no longer remember how I lived it. I only have experience with the war and the corruption it spawned, but now it’s over and things are going back to how they used to be, I’m not who I used to be…” He trailed off, looking pained. “I think that’s why I didn’t take Leander up on his offer immediately, not only because my ears are pointed now, or just out of duty to Marian, but because I don’t know what to do. I’ve been Robin Hood for so long, I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“Do you want to stop being Robin Hood?”
“Do you want to stop being a princess?”
Even though he’d suggested it before, now he’d made it a question, it hit me like the uprooting gusts of a windstorm.
My whole life, my identity was intertwined with my status as the firstborn princess of Arbore in centuries. But for a while now, even without the curse, I could see nothing positive about that title. Everything about growing up in the supposed safety and luxury of a castle, being afforded the best in food and clothes and education, all for the purpose of impressing Cyrus and the people at his court, it all felt so—pointless.
I was supposed to secure alliances and birth heirs. I wasn’t expected to fend for myself, or have a job, let alone to rule, or even get involved in true diplomacy. I was supposed to replicate my mother’s life, as my mother herself insisted, despite her perpetual displeasure with everything in that life.
But why would I take her advice when she was so bitter and hollow? When had she or any advisors, tutors, or courtiers ever steered me in a fruitful direction? Why had everything I learned served a useless purpose, just to keep up appearances, and impress people who wouldn’t blink if I died?
All I could feel now was regret at the waste. At being hindered by imposed limitations, at having my enthusiasm smothered, and my view of anything that didn’t serve my predetermined goal blocked.
If I had been born a few steps down the hierarchy as Robin once said, the daughter of a duke or an earl like him, I might have been afforded the freedom to be someone. To be myself.
I could have pursued music as a career, sung on stages across countries, published my own poetry, and penned my own compositions. I could have gotten to see the evolving world, and bring the art form Robin had mentioned to a grander audience. I could have also been involved at court, and with the people. Plenty of ladies helmed charities, and had helped during the wartime, while I’d been cooped up in my gilded cage, endlessly practicing to impress the man who wanted nothing to do with me.
And just like that, his question no longer unsettled me. For now I knew its answer. Unequivocally.
“Yes,” I gritted. “I would stop being a princess if I possibly could.”
He quirked an eyebrow at my intensity. “Even if it upset your parents?”
“Like you said, I owe them no further appeasement. They can go boil their heads.”
He cracked up, his laugh a free, joyous sound. “That’s the spirit! You need to stop doing what others want from you.”
“Take your own advice, hobgoblin,” I tossed back at him. “You’re no better than I am, compromising your life to appease strangers.”
“That is not comparable! Appeasing your parents made you live an ornamental life of no use to anyone, starting with yourself. I help people.”
“You are one man, robbing hoodlum. You can’t singlehandedly fix everyone’s problems. That’s what legislation and law enforcement are for. Your piecemeal solutions are simply inefficient.”
He made a dismissive noise. “I would argue it’s more efficient when I’m free to act without jumping through the hoops of lawmen, who…” He stopped, then sighed. “But you’re right. It would be more efficient to be within the system, than to continue punching rural criminals and robbing corrupt nobles. It’s where I would be able to fix it.”
I couldn’t help being in awe of how dedicated he was to his cause. My admiration was all the more intense after seeing him cast as a chaotic opportunist for so long.
“All the more reason to get your father’s title back,” I said, “so you can hold a position of power more easily.”
“I was only speaking hypothetically. I don’t foresee holding any kind of position with these.” He touched the tip of one ear, and I remembered I’d thought just that a