The castle always smelled like salt, in the summer when the air was hot it would pour over the walls and down into the courtyards flooding the area with the scent of kelp and sea foam. From the dungeons you could sneak down to the stone banks where the rocks were covered with barnacles, between shifts guardsmen would go down to swim. Now and then one would come back having slipped and been cut, carried by his friends to be treated with bandages and opium. Emma imagined that had she grown up with her family she might have succumbed to something similar, young and clumsy, sneaking out to swim. Instead she'd grown up with hay fever and calluses and as grateful as she was for her hearth in the castle it had never been home enough for her.

At twenty years old, royally summoned, she'd found her life replaced by a fantasy she'd dreamed up as a child and herself unable to sleep in a featherbed. She'd been raised in a town orphanage, or at least she'd grown there. Her raising had been done at the stables, trading work mucking for riding lessons the forge where she would stoke fires for a chance to learn to hold a sword. Reading had been most difficult with no abundance of teachers but profess a love of God zealous enough and a nun or two would teach you to read verse. Emma Swan had raised herself and had been angry about that for a long time.

The ruse was explained to her when her father's guard had been dispatched to retrieve her from the village and again later when her mother met her in tears, throwing her arms around her neck. The initial wonder of her own luck had been stunning but the idea that she had been abandoned, even for her own safety, had eventually led to sulking. The castle, now her castle, was massive and light. The tower peaks could see past the mountains and across acres of forest. That bay it sat on was good for fishing and the larder was full to bursting with the seasons harvest, it was every convenience a village orphan could have imagined. Her parent's tutors had been surprised at her education, prepared, as they were to swoop in and make her a proper lady of the court. In her four months since arriving the only thing that'd lifted her spirits were the feasts. They were as often as she might have wanted them and all with wild boar or venison and enough wine for one to drown a dozen grown men. After feasts, warm with spirits she'd taken to walking the castle. Growing up in squalor had taught her that an unfamiliar space was an unsafe one so she'd learned the paths to the kitchens and the men who manned the battlements. At night she liked the open space of the bailey or the courtyard outside the chapel where one of the monks had been growing herbs. The chapel itself she generally avoided, the colored light through the windows gave her headaches. It was the step-way to the guard's quarters she liked the most. It spiraled against a low wall beneath the castles main bridge. The smell of salt was stronger there, down so close to the sea where you could hear it lapping at the blood on the barnacles of the men who'd fallen. Delirious on opium they didn't know the tide had a taste for them. In the morning it was the strongest and waking up to sneak back to her chambers afforded her a view of the sunrise over the mountains. In the morning midway up the stone steps she heard the clink of armor in the training yard. A group of men stood in ranks at the call of the master-at-arms and suddenly she had no intention of returning to bed.

"What's going on?"

Archie must have jumped a foot in the air.

"Emma, what are you doing down here? The King and Queen-"

"Don't worry, I was just taking a walk. What's the crowd for?"

It was easy to tell by the way he looked back down at his work that the next thing out of his mouth was going to be a lie but even if he hadn't she would have known, Emma had a thing with lying.

"Just normal training stuff, you know Emma you should get back up to the castle before your parents start looking for you."

Archie was soft-spoken and normally assisted in the castle's library; he was well read and good with alchemy. Good enough to not be in the barracks by coincidence. There was a man Emma didn't recognize in the courtyard, he stood in front of the guards and said something indistinguishable at a distance. He was young, but a knight by his armor, which wore a sigil she didn't know: a large sun on fire.

"In full armor? Just because I wasn't raised in the castle doesn't mean I'm dumb."

"I don't think you're dumb, Emma. I think your parents have told you not to hang around down here."

"They have, then again, they shipped me off to be raised by strangers. I feel like they don't get as much of a say here as they'd like."

Archie sighed, returning for a moment to tend to the ingredients of his alchemy as if worried they would spoil, "We've talked about this Emma your parents were just giving you your-"

"My best chance. I know."

Emma diverted her attention for a moment to the men in the courtyard, trying to hear the orders the young man was giving instead of further discussing the conflict of her parents. She liked Archie; he had a habit of honesty. Not always in the small matters of what men were doing in the morning but his offerings of counsel were without reproach.

"I know you're angry with them but the threat to you was very real."

"I'm sure that's why nobody will explain it to me."

"It's just sensitive."

At an order from the young man in the sun the crowd of soldiers dispersed.

"It was twenty years ago. I don't know anyone that sensitive."

"Well, things are only just getting back to normal, I'm sure after some time…they'll be more than happy to answer your questions."

Great, if she waited around long enough someone might bother to explain something to her. She watched the man in the sun walk back across the courtyard.

"Doesn't matter."

"Emma, of course it does."

"They don't let me leave the castle, they won't tell me anything. How am I supposed to trust them?"

"They're your family."

"They sure aren't treating me like family, they're treating me like a prisoner or a ward or something."

"They're just afraid to lose you, you have to understand that you were gone for a long time."

"I'm gonna be gone for even longer if they don't start trusting me with my own life."

Archie set down his mortar and pestle, nearly finished with whatever it was he was preparing.

"Give them time, it's hard for them too. I promise, soon, they won't be as scared."

Emma perked up at the thought of it.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

As he packed his tools into a leather satchel Archie sighed, "You want to know something? Okay, that young man's name is Prince Phillip."

Emma didn't look at all relieved.

"They're not gonna try and marry me off are they? Not that he doesn't seem like a nice guy from the five minutes I've spent watching him from a distance I'm just not the betrothal type," Emma's brows knitted as she considered it, "Or the marrying type."

Archie's laugh never made her feel foolish, "I think his fiancé would be opposed to that. No, Prince Phillip has come from another kingdom for a favor to your family.

"What kind of favor?"

They were beginning to get into information he seemed less willing to volunteer.

"An important one, and when he comes back things are going to be different. I promise, you just have to be patient. Now go back up to your chambers, they'll be looking for you."

She didn't.

After Archie dropped off whatever he'd been busy with he headed back up to the library leaving the barracks free for her to roam. The entire business of being penned up in the castle was uncomfortable, she had built her life from mud and they had claimed it for their own. Fear she understood in good measure but she was a grown woman, if they wanted to act like she was five then they should have been around when she was.

By the time Archie had vacated Prince Phillip was investigating the smithy, he had removed his sun covered breast-plate as well as everything down his arms and seemed a smaller man in just his tunic. Dust always floated through the smithy from the piles of hay kept for the forges, it reminded her of the blacksmith where she'd grown up and stung her eyes as she entered it. As soon as he spied her through it his face cracked into a grin.

"Hello."

She didn't know if he recognized her, they'd never been introduced which in itself was odd. Normally foreign princes would arrive to fanfare and a feast but he'd nearly been smuggled in. Whatever favor he was doing was not one they'd sought to make public business.

The barracks were made of wide, heavy sandstone but the interior of the smithy was supported with wooden beams. Holes in the ceiling allowed for the passage of smoke and she had seen the canals they used the pipe up seawater to cool the metal. Normally men with broad chests, colored by soot, worked it before the sun got hot but today it'd been abandoned. Whatever operations had brought the Prince here had disrupted the normal pace of castle life.

A bluff seemed her best option.

"Sorry, I don't know you, do you work in the smithy?"

The answer was an obvious no, he wore the trappings of a knight and she doubted he ever touched a hammer in his life but he took it in good nature.

"No, I'm here on a visit, and you are?"

She wasn't exactly fantastic at improv but she hardly needed to be, anybody who'd grown up at court made easy assumptions of others inferiority. It wasn't something she could blame them for as it'd been reinforced throughout their lives but having come from the other direction it was something she recognized and wouldn't mind exploiting. Even if he knew of her she doubted she would be recognized in her clothes, a girl sleeping in wool clothes and cap looked man enough in the dark and it was safer that way. Even around her father's men there was the threat of a misunderstanding.

"Just one of the blacksmiths' daughters, milord. I was looking for him."

"I cleared the smithy for the day. He didn't tell you?"

Emma shook her head.

"I don't remember you're arriving. Did I miss a feast?"

Phillip smiled and looked away, he may have been born at court but he was capable of modesty, "Nothing so festive, I'm afraid I'm here on business."

By his expression she guessed its nature was unpleasant.

"What sort?"

Her poor hand at subtlety had shown enough to make him suspicious but she hoped he would write it off as the curiosity of a peasant.

"Maybe you should ask your parents my lady."

She had underestimated him. Whatever Emma's next lie was going to be it just pulled her mouth open enough to make her look dazed at having been tricked. His ruse revealed, Phillip set to unbuckling what remained of his armor; he had relinquished whoever had helped him with the cuirass to finish the job himself.

"Uh, okay."

"You didn't really think I had no idea what the famous lost princess looked like? You're nearly a bedtime story in my land."

With the façade dropped Emma's voice returned to its normal volume, "Funny, I never heard many bedtime stories growing up. Just cows. Some pigs."

Phillip chuckled, "There aren't any of this in the story I know."

Emma leaned against one of the wooden beams that crossed the ground beneath the thatched awning, "Yeah, well maybe if someone would let me hear it I would agree with you."

Phillip paused.

"Aren't you a little old for fairytales Lady Swan?"

"I've been too old for fairytales my entire life, I'd like to know why."

He set the cuisses on one of the blacksmiths' tables, it wasn't damaged as far as she could tell but maybe he intended to have it polished, he sighed and started on his greaves.

"I think it's left to parents to tell bed time stories."

"If mine had been around, then maybe they would have."

"I can see you won't be taking no for an answer."

"Try me."

The last of his armor joined the other bits he'd removed on the workbench and he spent a moment bouncing on the balls of his feet to stretch his calves, he looked incomplete without his steel but then again, many men did.

"I suppose I can't see the harm in a fairy tale." Across from Emma he took up a similar posture against the workbench, his arms crossed in front of his chest as he prepared to tell his story. He seemed amused with the whole thing, telling allegories to the woman they were about.

"So once upon a time-"

"What?"

Phillip grinned, "You've really never heard this have you? That's how they start: fairy tales."

Emma shrugged, trying to hide how foolish she felt.

"Well, like most stories this one starts in peace, two kingdoms getting along until the greed of a Queen led her to declare that she would have sovereign rule. The queen's greed was so great that she intended to kill the court of the other kingdom and used dark magic to gain the power to do so. She poisoned the Queen of the other Kingdom, but not before she'd had a daughter. The greedy Queen knew that this child threatened her sovereignty and used a trick to disgrace her, framing her for the murder of her father the King. For awhile the Queen ruled as she wanted to and even had her own daughter, taught her dark magic and groomed her to be the next ruler of the land. But this new Queen, when she grew up, couldn't stand the thought that someone lived who could challenge her right to the throne. She began to hunt the woman but in doing so unwittingly drove her into the arms of her true love, a Prince. Together she and the Prince defeated The Evil Queen and banished her outside of their realm. But on their wedding day she swore that if any new heir were born to the throne, she would make sure they never lived to sit it. The Prince and Princess, fearing for their unborn child, entrusted it with the Prince's father, to be raised as his secret ward. But the King betrayed them, and for a long time the child was lost."

Here Phillip paused for the effect of the story, Emma couldn't help but wonder if he had any children of his own, he seemed adept enough at story-telling. Emma had put names to his roles, his mother and father were the King and Queen at least. In the villages where she'd grown up there were whispers of The Evil Queen, tales never raised above hushed voices and always told late at night when the hearth was low. There were legends that even speaking her name too loudly might summon her though Emma had never subscribed to their superstitions the village children would make a game of saying her name in the dark of the forest.

"Smallfolk thought the Princess was dead, but her parents held out hope. Eventually a mysterious man appeared and made them an offer: that he would find their child for them if your father would volunteer enough of his troops to finally defeat the Evil Queen and bring her back to the castle to be executed. Your father agreed, and here you are."

"And The Evil Queen?"

Here Phillip uncrossed his arms, a few of the house guard had come down to the training yard to begin preparations. Their din required Phillip to raise his voice but he'd begun to show reluctance in continuing.

"Defeated, and imprisoned in her own castle."

"Which is where you're going."

He had not intended to reveal the truth of his mission but it was hardly difficult to guess.

"To retrieve the queen as per your parents agreement."

"But why you?"

It seemed as if she'd finally come across something he could share freely, "My kingdom isn't as well off as it used to be. This favor proves the fealty of my family…and it secures the safety of the Lost Princess. Who wouldn't want to be a part of a fairy tale?"

Sitting there amidst the sound of the men readying themselves Emma began to realize how little the truth was worth. The story of her past only left her hungrier and she knew no matter the questions she put to Phillip his chivalry could not sate it. She tried anyway.

"What about the mysterious man?"

One of the men in the yard called to Phillip and he made a gesture asking to be granted another moment.

"Nobody knows, but I guess every story needs a mysterious, memorable detail. Now if you'll excuse me Lady Swan."

From beneath his discarded armor he dug out his belt and the sword that was sheathed on it, "I hope to see you when I return."

"Same."

Phillip didn't know these men.

He had requested to bring his own but marching them in any sort of force the miles to King James' castle and then again out into the wilderness of the North was too great an effort when willing men lived in the castle. Now it was that willingness that worried him. The armory was crowded with volunteers, knights and guardsmen alike who'd come to bring the Queen to justice. They chattered like hens as squires and smiths helped strap those who had them into breastplates or hauberks. It was an atmosphere of merriment in preamble to dire business.

A knight already fully outfitted sat on one of the benches, dressed long before the others and waiting patiently for the commencement of their journey. The knight's suit was fine, unmarked, castle-forged and not one he recognized. Recruits had come from places he couldn't have imagined and the enthusiasm for this witch-hunt had long outgrown his ability to control it.

"Okay men, we have a short ride to do short work. I know you've never fought with me but for the journey we have ahead of us I hope we can trust in one another as we trust in the mission given to us by the King. Despite what you may have heard the woman we are tasked with bringing back is mortal like any of us, and we will treat her as such. None of you will do more than follow orders and retrieve her, is that understood?"

The silence that followed sounded neither like agreement nor dissent but Phillip accepted it as all he was going to get.

The King had kept his word in providing strong horses, the caravan that set out was supplied enough to ride into siege. Too him it seemed overkill, he'd taken less men into battles than he now led to retrieve a captive. It had been months since the King's forces had made the Queen's castle into a prison, not that it hadn't resembled one to begin with. Her fortress, large and dark loomed visible for nearly half-a-day before they came within its actual proximity. In the final mile of the journey the road was lined every dozen yards with a sentinel to stand guard as if the Queen might try a single horse against a legion of opposition.

They had halted at the first of the sentinels to identify themselves and soon were in the gloom cast by the palace. Through the spaces in their visors and from under the rim of their helmets the men he'd brought with him gawked up at it and the horses crossing the threshold of its shadow became unsettled. By the time they reached the gate the sun was sinking down beside it as if to warn them of their trespassing.

Phillip dismounted at the mouth of the gate.

"We'll set camp here."

There were no arguments to the contrary as not one in their midst wanted to keep the night in the castle. Even as the tents went up no man picked a spot within ten feet of the dark walls, Phillip's own tent came the closest but even that was a show. The place unsettled him and he wasn't alone in it, some men kept their weapons on them even as they ate and one amongst them rested in full armor.

"Ser."

The knight jerked his head up as if he had been sleeping.

"Do you need help undressing?"

The knight shook his head.

"There's nothing to be frightened of ser, it's just a castle."

Even as he said it he didn't believe himself.

"If you're so set on staying in your armor maybe you could stand the first guard? I need to go into the castle to confirm the status of the queen."

The armored knight nodded and made to stand but stumbled and Phillip had to rush forward to support him. He'd seen the same before, men who spent days straight in armor who no longer had the strength to stand or stay on a horse, fatigue just from the weight of their protection.

"Whoa there, you need a rest my friends."

He pulled the knight's arm over his and dragged him to standing, beneath the helm he now supported he heard the rattle of breath and in a moment recognized it's strangeness.

"Who are you?"

The tired knight suddenly struggled against him, trying to put distance between them as Phillip reached to move the visor from obstructing their identity. The weakness of the days ride crippled their efforts leaving Phillip to take a grip on the visor and pull it up. With her face revealed Emma looked exhausted but just as she opened her mouth to explain herself all of the fires in the camp went out.

Regina was sick of her walls, all parts of them.

She hated the dark rough parts as much as the slick parts, shiny as a blade and sometimes just as sharp. The spires and the towers made her ill, as did the countless mirrors (many of which she had now broken). There was no ground left on which she could stand without flying into a rage at the thought of her own imprisonment. Nothing was safe, not the decorated mantle or the feather couches in her bedroom, she had put holes in walls and ceilings and in some rooms the furniture had been reduced to pieces. Slowly, her cage was shrinking- her rage was burning it bit by bit.

The arrival of the lapdogs sent to fetch her was a relief as much as she dreaded it. For a long time she had imagined that they might let her live out her life like a rat in a trap but she'd been wrong, they had come for her head and now all she could do was relish their fear. Even parked at her gate with men at every exit they couldn't work up the nerve to come in. They could lord over her all they wanted but even chained they were too afraid to lay a finger on her; she loved it and intended to justify their terror at the first opportunity.

This was her mother's castle.

There were other's, a large stone manor closer to the coast and garden retreats in the south where it was warmer. There were fortresses, some with high black walls whose tops were crowned with the heads of her mother's enemies. When she was younger her mother had taken her on a tour of cruelty. She wanted to show her people early who it was that would be ruling them and once they had seen she had been kept in the castle like a trophy. This imprisonment felt much the same as that one, her free will sacrificed for circumstance. It was in this same castle, sitting everyday for the sight of her mother's procession on the road for the hope that she might be allowed a ride in the forest. Her only happiness was allowed when her mother was attending and in that way she'd been trained in the same way she'd seen the kennel master training dogs. There was no kennel master anymore; they'd slowly bled her of her attendants until she was left in solitary. Alone with her mother's walls and sometimes her shadow, glimpsed briefly around corners or at her window when she woke up in the middle of the night. Before falling asleep she sometimes thought she heard the muffled beating of a heart that wasn't hers. This castle was her mother's and even as she loathed it she could not sacrifice it without fighting.

Waiting for them she had sat vigil on her throne and it was late by the time she heard footsteps, she had thought they would sound like hoof beats or men at march when they came for her but instead they were hurried and alone. The door of her throne room opened not to a garrison of men but one lone figure hurrying past the threshold. It was a single knight, sword drawn, hurrying forward until they had nearly reached the throne.

"Excuse me, who are you?"

The knight stopped near the foot of the stairs that held the queen aloft, they're armor heaving with the effort of their breath, they reached for their helm. Removing it revealed an abundance of blonde hair flowing suddenly over steel shoulders, a girl in armor, her brow drenched in sweat. The girl was barely standing and her fingers, clumsy beneath her gauntlets, let the helm slip to the stone floor with a clatter. The armor she wore was newly dented, a scorch mark visible across her arm and the mail beneath hanging here and there as if cut. Though she was tired she fought the battle to stay on her feet. Whoever she was, Regina thought, she was no knight, though she seemed to have the spirit of one.

Panting the girl lifted her sword to point up at her, trying to pretend she had enough strength left to fight a battle.

"What did you do?"

Regina smirked and stood, a single girl in armor with a sword was all the King and Queen had been able to muster; she was almost as disappointed as she was amused. The girl's arm shook and she brought up her other hand to steady the sword and Regina, descending the steps, pushed the point of it away with a flick of her hand. Even the force of such a small gesture was enough to put the girl off balance and her knees buckled. Seizing the chance Regina placed her hand with a flutter on one of the girl's pauldrons and with a shove forced her down to one knee.

"You're going to have to be more specific dear, I've done a lot of things."