Chapter 1
Madelyn
Madelyn was in Hibernia as she conducted her first mission as a Royal Ranger. She stuffed it up pretty badly. Turns out she was a very bad ranger when Will wasn't around.
*Line Break*
Two weeks ago
"Hey, how was King Sean's next boring mission?" Maddie's new blonde-haired friend in the palace, Eltan Forrest grinned at her as they walked back to her room in the upper courtyards. She still remembered when she met the short boy in the King of Hibernia's court. She peeked carefully at him, seated behind his father, and he peeked back as carefully, if not more. That was before they became the most devious troublemakers known to mankind. She mock-stared him down and stuck her nose up at him. She wished he was smaller than her. "Very exciting actually. I went to stop some bandits and thieves from raiding the villagers," Madelyn said,
He spoke sarcastically, "And that sounds so fun, especially so when you consider that he can bring you down to the beach and give you some real action against the pirates, with your really bad skills with the bow."
"I hit the bullseye ten times in a row!"
"Those were lucky shots. You did them with your eyes closed."
The Crown Princess realised she was never going to win this battle, and took a different tack. Out of their topic of conversation, the Princess of Araluen contemplated how good Eltan would be with a weapon. She had never seen him with one. She petulantly crossed her arms.
"And how about the even more boring errand that your father made you do?"
Eltan sighed. "You know me too well. Another boring errand, to convince the Baron of so-forth to join his campaign to do such-and-such."
Madelyn smirked and Eltan threw his hands up in surrender. "Fine, your errand was more interesting than mine."
"Of course it was." Maddie mentally scored a point in her column of verbal clashes. It was a rare one.
Eltan smiled, and a dimple appeared in the middle of his left cheek, among his forest of freckles that covered his visage like a mask. Suddenly Madelyn found herself in a trance. A very nice trance, nevertheless, but Maddie liked to be in control. She shook herself out of it. He bowed in front of her as they reached her comfy room. "Your room, Princess," he declared. She waved off his gentlemanly comments.