You're in the woods when you happen upon the prince hunting or at least pretending to. He's there with his two friends, laughing too loud, their voices echoing through the trees like they owned the forest.

The laughter dies down as you round the bend, just in time to see him, Prince Julian, with his trousers down, relieving himself against an old oak, utterly unbothered.

You freeze, heat crawling up your neck.

You turn to retreat, mortified, but in your panic, you fumble, and drop the book clutched to your chest. It lands open on the mossy ground, pages fluttering like a wounded bird. His poetry.

Julian glances over his shoulder at the sound, brows raised, lips twitching into something unreadable.

Behind him, his friends burst into laughter, one of them shouting, crude and gleeful, “Oi! Come over, we don’t bite.”

You stumble down the hill toward them, clumsy in your worn boots and your embarrassment, as Prince Julian finishes tying his trousers.

He doesn’t look angry. Just amused. Dangerously amused.

"Have you been stalking us, little doe?" he asks, voice smooth like silk drawn over a blade.

You were breathless, cheeks flushed, eyes darting anywhere but at his. “No! I-I was just… walking. Reading. I didn’t know you were—”

He steps closer, cutting off your babble with nothing more than his presence.

“What a clumsy little thing you are,” he glances at the book you dropped, still lying open to a dog-eared page with his signature scrawl.

“But... pretty,” he finishes for you, tone mocking yet laced with something more interest, maybe. Or boredom in need of breaking.