"Don't eat those!" I cried, knocking the pokeberries from his palm. "They're poison!"
The prince turned, eyes wide. "They're only blueberries!"
I shook my head, wiping his hand on my skirts. "They're not, my Lord." My breath had been torn from my chest and I gulped at the air, struggling to calm. "They're not."
He sat back on the tall grass, staring up at me in shock. Only then did he begin to shake. "You've saved my life."
I didn't know what to say in return. I had.
"What are you doing out here all alone?" I whispered, sitting beside him. "Where is your steward?"
The prince nodded down the long winding path leading to the castle. "My uncle lives in the woods. Father lets me walk there on Saturdays. He says if I cannot travel a mile alone in the woods, I'm not fit to be king."
I choked on something, some emotion too large to pass easily through me. We'd turned twelve only six weeks before. The kingdom was surrounded on all sides by men who would not hesitate to put the young prince's head on a stake and parade around the countryside with it.
Mother would barely let me out of her sight to gather the herbs I was meant to bring back to the kitchens.
"Why do you go out there?" I asked. "It's not safe for you this far from the castle."
"Says you, a girl, alone out in the woods."
"A girl is safer out here than is a future king."
He looked at me, smiling in a way that pulled the dimples into his cheeks, made his eyes into a story too big to share. Tilting his head back to the woods, he said, "I go because my uncle tells me stories about my mum."