I really want to like the main leads. I came in to the story really excited by the initial chapters, but now their conduct has made them both rather unappealing.
Lamia is the easier to understand of the two, this is the man responsible for crippling her brother, taking away his life’s work(swordsmanship), and traumatizing him. I don’t know many people who’d be friendly with or romantically interested in someone who maimed and traumatized their close sibling. She’s got no choice but to play nice as he’s the prince. But at the same time she comes off as a little too proud and overbearing. Perhaps an intentional character flaw?
The prince was the character I initially liked the most but so far I’m finding him increasingly frustrating. The way he approaches Lamia obviously makes her uncomfortable, not to mention the deception involved with the Rose, the disguise to meet her in the garden, the ugly jealousy over a woman who is not your significant other(not in this timeline), etc. If he wasn’t the male lead, we’d find his actions pretty creepy.
Hopefully the author is setting things up this way as opportunities for them to grow and improve as people before they can trust one another.