The plan had been simple.
As much as he could plan simply, that is.
Step One: Get to the princess.
That would be easy. She often wandered off alone, easily slipping away from guards and escorts. And the Magic High Commission didn't seem to want to interact with her, according to the whispers that reached the forest. It would be easy to get her alone.
Step Two: Get her to destroy the wand.
A little more difficult, but still easy. All he'd have to do was threaten her parents - the only people she felt cared about her.
(The whispers that reached him said most people treated her with exasperated indifference. And the Magic High Commission alternated between hostility and fear.)
Convince her that destroying the wand would be the only way to protect them. Perhaps he would deceive her into thinking he wanted it - and she would choose to destroy it, preferring it to having it be in the wrong hands.
And after that, everything else would fall into place like dominoes.
But then she actually received the wand, and nearly set the kingdom ablaze.
Accident or no, she should only be able to do that with powerful magic.
And then she was being sent away, to another dimension.
And then he saw her.
It was funny. For all that he'd heard of the princess, for as often as she slipped away, he had never actually seen her.
He could see that shade of green even from a distance, one vivid verdant spot among pastels.
And then all that indifference and fear made sense.
...Right then.
Suddenly he had a new plan.