“Kiss me,” she demands, staring up into those shadowed blue eyes with the haughtiness of a princess who has never been denied anything.

He laughs at her, and she cannot help but bristle. “Little girl from the moonbeam, you don’t want that.”

“I know precisely what I want,” she insists, appalled that anyone, even a fellow royal (although he doesn’t count – not really – because he’s Terran and everyone knows how they are) would deny her such a request. Particularly one that many would fulfill without such tiresome prompting. “I wish for you to kiss me. Do so.”

“Is this how you court your suitors up there?” he asks, once again making it sound as if his race is superior. It is a trait that she finds most vexing, but a tiny part of her cannot help but admire him for his brazenness.

“Is this how you treat a lady down here?” she counters, silver brows arching in challenge.

He smiles and she doesn’t particularly like the curve of his mouth. “You, Princess, are like no lady I have ever met before. I don’t know quite how to treat you.”

“Treat me then as I tell you to and kiss me,” she repeats, proud that she has brought the conversation back to its starting point.

He snorts and she wrinkles her nose. How common. “The angelic sorceress asking—telling the barbaric prince to kiss her. Why would you want such a thing?”

She knows it’s because she’s a cliché, a terrible one at that. She’s the little sheltered princess who got tired of being told what to. She’s the little girl who ran away, streaking straight towards danger because she got sick of being safe. And she so found this dark prince from these bloody lands and she thinks him somewhat handsome, so she demands him to kiss her. She wants to because it’s wrong and because it’s foolish and because it’s dangerous and because it will anger anyone who has ever tried to protect her from this and moment and all others she might have enjoyed.

But she tells him, “Ask a Mercurial for an explanation, Prince. I shall offer you none.”

He seems amused by these words. “I thought Lunarians were a delicate race. You do not seem very delicate, Princess.”

“All fragile things must break apart,” she says cryptically, dropping her gaze.

He raises a dark brow, smirking. “Oh. So it’s that then,” he says, and she wonders if he does know her motives or if he is simply pretending to because now he has made her nervous. “Very well.”

And then he complies, taking her completely off guard. She is not ready, not prepared for his lips on hers. She is even less prepared for how light her head feels, how loud her heart his, how heated everything becomes.

She tips her head back, winds her arms around his neck and feels her self shatter, and she prays that no one ever comes to put her back together again.