Even when I didn’t trust you,” Ronan admitted, “I listened.”

The admission touched her more than she expected, and they talked and laughed easily through the rest of the meal, their knees brushing together beneath the table at some point without either of them moving away.

Later, as Naya prepared to retire, Ronan walked with her to their bedroom door, and neither of them seemed eager to end the evening.

“Do you have somewhere else to be?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then why are you still standing here?”

“Because I don’t want the day to end yet,” he said.

The honesty of it caught her off guard, and she reached for his hand, pulling him inside without another word. The kiss that followed was slower than their earlier ones, more comfortable, though the anticipation beneath it hadn’t faded at all. Ronan rested his forehead against hers afterward, and neither of them pushed the moment further than the other seemed ready for.

Naya stood there in the quiet, Ronan’s hand still warm in hers, and realized, for the first time since arriving at this palace, that she was looking forward to tomorrow with him instead of simply bracing herself to survive it.