Odette led Derek's impersonator, who was literally quaking with fear, by the hand, half dragging him up the stairs.

The entire way up, all she could think about was where the man had said the real Derek had been locked away.

Stonegate prison, as she recalled, was a fairytale parents told their children as a tale of caution. A bad child would be hauled off to the prison to be punished. As she got older, the tales were more gruesome as their teller would change from her father to her friends who enjoyed frightening each other with horror stories.

Some said it was created by a paranoid king who wanted to lock away all of his political competitors to secure his rule in the kingdom he ruled. Others said that the prison had been built by a magician who wanted to hold captive all the people who would stop him from taking over the world.

Yes, it was all just a fairytale, but the more she thought about it, the more Odette realized that her life more than resembled a fairytale. Perhaps this idea wasn't so farfetched.

If so, she thought as she got a sudden shiver, then Derek would be in terrible danger, with only God knowing what might be happening to him at that very moment.

She prayed that Stonegate would stay nothing more than a figment of her imagination.

Finally snapping out of her thoughts, Odette ran into two of the guards patrolling the hallway. Rather than try to interrogate the imposter alone, Odette decided it would be better to let the people closest to Derek know what was going on, as they would certainly be concerned with the way "Derek" had been acting all day.

"Would you get Rogers and Bromley?" she asked one, and then turned to the other. "And would you get Uberta?"

"Of course, your highness," they said confused but eager to please.

"Thank you. And hurry back."

Odette glared at the imposter when they left. "You can't lie to them any more than you can lie to me. If you're telling tales, we'll all know. Don't make this worse than it is."

It took a few minutes, but once Odette had everyone assembled, she was only too glad to reveal the false Derek for what he was.

"This man has something to tell you," she said.

"Derek-" Uberta started, confused by Odette's rather cold use of the words 'this man'.

"I'm not Prince Derek," the man said quickly. "I was only pretending to be him."

"Odette, is this a joke?" Rogers asked, immediately skeptical.

"No, it's not a joke," the imposter said. "My name is Dorian. I only pretended to be Prince Derek, see?"

He dropped the illusion, revealing that he was just a poor farmer.

"I only pretended to be Prince Derek to protect my family."

"From whom?" Odette demanded.

"His name is Merrick. He said he'd burn my fields if I didn't do as he said. Then he started telling me about the Forbidden Arts and how they've been hidden here. And last night, Prince Derek was out in the woods, just walking and Merrick attacked him. Then he taught me how to look like Prince Derek and made me come here in his place to look for anything Rothbart left behind. I swear, I wanted nothing to do with it, but I had to!"

"Well, where is Derek now?" Uberta demanded, looking as if she was about to slap Dorian.

"He's in Stonegate prison. Merrick is keeping him there so he can't escape."

"S-s-Stonegate?" Bromley stuttered. "I've heard of that place. No one ever escapes from there."

"This man is obviously lying," Rogers said. "Stonegate is a myth. Tell us where Derek is or you'll regret it!"

Dorian was immediately frightened. "I swear, I'm telling the truth!"

"I don't think he knows," Odette said. "He's not a liar or an evil person, just afraid. Let him go home."

"But my farm!" Dorian cried, panicked. "My family! Merrick will find out about what happened and he'll destroy everything!"

"Tell him you didn't find anything," Odette said simply. "It's the truth, isn't it?"

"Well, yes…"

Really, Odette couldn't bring herself to truly care about this man's plight. It seemed selfish, but it was true. She was only worried about Derek. Her mind was racing to figure out how to get him back.

"We'll do what we can about your farm if anything happens," Rogers said, picking up Odette's mental slack. "But you must understand that we need to find the prince."

"I understand," Dorian said, hanging his head. He turned to Odette. "I am deeply sorry, your highness. I pray you find him soon."

"Thank you," Odette said blankly.

Dorian left soon thereafter. Meanwhile, Rogers, Bromley, Uberta, and Odette discussed the best course of action in finding Derek.

"We have to find him soon," Uberta said frantically.

"Of course," Rogers said, ever the calm one. "But where should we look?"

"You heard the man. We have to find Stonegate Prison," Bromley said.

"For the last time, Bromley," Rogers groaned, "Stonegate is a myth. No one really goes there."

Bromley pouted like a small child and said nothing more.

While Uberta and Rogers discussed – and sometimes bickered – about what best to do, Odette couldn't bring herself to listen. For some reason, she was sure that Bromley was right about Derek being in Stonegate.

No one had ever really proven that it didn't exist, per say. In fact, there were several times when people had claimed to have seen it. Suddenly remembering stories she dismissed as the overactive imaginings of people who wanted to impress their peers, Odette recalled that they had said that the prison was located deep in Cordell, a distant land that few bothered to venture into. It was really nothing more than one huge forest.

Could Derek really be there?

Rogers and Uberta certainly didn't think so. Starting that night, they sent search parties all over the kingdom to find Derek. Messengers were sent to other countries to beg for help with finding the missing prince.

As expected, those searches proved fruitless as they returned the next morning to bring news and have a brief rest.

As if thinking she could do better than the soldiers who had turned the kingdom upside down to find Derek, Odette herself rode out, ignoring the advice of Uberta and Rogers, who were sure that she would be captured to if she were to leave the castle's premises.

She didn't care. It was her fault that Derek had been captured in the first place. She had driven him to anger, something not easily done, and because of that, he, hoping to avoid hurting Odette as badly as she had hurt him, went off alone to cool down.

It wasn't fair. She felt like she deserved to be the one suffering at the moment – more than she was, anyway, though she wondered if it would have mattered, since Derek would have rescued her without hesitation.

"Derek would come for me," she said to herself. "Derek would be headed to Cordell right now – no, before now. He would have been heading there the moment Dorian said Stonegate prison. So why am I still here? He's saved me without a moment's thought; shouldn't I do the same for him?"

The answer was an overwhelming 'yes'.

It didn't matter that Odette was not a fighter like Derek. It didn't matter that she would be in great danger until the moment Merrick, the man who had imprisoned Derek, was dead. All that mattered was that Derek was missing, and Odette was his best hope for returning home.

But she was going to need help, and she hoped to find it in an unlikely place.

That night, when the night was too dark to search any longer, Odette, Uberta, Rogers, and Bromley held a small council.

"No one has seen him since we argued," Odette said, summing up what every head-hanging, disappointed guard had been telling her all day. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt bad for the men, who were trying so hard to save their beloved prince and reunite him with their beloved princess, but simply couldn't find him.

She could understand how hard it was for them, to feel like they failed. In truth, she felt like she had failed him too. She failed to trust him, failed, in some ways, to even forgive him.

"We'll have them spread out more tomorrow," Rogers said. "They'll cover more ground. Hopefully, Derek isn't too far away and they'll be able to find him."

"But he is far away!" Bromley said. "He's in Stonegate."

Rogers glared at him acidly. "No, Bromley. He is not. He, unlike Stonegate, exists. He is not in Stonegate. Do you understand?"

Not even in the worst of situations had Odette ever seen Rogers speak to Bromley so harshly; but then again, she supposed, the situation at hand was far worse than any other than they have encountered, so perhaps Rogers' suddenly icy nature wasn't completely surprising.

Rogers was yet another person Odette could understand. If she didn't believe Derek was in Stonegate as Bromley did, she would probably be just as angry with him for insisting on such nonsense as Rogers was.

"Well, we can't just stand here and argue!" Uberta exclaimed, obviously on the verge of tears. "We have to save my boy!"

Since hearing that Derek was gone, Uberta was inconsolable and frantic, yet another thing Odette could understand. It took everything she had to keep herself from becoming as fragile as Uberta was, though she didn't blame her mother-in-law for acting that way.

Odette was inclined to be a little like all of the three types of people that she had encountered that day; the guards with a defeatist attitude, the frustrated Rogers, the hysterical Uberta. She wanted so badly to let loose the emotions building up inside her, to take her pain out on someone else, to sink into depression.

But she knew that if she allowed herself to do any of those three things, then she would be useless to Derek. For him, she had to stay strong, strong enough to make perhaps the most harrowing decisions of her life.

Odette waited out the rest of the discussion, more listening than speaking as Uberta and Rogers tried to come up with a plan better than searching and hoping they got lucky. It didn't take long for them to be out of workable ideas. They decided to sleep on it and pray they wouldn't be too late.

Rogers and Uberta were leaving with Bromley following behind them when Odette grabbed his sleeve, stopping him.

He whipped his head around, wondering what he was snagged on. Odette put a finger over her lips, signaling him to be silent. She waited until Rogers and Uberta had gone their own ways down the hall before closing the door.

Then, she turned her attention to the already nervous Bromley.

"Do you really think Derek is in Stonegate?" she asked.

"Well, I uh…"

"Do you?"

"Yes. I know it's just a legend, but I think that guy was telling the truth. And no one would bother to look for Derek there, it being just a story to most people. Do you believe he's there, Odette?"

"I do."

He was surprised. Usually, Odette would have shot down such an idea. He wondered why she suddenly believed something that she would have otherwise dismissed as lore.

"We have to save him," she said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"W-we?"

"Yes!" Odette exclaimed. "Please, Bromley, you have to help me. No one else will believe he's there."

"Yeah, but what can we do?"

"We can save him. Come on, Bromley, I need you to help me to help Derek. Please."

Despite his fear, Bromley agreed, being unable to say 'no' to his dearest friend's wife. Derek would certainly want to see her again. Who was he to stand in the way of such a wish?

"Okay. Don't tell anyone what we're going to do. We have to leave tonight."

"To-tonight?" he stuttered.

"Yes, tonight. We can't waste time, Bromley. Derek needs us now."

"How do you know where to go?" Bromley asked.

"My father told me that it was to the west, and I heard from one of the castle guards that it's in Cordell. If we go there, I'm sure someone knows where it is, if it's real."

"And if it's not?"

"Then… I really don't know."

If Stonegate wasn't real, then Odette would have no leads to Derek's location, and very little hope of finding him. Not only that, but she would have wasted precious time, time Derek probably didn't even have. Even now he could be dying. She shuddered to think of him like that, cold, lifeless.

She shook herself out of such gruesome thoughts. No. Derek was still alive. She had to believe that.

She couldn't let herself sink into despair the way she had previously sunk into obsession and worry. She had to stay strong. She had to steel herself against the terrible thoughts and horrible images. She was sure that Derek never allowed himself to give up on her, so she would certainly not give up on him.

She owed him that. In fact, she owed him her life.

After all the times she needed Derek, Derek needed her.