The Tavern: Revisited

page xxiii

Two weeks and one very angry, stubborn fairy later, Regina's back at the tavern door, drawn to it by the promise of a fate that can be hers if only she will let it; and as she peers through the window, she realizes that she had every expectation not to find him there again, yet all the faith that she would, because when she doesn't, disappointment drags her heart and that wretched hope down along with it. Her heels pivot and grind into the dirt-packed crevices of the cobblestone path, and when she reaches the wooden post where her horse ought to have been, where she could have sworn she'd left it not moments before, she stumbles, falls.

But before the ground can hit her knees she lands into a stranger's embrace instead, and though she's never met the man, the tattoo he bears on his arm is not one she'd ever forget. She hears his voice at her ear, a low murmur of "Milady," was she injured, and could he be of any assistance to a woman as stunning as she?

As she proceeds to explain, her words trembling where his had been strong, "I've lost my only way back home," the guilt crosses like a shadow over his startling, handsome features, long enough for her to know exactly who is the one to blame for it.

And of course, of course, the man destined to be her soulmate would be a petty two-bit thief; how could she have expected anything less, or thought she deserved anything more? The tears prickling at her eyes are hot, angry, mortified, but she won't let them fall, can't let him see; so she does what dealing with her mother for the majority of her life has taught her to do, and she bites down on her tongue, hard, to staunch their flow.

"Please accept my sincerest apologies, milady," he's saying, and she has to hand it to him but he manages to appear genuinely distraught as he continues, "I had no idea—"

"And that excuses you for stealing my horse?" Regina demands, finally recovering from the initial shock, finding both her voice and her willpower as she shoves him off with a forceful hand to the chest. "What kind of stupid logic is that?"

The thief shakes his head, dragging a hand through his locks, down the side of his face, across his stubbled chin. It's criminal how good-looking he is, Regina thinks mutinously, and if stealing her horse hadn't been grounds enough for throwing him into Leopold's dungeons, this might have served as a perfectly legitimate reason instead. "I swear, milady, had I known—"

"Had you known you were depriving some pretty young thing of her transportation, you would've what? Stolen from someone a little less easy on the eyes?" But it's not just her horse, is it, not when she feels robbed of her second chance as well.

He falls almost bashfully silent for a while as she tries to calm her erratic breathing, unclench her fists from her hips, then finally, "It's not that, not exactly," he says lowly, "although there is no denying that you are—truly stunning—"

Oh, please. She regards him with her most murderous glare (he's unfazed; she'll have to work on that more), then spits out the words as violently as though they were laced with actual poison, "Don't even think about charming your way out of this. You—"

"Let me finish," and the pleading look in his brilliant blue eyes stops her short despite herself, "There are all manner of unsavory types roaming the streets at this time of night." (She snorts delicately—that much is apparent to her, thank you—but he ignores it.) "And it would be unforgiveable for me to allow a woman as vulnerable as you, with no means of a quick escape should you need it, to fall into the wrong hands."

"And your hands?" Regina retorts, even as her traitorous heart flutters at the warm look he's giving her now. "Are you saying that your hands are the right ones?"

He answers her with a crooked smile that accentuates his dimples and sends her stupid heart doing stupid little flip-flops up and down her chest next. "I may be a thief," he says seriously, "but I would never allow any harm to befall you. Least of all by these," and he lifts the hands in question, peacefully, palms up, "indirectly or otherwise." And damn him to high hell but she believes him, and as she scrutinizes their rough, calloused surfaces, her mind betrays her, imagines them doing other things to her body instead, delicious, unspeakable things, until she's thanking whatever higher power there is that it's too dark for him to see the flush rising up in her cheeks.

Biting her lip uncertainly, Regina wonders if this was the meeting that Tinker Bell had envisioned for her and her soulmate—if the fairy had had any idea of his life's occupation, so to speak, or if she would be just as appalled to learn that the man meant to be her second chance at love and happiness had grossly miscalculated and stolen her horse rather than her heart.

But when her gaze lifts back up to lock with his, there's a softness in the way he's looking at her, a protectiveness that she never would've expected. She wonders what he sees in her that he seems to believe needs saving, and the fear returns tenfold, the fear that there are no second chances for people fated for the darkness like her, the fear that she'll end up alone and wretched, just like Rumplestiltskin. But pixie dust doesn't lie, she reminds herself, and maybe, just maybe, there's a reason to hope after all. Something lifts over her heart at the thought, a veil heavy with regret and exhausted from it, exposing everything beneath; she's utterly vulnerable before him now, and it's the most exhilarating thing she's ever experienced.

"I understand that I've angered you," he begins tentatively.

"I'm furious with you," she says, but it sounds petulant even to her, the fight already deflating from her voice and loosening the rigid posture that's tightened her shoulders back.

"But perhaps we could start over?" he continues, and when she doesn't respond right away he slips the words in to soften the silence, "I'm Robin. Robin of Locksley." He extends a hand, which she refuses to shake.

"And I am in need of a horse," she says stubbornly, defiant arms folding across her chest. Her narrowed eyes meet his open ones, challenging him, this Robin of Locksley (and why such a man of apparently noble birth would rather steal from others than claim his own title fascinates, intrigues her), until some inexplicable force starts tugging at the corner of his mouth. He's biting back a smile before a throaty chuckle bursts out, and then suddenly she's fighting down her own laughter too, the whole situation is just absurd, two complete strangers standing in the middle of a dark alleyway and they're bickering like a pair of children, betrothed at birth and against her will.

But maybe that's the whole point of it all, as every sensible bone in her body protests, because she is a goddamn queen, and what is he but a common thief, by his own design, who would probably need to rob a royal treasury in order to pay off all his debts; still, the rest of her clings to that ridiculous hope, gravitates her heart toward the man who by every stretch of the imagination is all kinds of wrong for her, and yet it makes him just the perfect kind of right.

"Oh, are you?" he asks now, lilting, teasing.

"Yes, I seem to have misplaced mine," she returns with a glare that only widens his smile and, in turn, causes a hitch in her breath.

"Is that right? You know, I may have an idea of where he is," the thief—no, Robin—murmurs, the gravelly rumble of his voice positively sinful, and she realizes she's taken a step forward, or he has, does it really matter, his mouth is inches from her forehead now, his words exquisitely light against her skin and his breath warm, so warm, sending luscious little shivers darting up and down her spine, and she feels pleasantly numb and hypersensitive all over, all at once. "And I'll be more than happy to supply you with both yours and another of my own, should you require—"

What is he even saying? Regina thinks vaguely, slightly mystified, as her fingers come up to curl around the collar of his tunic hanging loosely at his neck, either to push him away or keep him from leaving, she hasn't quite decided yet, Can he just…stop…talking? For one second? Yes, one second seems like plenty of time to—

But whatever she'd been thinking escapes her, slips out of her awareness, elusive, already forgotten; and it's all his fault, why is he standing so damn close to her now, how is she expected to form a coherent sentence in her mind when the very scent of him is filling her thoughts instead; and it's so rude how he has the audacity to place a gentle palm on her hip, the other curling around to rest at the small of her back, just rude, but also warm, very warm. His nose grazes her cheek, his lips slightly parted as they take in a shuddering breath, and the utterly captivated look on his face as it draws closer, heart-stoppingly closer to hers—God—her eyes flutter shut at the feel of his kiss ghosting over her mouth, his arms tightening their hold around her waist as desire pools down low in her belly—

"There you are!" A voice booms and grows louder, a familiar, rattling echo as it ricochets around the inside of the generic black helmet of the King's guard, and Regina's insides twist as she stumbles away from Robin with a startled gasp, chest heaving, heart pounding. "Thank heavens I'll have good news to report to the King. His Royal Highness had grown rather concerned about—now, say, who's this?"

She's put enough distance between her and Robin to stand at least three other guards of similar build to the one sauntering towards her now, jauntily swinging his shield from side to side. But evidently there's something about Robin's posture, the hand he still has reaching out towards Regina, that's not to the guard's liking, and he assumes an offensive stance, draws his sword, exclaims loudly, "Kneel, young man!"

"Stop," Regina commands him. "He's done nothing wrong!"

But the guard is relentless, carrying on boisterously, "Didn't your mother ever teach you the proper way to treat a lady?" He turns back to Regina, sounding almost apologetic on Robin's behalf. "Your Highness, was this man disturbing you? I'll happily oblige in teaching him a lesson—"

"No!" Regina yells. "Leave him be!"

The guard reluctantly sheaths his sword as he grumbles something about simply wanting to ensure Her Majesty's safety, but she's tuned him out, because all she can see now is the disbelief slackening Robin's jaw, and the words—Your Highness?—swimming in the turbulent blue of his eyes, before they disappear from her sight as he sinks slowly down on one knee, dipping his head in a deferent bow. Shame colors her cheeks; he's the one who'd stolen from her, so why does she feel like she's the one in the wrong, for lying to him, by omission of her true identity?

Please don't, she wants to tell him, please don't go, and she wishes with a terrible ache in her heart that she could pull him off the ground, beg him to take her away, far, far away—where there is no King, nor the men who guard him and obey his every command, every order to stalk his wife and bring her back home to him. But the guard's ever-watchful eye on them both stops her, and how is this fair, that this second chance Tinker Bell had offered is no longer hers, maybe was simply not meant to be. And she'd been the fool for starting to believe in something as ephemeral as pixie dust, because even if it never lies, it certainly doesn't last forever, either.

"We should be on our way, then," proclaims the guard, pointedly eyeing a group of raucous men vacating the tavern several shops down from them along the cobblestone path.

Regina looks helplessly at Robin, his beautiful eyes unreadable, and she swallows back the bile burning up her throat, because tattoo or no, how can a thief—her heart contracts painfully in her ribcage, and even then she feels like there's no more room there to breathe—how can a thief love a woman who already belongs to a king?

"Milady," he starts finally, but his voice is hollow, and when the guard creaks his helmet around to give him what Regina can only assume is meant to be a threatening look, hidden as it is behind a gaudy array of feathers on metal, Robin corrects himself immediately, "Your Majesty." (And she flinches as though he's cursed her.) Then, a reminder, "Your…steed."

"Keep him," she says, the words cold, empty, as a gloved hand surrounds her arm like a vice. She can already feel her heartstrings being tugged violently against her chest toward Robin where he still kneels on the ground as the guard leads her away from him, drawn back as if by some invisible force of nature, and she doesn't try to fight it now, simply can't bring herself to believe she wants to even if she could.

As far as she's concerned, he can keep them both. They belong to him now.

page xxv

He can't get her out of his head.

It's not just the first glimpse he'd gotten of her, running with her head bent down as he'd been making his own way toward the tavern. (A drink had been in order; he'd just had the unbelievably good fortune of stumbling upon a prized steed—rather poorly protected by its owner, whoever that was—that looked worth every penny he planned to take for it.) Nor is it the first true look he'd had of her face, as she'd fallen and he'd had the even greater fortune of being there to catch her—the stirring eyes, the exquisite lips that had had him gaping and saying nonsense like some lovestruck git (that is, until he realized it was her horse he'd just stolen). It's not even the way this magnificent creature, and it's almost unsettling how stunning she is, really, had let him hold her, touch her, with the wholly underserving hands of a good for nothing common thief such as he.

(Because while all those things are—well, they're just—his mind is still reeling on a pedestal of nerves from the entire experience, if he's being perfectly honest about it. Wondering if he'll ever quite catch his breath back, or if she's taken it away from him for good.)

No. The thing haunting him more than any other now is that last look she'd given him. That look, after he'd learned that his petty crime was quite a lot more treasonous in nature than he'd had the misfortune of not knowing, and before the guard had all but dragged her off without giving her a proper go at punishing him for it.

It must be more than that, though, he tells himself as he rises back to his feet, the moments that pass taking the vision of her farther and farther away from where he stands motionless, stupid, watching them leave. The guard could've had Robin's head on a silver platter for the Queen, had that been what she wanted. (Not that he wouldn't've gone down without a fight; but even considering that the guard likely had only half a brain to work with, Robin would still be one sword down, which didn't work out terribly in his favor. So said fight would've been short and quite messy, optimistically speaking.)

Yet somehow, he suspects that his untimely demise was the last thing the Queen had in mind—though it might've been her first, before he'd (he likes to think, anyway) charmed his way into her good graces, or at the very least come just shy of it. Either way, she'd allowed for just the opposite; had seemed frantic, even, when her guard had so generously proposed to off a man on her behalf, and that had to count for something, hadn't it? He'd bet everything he's ever properly owned on the idea that him lying there with his head detached from his body would in fact greatly displease her.

And he can't fathom it, but the only other explanation coming to his semi-stunned mind at the moment is that she'd simply thought of a punishment for him even more befitting than death—the thought of never seeing her again, and that he would have to be okay with it (he's not okay with it). Which, judging by that look on her face, equal parts furious and distraught, seemed to be a sentiment she inexplicably shared.

So he does the only sensible thing, really.

He follows them.

(First he gives his friend Alan explicit instructions not to steal any more horses tonight, even though they're about to find themselves not one but two shorter than previously. And then he follows them.)

.

.

.

It's somewhat unfortunate the amount of noise he's making now. In addition to the clomp, clomp, clomping of his own horse (a rare breed he'd purloined years ago, from an abusive drunkard who really didn't deserve to own such nice things if he insisted on mistreating them as he did), Regina's stallion trots obediently alongside him, reins tethered to the horn of his saddle. (It also occurs to him the Queen's odd choice of quaint little towns for the purposes of a midnight ride, miles away from the castle and unattended no less; he's not sure what to make of it.) Leaves not yet damp from the twilight mist crunch underfoot, creating quite a stir in the surrounding air.

Luckily for him, though, the guard escorting her home is both oblivious and lacking in subtlety as he trundles along, leaving an easy enough trail that Robin can follow from a safe distance behind. He hears the thwapping sounds of the guard's sword hacking away at offending branches, as the man talks loudly of court matters while Regina walks silently alongside him.

"Say," he interrupts himself in the middle of recanting some story about a visiting duke and his wife's missing gemstones, not to mention the terrible headache the whole ordeal has caused, "what were you doing wandering so far north, anyway?" But, being the Queen, she reserves every right not to respond (which she doesn't), and he finally takes her silence as an order rather than a suggestion and falls dutifully mute as well.

Robin pulls gently at the reins, bringing both horses to a halt as the movements ahead of him still. "All right, Your Majesty," he hears, "do watch your step there—" followed by the swish and latch of what sounds to be a carriage door being secured shut.

"We'll be back to the castle in no time at all, don't you worry," the guard calls loudly (still no response), then several answering whinnies, the lash of a whip and the grinding of the wheels into the dirt carry them forth into the night. As distastefully loud as the guard had been, the carriage will still be considerably easier to follow from farther away, Robin thinks, and he waits several additional seconds before clucking to the horses to resume their trotting once more.

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.

.

When the majestic, towering turrets of the castle finally come into view over the treetops, however, Robin begins to doubt this plan of his, namely the fact that he'd come up with no plan at all. Judging by the height of the moonlight the trip has not taken them an insignificant amount of time, and he'd just spent every hour of it entertaining preposterous thoughts of sneaking into the Queen's bedchambers. Of sneaking into her bedchambers and into her heart, rather than the much more likely scenario of getting tossed straight away into the dungeons for his efforts to woo the Queen. Especially considering the matter of her husband, whom Robin sincerely doubts would be keen on simply letting her go off with another man.

And then there would be the tiny problem of having absolutely not a clue how to account for his absence to his mates back in town, particularly if said absence ends up being a more…permanent situation than he'd originally intended.

Even supposing he did somehow manage to find his way to her first, and with all his limbs still intact. He still couldn't be entirely sure that she'd receive him favorably. He had, after all, stolen her horse. Proceeded to flirt shamelessly with her. Been properly chagrined when they both arrived at the same conclusion of where her horse had gone off to. Then flirted with her some more. And not just with any run of the mill sort of woman, as it turned out, because not only was she the most stunning thing he'd ever seen, but she also happened to be the Queen. God help him but he'd fallen for the Queen. He must've looked a right idiot in her eyes.

So the more he dwells on it, the clearer it becomes to him that this was all in all probably a very bad idea.

But there's really no turning back now, not without the shame of having come so far, of having her just within reach, only to let her slip right out of it and for no other compelling reason than the fear of losing his own head. (Because if he doesn't see her again, he'll just as likely lose his mind anyway.) That would be simply inexcusable, he tells himself sternly as he dismounts, secures both horses to a tree trunk and gives the knot a sharp, firm tug for good measure.

Well, all right then. No use delaying any further.

Robin takes a great, calming breath before sneaking furtively off across the gardens, heading in the direction of a balcony that looks reasonably accessible enough to climb up from the courtyard below. His footsteps dodge patches of moonlit ground and keep to the shadows, expertly trained motions barely above a whisper in the grass.

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.

.

His grip finds the smooth, ivory marble and he hoists himself over the balcony ledge, boots landing with a dull, unimpressive thud on the stone floor.

Parts of it, he notices, look newer, more refurbished than the rest, but he pays it little mind as he takes in the features of the expansive room that come into dimly illuminated view before him. It's generously proportioned but feels oddly unfurnished, save for a few elegant, solitary pieces—a large four-poster bed with an ornate frame off to one wall, an elaborate vanity against another. It also appears to be vacant, the hearth empty, the air cold but lightly perfumed with a familiar scent, and he guesses that the Queen must be elsewhere in the castle, must have yet to make it back to her bedchambers since returning from her journey.

Robin wanders over to her vanity, thinks that what he's doing might be considered rather invasive. But it's as though he's drawn there, to the chair where he imagines her to sit every morning; to the mirror he can picture her gazing distantly through now, with that haunted look in her eyes, cold until he had been the one to warm them.

(He really does like to think so, anyway.)

He rests his fingertips on the table, traces the grooves whorled into its carved edges. He sees her absentmindedly pick at the gaudy jewels resting lazily on its surface, stare blankly at them before dropping them back down.

Had he not been so engrossed in this mental visual of her, he might've noticed that he was no longer alone in the room.

"Got you!" the triumphant cry of that blasted guard comes from behind him, and then it pitches upward into something with an almost sinister, singsong quality about it, "Don't even know what you just walked into, do you?" Before Robin can determine whether the voices belong to the same person or not, he feels a heavy blow to the back of his head and then darkness.

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.

When Robin comes to, slowly, and rather unpleasantly, it's to the musk of wet hay as well as something that smells suspiciously of day-old excrement. Lovely. Truly lovely. He hears the echoing drip, drip, drip of a leaking pipe overhead, doesn't even need to open his eyes to know where this latest bout of supreme stupidity has landed him.

The King's dungeons.

And that's just wonderful. Wonderful and entirely predictable and he'd really asked for it this time, hadn't he?

Groaning softy, Robin raises a hand to investigate the dull throb at the back of his head, and his fingers come away blessedly dry and free of blood. At least he hadn't been bludgeoned hard enough to cause much lasting damage, then, though he could do without the headache. It's distorting his senses, spinning his world round and round when he opens his eyes, so he shuts them back up, squeezes tight to keep what little light there is from leaking through.

And then he hears the voices.

They're arguing, rather heatedly from the sound of it, though from far enough away that he can't distinguish words, only tone—anger in one, insistence in the other. Whatever they're going on about, Robin thinks, surely they could find a better place to do it? They're being quite disruptive. Please sod off, he wants to tell the both of them, growing more irritable by the second, but also more sluggish, if they could only leave him be, for just a moment, so he could sleep it off and then work out how the hell he plans to escape this place…

"But Your Majesty," he finally makes out, and as soon as Robin recognizes that infernal guard's shrill, sniveling voice it has roughly the effect of a bucket of frigid water, cruelly washing away any lasting fuzziness in his brain, God if he could only just hit that man's face, at least once, it would vastly improve his mood, "I found him trying to steal from you."

"It wouldn't be the first time," responds a woman, and that's when Robin's eyes pop back open, his vision dancing in and out in a blurry, dizzying fashion until the double images of hay bales resolve back into one. When it feels safe to do so he tosses a side glance in the direction of the Queen's voice, low, husky, every bit as lovely as he'd remembered it, and every bit as infuriated, too, to match the look on her face as she glowers up at the guard. "But that doesn't mean he deserves to be locked up and beheaded for it!"

It's almost comical how accurately Robin had predicted his own bloody fate, really, and how eagerly he'd gone to great lengths to see it through.

"Not only that," continues the guard earnestly, "but I found these in his pockets!"

Found what now?

There's a delicate tinkling sound and something glitters brilliantly against the darkness of the guard's gloved hands.

"What am I supposed to do with these? They're not mine," says the Queen.

"Your Highness," the guard says in a loud, scandalized whisper, "these are the gemstones that went missing from the duchess's safe!"

"I see," says the Queen. "So you're telling me he followed us all the way back to the castle"—the guard's helmet bobs up and down in avid agreement—"and found these jewels. In my room." (The guard then pauses in his nodding, tilts his head to the side, seems to suddenly doubt the direction this is going in.) "After they had already been missing for several days." (His helmet begins to shake fervently now.) "It only makes sense that I was the one who stole them first, then, is that what you're going to say next?"

"What—" splutters the guard, "no, of course not, that's—that's just absurd!"

"No more absurd than you're being right now," the Queen says with a dash of iciness that sends a slight chill down Robin's back. "Leave us."

"But—Your Majesty—if the King discovers I've left you alone with this thief—"

"Then you'll benefit from speaking of this to no one, because if you do it will be your head that goes missing tomorrow morning!"

The guard looks on the verge of objecting further but the positively malevolent look she gives him seems to change his mind, and he tilts his helmet down in a bow before scuttling off up the stairs.

The Queen stands there a second longer, staring indifferently ahead, but her hand is fisted and trembling by her side. Robin takes her silence as opportunity to stand, very gingerly (wincing slightly when his knees protest under the sudden weight of his body, and his head from the sudden lightness there as the blood rushes down and away from it). He lets out a grunt, grabbing onto the metal bars of his cell to steady himself, and she seems to startle out of her reverie, is in front of him in an instant.

He feels short of breath for an entirely different reason when their eyes meet.

"Hullo," Robin says finally to fill the space between them, and it sounds woefully inadequate the moment it's escaped his lips. "What a pleasant surprise that our paths should cross again so soon."

She doesn't respond right away, her eyes too dark to read as they flit up and down his form, pausing and narrowing at the sight of his forehead. He raises two fingers self-consciously to inspect just above his brow, finds a knot there that's already starting to bruise.

"Bollocks," he can't help but mutter, "that smarts a little."

Her hand twitches, almost as though to examine the injury herself, but then it stills, or he'd imagined it to begin with; being this close to her again is hazardous, to be quite honest, derails all logical thought. It really is a crime how beautiful she is. She ought to be the one here in this jail cell, at least then there wouldn't be these bloody bars to contend with if he were to, say, just reach out and—God, to have her so near, yet virtually untouchable, is torture in the purest sense of the word—

"You're here," the Queen says at last, disbelieving, as though she's still not entirely convinced of it despite the fact that he is very much locked up in her own dungeon. "You're…why are you here?"

"I…" He wants to tell her the truth, but suddenly the truth strikes him as something that'll sound downright mad the moment he voices it aloud, although perhaps it would be to his benefit to plea insanity in defense of his actions. Still, he stammers on for a moment, "I…ermm…" then finally, "I came to return your horse," he finishes lamely.

"Is that all?" is all that she asks.

He hopes his answer is adequately conveyed in the look he gives her rather than whatever words he's trying to get out, because judging from the way one jaw's come unhinged from the other he doubts they'll sound even vaguely coherent and why is behaving like a normal person so terribly difficult around this woman?

"The guard found you in my room." There's a question in the statement.

"I was looking for you," he answers honestly.

"To return my horse."

"…Yes?" Robin says hesitantly.

"In my room." Her impassive tone of voice is driving him mad if he hadn't already been before.

"Well, no, obviously not," he responds with a frown. "It just—it had seemed the most expedient and discretionary way to reach you, at the time."

She looks skeptical. "So you scaled a wall, climbed over a balcony, and snuck into the Queen's bedchambers, risking punishment possibly worse than death, just to tell me you brought back the horse you'd stolen from me."

Well, when she phrases it as such, it really is no wonder her guard had seen fit to throw him in here.

"That…yes, that sounds about right," Robin admits, beginning to feel rather foolish. A thread of uncertainty laces into his bloodstream. He hadn't simply dreamt up the way she'd looked at him earlier that night, back outside the tavern, had he? "Although, to be fair—" he throws all caution to the wind as he continues, because what has he got to lose by this point, when he's already been sentenced to a beheading by morning, "—the thought of not seeing you again was reason enough to try, and I don't regret a second of it."

He really hadn't a clue how she would respond to that, given how impersonal and detached she's acting toward him now—even the barest hint of a smile could've put him through the coldest winter and still that would've been too much to ask of her—but even so, he certainly hadn't been expecting this.

This being the unconcealed rage that flashes through her eyes, the brown in them fierce and stormy where they'd been calm, clouded over mere moments before. It draws her features down into a livid frown and has her hand surging forward, swiping viciously into the air as a jet of purple light crackles from her palm and blasts the lock on his cell clean in two.

"There," she says, fuming, refusing to meet his gaze as the door creaks slowly open of its own accord. "I can manage that much, at least. What are you waiting for? You're a free man. Now go."

But he stands there, struck dumb, staring, can't fathom why she would be so furious with him, nor how such anger would drive her to release a royal prisoner rather than expedite his execution. Yes, perhaps he'd overstepped his bounds by inviting himself into her home, by presuming himself to be entirely welcome. But that actually seems to be the least of her concerns, which, judging from the way her gaze keeps darting back to the foot of the stairwell, shifting with every stray sound that echoes off the damp, moldy walls, seem solely centered around the worry that he'll be somehow thick enough to get caught again before he's managed a proper escape.

But the matter of getting away is the least of his own concerns, as he takes a tentative step beyond the threshold of his jail cell, then stops in front of where she's stood aside to let him pass. "I don't understand," he tells her, palms out, almost pleading. "Why are you letting me go?" Why don't you want me to stay?

"Because you're being an idiot, that's why," she hisses. "Because you risked your life for—for what? For a glimpse of something pretty that doesn't belong to you?"

Robin winces at the reminder, and he knows he can't have her, has known the moment he found out who she was, despite the utterly stupid hope that he could've had otherwise. Yet for all the venom in her voice, her eyes still keep that stupid hope in him alive. For whatever reason, to push him away or protect him or both, she wants him to give as good as he gets, to respond to her anger with words he can't take back. But he doesn't rise to the bait, says instead, "If you're meaning your horse, then I'm afraid Your Majesty is quite mistaken. I needn't have brought him all the way back here just for that."

The Queen is not amused. She opens her mouth—her perfectly formed, rose pink mouth he had kissed just hours before, and it's the memory of how she'd sighed into him, opened herself up to his lips, his embrace, that assures him he hadn't been dreaming after all. She's no doubt about to tell him off some more, but he interrupts, serious now, because now he feels like he does have something to lose, has everything to lose, if he proves too careless with his words, and possibly even her heart.

"Milady," he says, dropping the title that had caused this entire mess to begin with, and her eyes are unusually bright as they regard him once more, "It's not about owning you." Her bottom lip trembles, or perhaps that's just his perception of things becoming all indistinct again, as it seems wont to do whenever she is standing this close, close enough for the tip of his nose to graze her forehead, if she would let it. "And why is it so hard for you to believe that I would want to see you again?"

"I lied to you!" she tells him, her fury catching a second wind. "I lied to you about who I am."

He shakes his head, disagrees. "You never told me your name, because I never asked. And for that I am sorry."

Her gaze is trained on the general area of his chest (they're standing so close now there's little choice for her to look elsewhere), some point just above his shoulders, anywhere but his face as she admits, begrudgingly, "True." Then, muttering under her breath, "I suppose at least I didn't steal from you."

He chuckles at that, and when he speaks again, his voice is deeper, lower, softer. "What if I told you I brought your horse back in exchange for something you did take from me?"

"I—what?" She looks confused for a moment, like he's a puzzle trying to trick her with his words. "I didn't steal anything from you."

"You did, actually." He reaches into what little space is left between them, takes her hand into his. When she doesn't slip it out of his grasp, he raises it to his chest, presses her palm to his beating heart. "Something from here, as a matter of fact."

"It seems to be working just fine where it is," she says, but he knows she can feel his pulse picking up speed as he lowers his forehead just shy of hers, the blood pumping, rushing past his ears in a deafening roar, and the sight of her from this angle is positively arresting.

"Regardless," he says finally, gravelly now, "I believe you've done something to it. But if you intend to be as callous with my heart as you have been, then, well, I'd quite like it returned back to the way it was."

Her fingers curl into his chest even as she stares at him, stunned into silence.

"Why won't you just leave me alone?" she sighs at last, almost in defeat, and victory is nearly his.

"I will if that's what you truly want," he murmurs, but she can't answer, and that tells him everything he needs to know.

"Do you have a death wish?" she gripes at him as he traces her fluttering eyelashes with his nose, her words warm puffs of air against his neck.

"If I did, would you be the one to fulfill it?" His free arm snakes out, rests against the side of her waist, encircles to the small of her back.

"Why wouldn't I?" she challenges, but she sounds breathless even to him. Her palm turns out from his chest, catching his fingers, weaving hers through.

He mock-frowns. "That's rubbish and you know it."

She arches a brow. "You would dare speak that way to your Queen?"

His frown turns to a grin then, a lopsided grin. "What will you do, throw me back into your dungeon?"

"I'm sure you'd deserve it," she scowls prettily.

"Probably," he admits, grin now turning rueful. "There are a number of things I've done that I ought to regret, but none so much as if I were to walk out of here today without at least knowing your name."

She shakes her head, disbelieving, always disbelieving. "Why?"

"It matters," he answers simply, and he feels her hand tense underneath his, fingertips digging lightly, but not unpleasantly, into his skin.

"Regina," she says finally, voice small, apprehensive. "It's Regina."

"Regina—" he begins, but the way her eyes close at the sound of her name falling from his lips, it has every nerve in his body tingling and on the brink of bursting at the seams. Then he's saying something else, but for the life of him he'll never quite recall what, because suddenly her mouth is opening up to his kiss, he can't pinpoint the exact moment he'd surged forward and closed the last remaining space between their lips, only the thought that delaying it any longer had been unbearable, excruciating even. Now there's hardly room for any thought at all, nor time to take so much as a breath, he's drowning in the sensation of her scent, her touch, her everything. Why they hadn't done this earlier, rather than squandering precious time on words and arguing and other such nonsense—

The hand holding onto hers lets go, buries into the loose waves of her hair instead, weaves, grips and tugs, angling her mouth against his so he can deepen the kiss, and her body is pressed up against his chest, belly, thighs and in between, as closely as is physically possible with the fabric of their clothing and her hand caught between them, but still it's not enough. His palm on her back drags round to the other side of her hip, gripping there, clenching involuntarily when she moans into his kiss, tongues meeting, dancing, God but if they're found out now, what does it matter, the prospect of dying, as this is exactly what he'd imagine heaven to be like anyway.

When her lips part to drag in air, his make their way along her jawline, to the shell of her ear (drawing a delicious little gasp out of her), down her neck to her collarbone. He feels her fingers on the back of his head, skirting around the knot there he'd gotten courtesy of her guard, tickling his scalp, threading through his hair, coaxing his lips farther down, down—

"I can't believe you came after me," she murmurs as he presses a kiss just above her breast, feels it rise and fall against his lips as he waits for his breathing to calm so he can manage out more than a word at a time without gasping.

"Nor can I," joins a new voice from the stairwell, in the same high pitch the guard's had taken on back in Regina's room, just before he'd clubbed Robin over the head. Regina's fingers tighten, Robin's mouth stills. His heart resumes its frantic pounding, born of a sudden, inexplicable fear he doesn't quite understand as the voice continues, "But let me just say that I was certainly counting on it, dearie."