Wild Berry Meadow Tell everybody I'm on my way

His laugh, full and true for once, eased the furor of Needle’s spirit.

She listened to him then, quietly enraptured, imagination pooling into fantastical scenes she hadn’t thought up in many moons. She’d forgotten she was even capable of this conjuring. Constant fear and scraping and scrounging didn’t often afford her the privilege of enjoying childish notions such as using her imagination.

And not since losing her family had she thought of courtly things. Bryony Aquilanera hadn’t been royalty, but she’d certainly been treated like a princess.

It had become easy to forget this bittersweetness, through all that had happened since then.

However, Stark’s tale was drawn in rueful strokes, honest and bare, constructing a portrait that was saturated in dolorous grays and singed on the edges by longing. Needle felt her heart lurch for him, settling as a hard lump in her throat, more due to his tone than out of any depth of comprehension. But the more they would speak on it, the more she would come to understand.

“I am—was, a Prince.”

The wind seemed to howl distantly at this, keening of a great injustice. Needle’s ears fell back against her crown and refused to hear the sound.

A proclamation followed. Ears righted themselves and she looked upon him with growing admiration and wonder. She swallowed thickly, dry-mouthed from all the sugar, and felt the weight of his question settle like a warm cloak over her slender frame.

For once, Needle was speechless. The intensity of his single eye, the prospect of more, the hope that ventured to flutter between her ribs had all stricken her silent, wide-eyed, and starved. She searched his gaze for a hint of a joke, a morsel of deception. After a moment, her eyes dropped to the ground.

She didn’t dare to want something. She hadn’t the purse to afford desires…

But then she looked up again, jaws set and eyes full of fire. She nodded once.

I want more.

I do.