“Okay but you actually have to tell him this time.”

Eli made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded somewhat like a growl, though he certainly hadn’t meant for it to, and glanced from the window back to Rosaline. “I know and I meant to last time but—”

“You got scared. Just like the ten times before that.” She whirled her spoon in the air as she talked, flailing drops of melted ice cream across the kitchen. “This is the last time I’m helping you. After that, you’re on your own. Opportunity—” She jumped up onto the counter and landed with a hard thump— “missed.”

He glared at her. “Please don’t sit on my counter.”

“I am doing you the favor to end all favors.” Rosaline inhaled another spoonful of her ice cream. “I will sit where I please.”

“I’m paying you,” he protested. He could feel heat rising in his cheeks, though he knew it wasn’t from anger. If she was being serious and he truly was out of time… He would have to do it today. He didn’t want to do it today. He couldn’t.

“Yeah.” Rosaline gestured to the bowl in her hand and the chocolate mountain within it. “In ice cream.”

“And would you like me to stop giving it to you?”

She scoffed. “Of course not. But I’ve been repeatedly coming here and interrupting my brother’s day just so you can see him and think about how pretty he is. He is really not all that, Eli. Talk to him or don’t. This is becoming a waste of all of our time.”

Eli leaned back against the wall and hid his face in his hands. This had been a good idea at first, but the longer they went on with it, the harder it became for him to act on his plan as he had originally intended to.

His stomach flipped inward as the clop of a horse’s hooves on the path outside poured through the open window. It was on the opposite side of the large room—an open space comprising Eli’s kitchen, living space, and bedroom beneath a towering dome ceiling—but he still felt as if he were leaning out of it, staring at the ground below.

“If it’s any consolation,” Rosaline said, “I’d take the fact that he hasn’t burned your tower down or had you beheaded yet to be a sign that he’s interested.”

Eli groaned, his sweaty hands sliding away from his face. “It’s not.”

“Return my sister to me at once,” shouted a voice from below, “or I shall return with the full force of the King’s army.”

Rosaline snorted and nearly tumbled off the counter as she laughed. “Return my sister to me at once.” She pitched her voice low and spoke through her giggles. “Or I shall return— with the fu— full force of the King’s army. Why does he talk like that?”

Eli couldn’t make light of the situation as she could, which he supposed was because it was the course of his life that was about to be decided and not hers. Regardless of what happened in the coming moments, she would return with her brother to the palace and continue living her life as a princess. Whereas if Eli crashed and burned, he would end up alone forever or with his head on a pike. He decided he greatly preferred the latter.

When Eli said nothing, Rosaline rolled her eyes. She set her bowl on the countertop and strode over to the window, sticking her head out and shouting down. “The door’s unlocked, Hector.”

“Why would you—!” Eli felt like his eyes were about to pop clean out of his head. “No!”

“This is your last chance. Remember?” Rosaline grinned. Her teeth were sparkling white. “I’m not letting you waste it.”

Eli could already hear a single set of footsteps pounding up the staircase to the top of the tower. The door at the bottom may have been open, but there was still time for him to lock the door between them and the staircase. He didn’t move.

The door slammed open, surely leaving a dent in the wall behind it, and a spindly young man burst through, brandishing a large sword in his left hand. Eli stepped back, wide-eyed, as he flailed it over his head.

Rosaline’s cackling continued, as she stumbled off the counter and stepped towards her brother, though she remained behind Eli. “You look like you’ve never wielded a sword before. What is this?”

“What is—” the Prince, Hector, stuttered. “Excuse me? What is this?”

His eyes were flicking back and forth between Eli, Rosaline, and Rosaline’s half-eaten bowl of ice cream. He appeared to have, not unreasonably, expected to find his sister chained to the floor, begging for her life, not standing around giggling.

“Oh, seriously.” Rosaline rolled her eyes. “Hector, this is Eli. Eli, this is Hector. Eli has been paying me in ice cream and friendly company to pretend to be a hostage so you come and save me. Then, he’s supposed to introduce himself to you and you’re supposed to live happily ever after. But he’s a twit so he’s been chickening out and just sending me out to you instead so you think you saved the day and he gets to see you. For like five seconds. Which is stupid as far as I’m concerned.”

She shrugged, squeezed Eli’s shoulder, and walked past him. She surpassed Hector too, her bowl, one of what Eli considered to be his good dishes, still in hand. “Best of luck. I’m going to be waiting downstairs.” She afforded them one last wink and started on her way down the steps. “I’m rooting for you!” And she was gone.

Hector and Eli stood for a moment in awkward silence until Eli gathered his composure enough to stand up straight and clear his throat. Hector lowered his sword.

“I am so sorry,” Eli said. “This was not supposed to happen like this and it wasn’t supposed to go on for so long… It seemed like a good idea at first.”

Hector held up a hand. “Wait, hold on, just— Just hold on.” He took a shaky breath. “You’ve been fake-kidnapping my sister just to talk to me this entire time.”

Eli’s cheeks were on fire. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t because you couldn’t work up the nerve?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.” Hector sheathed his sword and took a step forward. “This isn’t the first time we’ve met. Is it?”

Eli could feel the look of surprise on his face. He hadn’t expected Hector to remember. He was the Prince. He met so many people there was no reason to think he would remember the one time he had met Eli, the standoffish sorcerer who lived in a tower at the edge of the kingdom’s border. “No, it’s not.”

Nearly a year earlier, the King and Queen had hosted a masquerade ball to which they invited every one of their subjects. It was supposed to show that their doors were open, Eli knew, and though he hated interacting with people, he had elected to attend. He wouldn’t have to show his face, after all.

There, he met Hector. The Prince wasn’t known for his grace and had stumbled backward into Eli, knocking his drink from his hand and staining the front of his white shirt red. His apology had been profuse and genuine—not stuck up and entitled as Eli had falsely assumed it would be—and that had been the end of their interaction. 

That same night, he met and befriended Rosaline, confiding in her months later about the way he had started to feel about Hector. He had needed to tell someone about the bothersome thoughts in the back of his head and the incessant churning of his stomach each time he saw the Prince, as he went about his business buying and selling various goods at the market. 

It had been her idea to garner his attention this way, and when he had insisted he provide her with compensation, she had asked jokingly for ice cream. Six months and at least a dozen staged kidnappings later, she had finally managed to force them into a room together.

“It was a beautiful shirt,” Hector said. “The ivory color and the ruffles and the lace… It was a shame I ruined it.”

Eli shook his head. “It really wasn’t all that big a deal.”

“No, it was.” Hector seemed to think, the brown of his eyes deepening. “I’m not appropriately prepared and my sister is waiting downstairs right now, but I will return tomorrow and I will repay you for it. As I should have done when it first happened.”

“Repay me how?”

“However you’d like. Maybe with, say, a picnic?”

Against his will, Eli felt himself smile, his lips twisting effortlessly upward. “That’s perfect.”

“Magnificent.” Hector too grinned. He took Eli’s hand in his own and lifted it to his lips, planting a single, soft kiss on his knuckles. “I will see you then,” he said, and he turned his back, disappearing down the stairs and leaving Eli to remain planted where he had left him, heart racing and brain short-circuiting. If he had known it would be that easy to get a date with Hector, he would just have asked.