"No way," Asa said gleefully.

The other boy bounded forward. Romes was still kneeling in the dirt, parchment clutched in her hands, staring at Jax as if he'd donned a skirt made of broccoli and performed an interpretive dance of "I'm A Little Teapot." Jax's heart pounded in his chest. His chest suddenly felt too small for his lungs, his tongue too swollen for his mouth.

"Let me see!" Asa demanded.

He made a swipe for the stack of papers. Romes clutched them to her chest.

"Absolutely not," she said.

Xander frowned. "Those are private, Asa."

"I'm not going to read the whole thing," Asa said, making another grab. "Just the first paragraph."

"No." Romes turned to Jax, her green eyes like burning stars. "Explain. Now."

Jax swallowed. His shoulder was screaming in pain, and his ankle felt like a spaghetti noodle that would snap if he moved. Fatigue settled over him like a blanket. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to cry and eat chocolate. He did not, Jax thought, want to explain why he'd written a secret manuscript about falling in love with the girl he fancied.

Alas.

"Aha!" Asa cried.

He snatched the parchment from her hands, waving them above his head triumphantly. Romes cursed, hopping to her feet. She elbowed Asa in the stomach; he pushed down her head, his eyes devouring the lines.

"Oh, my gods." Asa shook his head. "This is hilarious."

Jax's cheeks burned. "Shut-up, Asa."

"No, I mean it's genuinely hilarious," Asa said, looking up. "This is what you're going to publish?"

"You're absolutely not publishing that," Romes said tightly.

She wrenched free of Asa's grip, her eyes blazing. Dirt speckled her cheek, along with a nasty-looking cut and some faded bruises. Her hair was caked with mud. She didn't look like the sort of person you should mess with, Jax thought, which was largely why he felt like he might throw up.

Jax took a step forward, and then instantly regretted it when his ankle throbbed. "Romes, I can explain—"

"Listen to this," Asa said.

Xander rubbed his face. "Oh, dear."

Asa cleared his throat. Then — to Jax's horror — he began to read aloud.

The princess padded to the window. Moonlight wreathed her hair in silver stars. She could feel the cold cutting through her silk nightgown, and she shivered, pressing her forehead to the glass. Outside, she could make out the shape of some hulking stone building. The east stables? The west? She was forever mixing them up.

There was a click as the door opened.

"You," the princess said, without turning.

He shut the door. "Me."

She closed her eyes. Duke Featherington crossed the room; his footsteps had a terrible heaviness to them, like horseshoes on cobblestone, and it made her think of lighter footsteps that she'd known once. Feet that moved like smoke.

"I told you," the princess said. "My answer is no."

He cleared his throat. "Your father said—"

"My father does not speak for me."

She could feel his warm breath ghosting along the back of her neck. The duke smelled of cigars and something sweet, and she wondered if he'd put on cologne for the occasion. Probably. His hand drifted over her arm—

"Alright," Jax said gruffly. "That's enough."

Silence fell.

Jax rubbed at his injured shoulder. There was nothing worse, Jax decided, than listening to your own writing being read aloud to you; he could hear every cliched phrase, every clunky bit of dialogue. Forget thumb screws. Forget being lashed, or drowned, or covered in hungry rats. The worst way to torture an author, Jax thought, was by releasing their first draft to a discerning audience.

"You wrote that?" Romes asked.

Her expression was unreadable. Jax glanced at the ragdoll tree. Maybe it would come back to life and eat him, he thought hopefully.

"It's not done," Jax said.

Her gaze was steady. "But you wrote it?"

"The beginning is all wrong," Jax said, throat dry. "And the dialogue in the third sentence is clunky, so I'll need to go back over it and—"

"Blackwater," Romes said.

He braced himself. "What?"

Romes shrugged. "It's actually decent."

She looked begrudgingly impressed. Jax blinked. "It is?"

"Yeah." Romes picked up a knife, considered it, and began filing her nails. "I really thought it'd be crap, but it's not that bad."

"I... thanks?"

The knife flashed. "Princess Romes sounds like a dimwit, though."

Jax stared. "What?"

"I mean, Princess Romes can't identify a building outside," Romes said. "In her own castle. Who does that? And she'd be sleeping in an oversized t-shirt." She started on the nails of her left hand. "No woman owns a silk nightgown. And even if she did, it would just sit in the back of her wardrobe."

"Male gaze," Xander murmured, nodding knowingly. "Male authors always get female characters wrong."

"Princess Romes likes silk," Jax said defensively.

Romes scoffed. "Princess Romes thinks silk is stupidly expensive. She would use the money to buy a new set of knives. Or doughnuts. Obviously."

"How would you know?" Jax asked. "I'm the author."

She lifted a shoulder. "And I'm Princess Romes."

"No, you're not," Jax said.

The knife paused. "You're joking."

"The character is inspired by you," Jax clarified. "But she's not you."

Romes sheathed the knife. "We literally share a name."

"That's a coincidence."

"This conversation," Asa announced, "is so stupid." He stuffed the rest of the fruit jerky, quills, and bits of rope into Jax's bag, holding it out to him. "Let's make camp. I want to read the rest of the story."

"Here?" Xander asked.

He looked thoughtfully up at the ragdoll tree, as if genuinely assessing the pros and cons of sleeping beneath a carnivorous plant. Asa scooped Bibi up; the pegapiglet looked like a porcelain teacup in his scarred hands.

"Well, not here," Asa said. "But somewhere nearby."

"You want to make camp right now?" Jax asked.

He wanted to cry with relief. His ankle was throbbing now, buckling under the weight of holding him upright. Asa shrugged. "Why not? We reach the Scorched Plains tomorrow, and I want to find out if Princess Romes turns down Duke Featherington before I die."

Xander perked up. "Can you read it out loud?"

"Nobody's reading anything out loud," Jax said, his voice rising. "It's my intellectual property. You literally can't do that."

"Let's vote," Asa said.

Jax shook his head. "No."

Asa turned to face the group. "All in favour of giving Jax some semblance of privacy?"

Nobody moved.

"We're not voting," Jax said, exasperated.

Asa ignored this. "All in favour of snooping?"

Three hands went up. Four, if you counted Bibi's good wing, although Jax hoped that the pegapiglet was just stretching. Asa shuffled the parchment. "Sorry, Fish Food. The people have spoken."

"But—"

"Come on," Asa said, turning. "I want to put at least a hundred yards between us and the man-eating fauna."

The journey was excruciating. Every step felt like stamping down on sharp glass, and Jax bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood. His shoulder burned. Asa trudged on for thirty minutes, and it took another ten minutes to set-up camp. Jax flopped down on his cot, his chest heaving. He couldn't bring himself to join the others by the fire.

Asa began to read.

He had a deep, sonorous voice, the smoky type that was made for telling stories by winter fires. Romes laughed in all the right places. Xander made little comments like, "I knew it!" or "Destroy him!" And maybe, Jax thought, staring up at the stars, it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. Maybe he even enjoyed it.

Someone extinguished the fire.

Romes crawled into the cot next to him, smelling of dirt and vanilla. Her body was soft and warm. He wondered what type of oversized shirt she normally slept in. Red cotton, Jax decided, with lots of holes in the hem of it. Which meant it was probably not that at all.

"Romes?" Jax murmured.

Some rustling. "Yeah?"

"Are you asleep?"

"Yeah," Romes whispered.

"Oh."

"I'm kidding, Blackwater." He could hear the smile in her voice. "What do you want?"

"I'm sorry," Jax said. "About earlier." He could feel his heart knocking against his ribcage. "I didn't mean to make fictional you sound incompetent. You're the most competent person that I know. And I'm sorry for writing about you in general. And I'm sorry for not telling you that I was—"

"Blackwater?" Romes interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"If I forgive you," she said, "will you stop talking?"

"Yup."

"Okay, then." Romes shifted. "You're forgiven."

Jax stared into the darkness. Smoke trickled up from the fire, bending like a silver flower straining towards the sky. He could hear Xander snoring, blending with the even see-saw of Asa's breathing.

"I'm not tired," Jax murmured.

He waited. Romes would say something sarcastic, undoubtedly. Perhaps she'd offer to knock him out with a knife hilt. But she surprised him by rolling over, her eyes shining like twin polished coins in the darkness.

"Neither am I," she said.

Jax smiled. "Come on."

He rose, ignoring the slight twinge in his ankle. Romes' brow knit together. "What?"

Jax held out a hand. "Come on. I want to show you something."

She squinted at him suspiciously. "You're not taking me back to that man-eating plant, are you?"

"No."

"Alright." Romes took his hand. "Lead the way."