His Forbiden Princess

Chapter Three – The First Morning

The smell of coffee wakes me before the sun does.

For a moment, I forget where I am. The sheets smell like salt and smoke, the pillow rougher than anything I’ve ever slept on. I reach out instinctively for the silk cord that would summon my maid — and my hand meets empty air.

Right. No palace. No maids. No crown.

Just me. And Rowan.

I sit up slowly, squinting through the early light. The cottage looks smaller in daylight — a handful of wooden beams, faded curtains, and a fireplace that’s burned down to ash. The storm from last night has left streaks of rain across the windows. The ocean beyond is gray and endless.

And there he is — already awake, already moving.

He’s standing at the stove, shirt sleeves rolled up, hair a little messy, stirring something in a dented pot. The sight shouldn’t do what it does to me. My stomach flips, and it’s not from hunger.

“You cook?” I croak, voice still heavy with sleep.

He glances over his shoulder. “I survive.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He smirks, just barely. “Then let’s call it survival food.”

I pull the blanket tighter around myself and watch him move. He’s all quiet precision — every motion deliberate, efficient. Even in exile, he moves like a soldier. The only thing out of place is the soft hum in his throat — a tune I don’t recognize.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Early,” he says. “You needed the sleep.”

“I didn’t sleep,” I lie.

He glances at me, eyes sharp. “You did. You talked in your sleep.”

My stomach drops. “What did I say?”

He hesitates — and that tells me enough.

I groan. “Please tell me I didn’t say your name.”

He goes back to stirring the pot. “You didn’t have to.”

When he sets the bowl down in front of me, I stare at it like it’s an alien artifact. It’s some kind of porridge — thick, beige, possibly sentient.

“What is this?”

“Oatmeal,” he says. “Eat it before it gets cold.”

I poke at it with the spoon. “It looks like wallpaper paste.”

He sits across from me. “It tastes worse.”

That pulls a laugh out of me before I can stop it. The sound feels strange — light, unroyal. His eyes flicker at the sound, like he’s memorizing it.

I take a tentative bite.

He’s right. It’s awful.

I try to hide my grimace, but he sees it and shakes his head. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Or die trying,” I mutter, and that earns me his first real smile since the wedding. It’s fleeting, but it’s there — soft and human and entirely unfair.

After breakfast, we venture outside.

The air is cold and clean, the sea stretching endlessly below the cliff. The wind whips my hair free, and for the first time, I don’t care. The salt stings my lips, and I almost laugh from the sheer wildness of it.

Rowan’s already checking the perimeter — scanning, mapping, assessing. Always protecting. Always two steps ahead.

“You can stop looking for threats,” I call over the wind. “No one knows we’re here.”

He gives me that look — the one that says ‘you’re adorable, and you’re wrong.’ “The first rule of survival,” he says, “is that you’re never safe just because you think you are.”

I roll my eyes. “The first rule of royalty was that you’re never safe even when you think you are. I’m used to it.”

He stops, looks back at me — really looks. “You shouldn’t have to be.”

That shouldn’t make my chest hurt. But it does.

The next few hours are a lesson in humility.

Rowan gives me “tasks,” as he calls them — simple things, apparently. Fetching water from the pump. Folding blankets. Attempting to light the fire without burning the cottage down.

I fail at all of them spectacularly.

By the third time I drop a bucket, he’s laughing — actually laughing, low and warm. “You’re hopeless.”

I glare at him, cheeks burning. “In my defense, I’ve never had to carry water before. We had taps. And staff. And—”

“And now you have me,” he says, still grinning.

Something about the casualness of it — the ‘now you have me’ — hits me in a place I didn’t know was hollow. I turn away, pretending to study the horizon.

He steps closer. “Here,” he says, taking the bucket from my hands. “You have to brace it with your knee.”

He moves behind me, close enough that his breath brushes my ear. His hands settle over mine, guiding me. My pulse goes wild.

“Like this,” he murmurs.

I nod, though I don’t hear half of what he’s saying. My brain’s too busy screaming about how close he is, how steady his hands feel, how much I don’t want him to move.

When the pump finally releases a stream of water, I let out a triumphant laugh. “Ha! I did it!”

He leans back, smiling. “You did most of it.”

I look over my shoulder at him. “Don’t ruin this moment for me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says — and for a second, we just stand there, grinning like fools, before realizing how close we are.

The smile fades.

The air shifts.

My heart stumbles.

He steps back first, clearing his throat. “We’ll need to go into town tomorrow,” he says. “Get supplies.”

“Town?” I echo. “As in… people?”

He nods. “Don’t worry. No one will recognize you.”

I raise a brow. “You’re sure? Because the last time I checked, my face was on every magazine cover in the continent.”

“Then we’ll make sure it’s not your face they see.”

He says it so matter-of-factly that I almost miss the implication. “What does that mean?”

He smirks, just slightly. “You’ll see.”

***************

By the time the sun starts to set, exhaustion has settled deep in my bones. I sit on the porch steps, wrapped in a blanket, watching the waves turn gold. Rowan’s somewhere inside, sharpening a knife or cleaning his g*n — something entirely too practical for a moment this beautiful.

When he joins me, he’s quiet for a long time. We sit shoulder to shoulder, the silence between us thick but comfortable.

“Do you regret it?” he asks suddenly.

I look at him. “What?”

“Leaving. Choosing me.”

The question steals the air from my lungs.

I open my mouth, close it, then open it again. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Sometimes I think I should. My father’s furious, the world thinks I’ve been kidn*pped, and I don’t even know who I am without a title.”

He nods slowly. “And the other times?”

I look at him — really look. The way the sunset paints his face in soft gold, the faint scar at his temple catching the light. “The other times,” I say quietly, “I think I’ve never felt more alive.”

Something flickers in his eyes — something dangerous and beautiful. He looks away first, staring out at the sea.

“You deserve a better life than this,” he says.

I shake my head. “You keep saying that. Maybe this is the first time it’s actually mine.”

He exhales, long and slow. “You shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes.”

“Rowan,” I say softly, “I don’t see you as a mistake.”

He turns to me then, eyes searching mine like he’s trying to believe me. The moment stretches — too long, too close, too much.

Then he stands abruptly. “We should lock up. Wind’s picking up.”

And just like that, the moment shatters.

That night, I can’t sleep again. I keep thinking about the way he looked at me when he asked if I regretted it — like he was bracing for me to say yes.

The fire’s still burning low when I hear him move on the couch. He’s restless too.

“Rowan?” I whisper.

“Yeah?”

I hesitate. “If we’re pretending to be married… shouldn’t we at least know what our story is?”

A beat of silence. Then, “What do you mean?”

“I mean… how we met, how long we’ve been together, little details. If someone asks.”

I hear the faint smile in his voice. “All right, then. Tell me. How did we meet?”

I think for a moment. “You saved me from a boring life.”

He chuckles. “Sounds about right.”

“Your turn,” I say. “What made you fall in love with me?”

There’s a long pause. Too long.

Then, quietly, “The first time you looked at me and saw a man instead of a guard.”

My breath catches.

The fire crackles, filling the silence that follows. I can’t see him from here, but I can feel his presence — steady, protective, heartbreakingly close.

I roll onto my side, staring into the dark. “Goodnight, Rowan.”

“Goodnight, Serena,” he says softly.