Can you do a snippet where an evil prince captures a famous warrior princess after her father lost the war (the prince won). The prince admires her and there is a lot of sexual tention (the princess hates him). Have a great day!

“You know,” the prince said. “You are the reason that your kingdom lost.”

The princess’s eyes hardened at that, her gaze as sharp as her ‘confiscated’ blades. She sat on an intricate loveseat in the prince’s parlour - another beautiful treasure in a beautiful room. She hated it. 

Her armour had not been beautiful by the standards of his kingdom, but it had served her well. She felt naked without her chainmail. The long dress she had been given had a corseted waist which had been cinched punishingly narrow by the prince’s servants. Who needed restraints when they could misuse the fashions of women’s clothing so effectively? 

“Am I.” Her voice could have chilled a desert. She tilted her head, examining him in turn. 

He still wore some light armour around her, so he was not a fool. In other circumstances she may even have considered him handsome. As it was, however, she hated losing and so now no amount of loveliness would make him less repugnant.

She turned her head away from him, dismissively, as he came to a stop in front of her - but couldn’t shake the feeling of his attention quite so easily.

“Yes,” he said, in a tone of open admiration she hadn’t expected. “You are a legend, even among my people.”

“And that excuses you of your responsibility in cutting my people down?” 

She saw him smile in her periphery vision; delighted, no polite strategic twist of the lips. 

“Your father was so used to relying on your skill as a warrior that he had become complacent, assuming you would always protect his kingdom, that you could not possibly be overwhelmed. Not you, his little wolf. That’s what he called you, isn’t it? But...” he reached to trail a finger down the cut on her turned cheek. “No one person can win a war, can they? You know that.”

She did know that. She had begged to be allowed into the council meetings with her father, to discuss the strategies that would serve them best, the resources needed for such an undertaking. Even before the battle, her father had always refused her. She was a warrior; her role was to fight, let other people worry about something as unfeminine as thinking. As if fighting made her a blunt tool, a weapon, to be wielded by someone else’s hand instead of her own. 

It had not mattered that her brother had wanted nothing to do with war or conquest. It did not matter that he had preferred poetry, philosophy, or medicine even if anything close to performing violence was required of him. He was the son. She was the daughter. 

Normally, her brother would have come to her behind their father’s back but this time - she had been on the field, when the tide turned, for she had been needed there too. Decisions had been made. She had been stretched thin, thin enough that even her defences were worn brittle and breakable. 

They lost. It burnt like acid in her throat. 

She didn’t know how her father had lost exactly, only that he had, and that she was now supposed to surrender.  She didn’t, not even when they knocked her out. Not until she realised they had Luis. She could not imagine her brother thriving alone in such a world as this without victory. He was a gentle, peaceful, man. She may have been able to weather whatever their enemies threw her way, but he could not. And her father was dead, so Luis was in line to the throne, and she had been raised to protect him. Surrender seemed an odd protection, but she was not so stupid as to think it did not work. 

To attack the prince meant to guarantee her brother’s suffering. 

She looked back at him, still watching her with his strange pretty eyes the same grey as her favourite sword. 

The princess’s throat thickened.

Another smile curled the prince’s lips when their gaze met. 

He knew war too, she could see it, sense it in her gut. He knew everything that she might do, because his heart and his ruthlessness beat in the same way. She was a warrior princess and he was the prince of silver tongues, but they were the same. 

She would have admired it, him, if it hadn’t so become her disadvantage. If admiring him didn’t feel like losing all over again.

His hand moved down further, fingers ghosting delicately across the roaring pulse at her neck. A shiver ran down her spine. Her expression may be composed, but the thump of her blood betrayed her to him. 

“People say that you are savage, princess,” he murmured when it became clear she would not speak. “A woman of the like not seen in my kingdom. A wild feral thing to be loosed on battlefields.”

She curled her own lip back, a thinly veiled snarl. “Then, perhaps, prince, you should remove your hand before I bite it. One does not pet a wild feral thing where I come from.”

His eyes gleamed. 

“I do not believe what they say,” he said, not removing his hand. “You see, the woman of my kingdom are expected to be diplomatic, clever, if they should hold power for they are not allowed the use of any of the weapons you so favour. My people consider it unladylike. And the women of your world are allowed only the physical tools, instead, and should you be angry at that...well, savage things are angry, aren’t they? They cannot be taken too seriously.”

Nobody had ever said it to her, not so bluntly, though she and many of her forces had long since known it true. 

“Is this speech supposed to endear me to you?” she mocked. “Proof that you alone are wise enough to see past the bars of prisons you build with your own hands?” 

His smile broadened further. 

“Endear me?” he mused on the thought. “I would be suspicious of any ruler so swiftly endeared towards their enemy. I do not expect your fondness. I did not summon you here to bat your eyes and pretend you do not have teeth.”

She tilted her head the other way. 

No. He didn’t, did he? She studied his face. He was not simply saying it, just as she had not been stretched thin in the final fights by misfortune. She had been stretched thin a hundred times before. Her losing was by his hand, his design. His admiration, too, was not the hidden coveting of a man who had seen something he wanted for himself. Undoubtedly, his eyes told her that he did want her. But he did not quite consider her a trophy; she was not, as she had assumed him to think her, some shiny ornament of victory too empty headed and powerless to be a threat.

Her mouth dried.

The open admiration on his face, such as it were, was for her. Truly, for her, without guile or shallowness.  And in any other circumstance...

Why did the first person to see her, really see her, in such a long time have to be her enemy? Why did this conversation have to make her feel like she was on the battlefield again, adrenaline singing in her veins? Being a royal prisoner was dull and he was not that.

“Why did you summon me here, then?” she asked. “Your guards think you would have your way with me.” 

“My guards accept the answer that they understand, just as my servants offer you the clothes they consider appropriate for your station.”

“That is not an answer.”

“I wished to speak with you,” he said, and it seemed honest. “To meet you. I have followed your conquests with interest for some time. I suppose you could say you are inspiration to me.”

“And I suppose you would say I inspired you to invade my kingdom.”

He laughed.  “You did, actually. Perhaps not the face to launch a thousand ships, princess, though I cannot confess to any complaint in observing you...but certainly the spirit.” The laughter faded from his mouth and his eyes darkened. His hand rose again, to her cheek, to the scar, as if he could not help himself. His voice dropped lower, rich and intimate, intoxicating as a drink that masked itself as something sweet and honeyed. “I knew from the moment I heard about you that I would burn a thousand citadels to have you. You are...” he savoured the word, savoured her. “Magnificent.” 

It would be wrong to flattered. (She may have been flattered.)

“Well,” she said, catching herself biting her lip. Wanting to bite him, swallow him whole, take him to pieces and make him unravel. “You talked to me, prince.”

“Nathaniel.” 

“Nathaniel.” The sound of his name, in her mouth, felt too much like asking for something. Wishing for something. Promising something. Starting something. 

His hand was still on her cheek. Warm. It melted the coldness within her and beneath the cold was - too many things. Nothing in his face reassured her of comfort or kindness, but she had never been good with such things. She didn’t know what to do with stalemate. She didn’t know what to do with just a hand on her cheek. 

And, so, she tipped her head and kissed his palm - just to watch his eyes widen with shock, not having expected that in the slightest. She batted her eyes. Mocking, murderous. Let him get too close despite knowing better. He could not look away.

The second war began.

Hello! Thank you for responding to my previous ask so quickly, I was the anon who asked if repeat ships are okay!

I would love to see more of Skeptic x Opportunist from you, if you are open to that! I really, really like how you wrote it last time, I think you captured dynamic so well!!! And so I wanted to request it again <3

[I will also take this space to say again that your writing is amazing, and I am very much inspired by it! Thanks for doing what you do <3]