10 . 2 . 13

I'm going to try to update on Wednesdays for the forseeable future, but I already know this week is going to be crazy. So have this chapter early. Cheers.


It was now the morning after the ball, and the Folalli castle was in as much of a disarray as it had been the night before. The guests had all been questioned and then released to return to their homes, the grounds and castle had been thoroughly searched, and there were still no signs of what might have happened to the princess. No one had seen anyone suspicious coming or going, from the castle or from Amethyst's chamber. The only thing they had to go on was Micah's vague testimony (which was barely a testimony at all, as the only thing it proved was that someone had been in the hallway. And that much could have been guessed anyway.)

Most of the guests left without questioning the situation, but Cynthia was in such a state that her servant could barely convince her to even get in the carriage.

"I can't leave until I know she is alright!" she bawled, eyes bloodshot and swollen; she had been crying all night, that much was evident. "She's my best friend in the entire world, and you expect me to just wait at home for news? I won't know for a week after the castle gets news!"

Earl looked around vainly, hoping that she could possibly be talking to anyone but him. He had a very important and time-sensitive mission to accomplish.

Unfortunately, he was the only one within earshot of the secondhand carriage and world-weary matron currently with a vise grip on Cynthia's arm. And clearly, she was not talking to the servant, since her hand was grasping for his. Earl took a discreet step backward (her fingers had nearly caught his vest pocket) and looked to the older woman for help.

She looked at him mutely, clearly ready to be relieved in her shift of weeping-lady-sitting. So, Earl checked his pocketwatch; he had ten minutes to spare, and this would be a good use of them. Careful to stay out of reach, he bobbed a bow quickly and cleared his throat.

"Lady, uh…"

"Warren," the woman helpfully supplied, tightening her grip on the slender arm.

"Lady Warren," Earl said with a quick nod of thanks at the servant. "I assure you, your mind will be more at ease in your own home. You can inform your family and wait for news in the company of loved ones."

"Mail doesn't come from the palace but once a week!" she argued, fresh tears leaking from her eyes. "She could be safe for seven days while I am still mad with grief!"

"Do you not think Princess Amethyst will send a special messenger to you, Lady Warren?" Earl said softly, his mouth curving into a sympathetic smile. "She cares deeply for you, and she knows you will be hysterical — if you'll pardon my frankness." He added that comment hastily, forgetting that honesty was not as welcome with all nobles as it was with Amethyst. Princess Amethyst. Amethyst.

Lady Warren's response pulled him from his mental dilemma.

"But suppose she is so grateful to be home that she forgets and—"

"My lady," Earl cut in smoothly, "you will have nothing to distract your mind if you are here. Amethyst will not forget about you."

The young girl stared at him hard.

"Are you — the party planner?" she asked suddenly.

Braced for another argument about why she should stay, the unrelated question caught Earl off-guard. He blinked, then replied affirmatively.

The girl narrowed her eyes, but not in an altogether unfriendly way. It was scrutinizing. Earl was again caught off-guard, so he smoothed his vest unnecessarily and checked the time once more. Five minutes to spare.

"See that I am informed, if you please," she said at last. Her words were shaky, but decided, and she muffled a sob with her other hand as she turned quickly to the carriage.

"Thanking you," the woman said in relief, her tiredness forming into a kind smile of thanks for Earl before she followed her mistress into the carriage.

Earl bowed slightly to her, checked his watch once more, and hurried away.

As for the investigation, there was no other evidence, and no other hint as to how the kidnapper had gotten in or out. The window in Amethyst's room was unlocked, but as the wall dropped straight down three floors from there, it was unlikely that anyone had taken the princess that way. Someone would have seen the rope. If not the window, however, they must have used a door and escaped unnoticed by any of the servants — an impossible feat. An entire night of investigation turned up no unlocked doors or windows and no clues as to how they had escaped.

The only thing that was clear was that the kidnapper had escaped, somehow, with the princess, and he was only getting further away by the minute. Since there was no news to be found in the castle, then, Micah was heading up the official search party to track the kidnapper. The soldiers deployed the night before had not found anything in the surrounding towns, which meant that the kidnapper had fled quickly, and with a specific destination in mind. Probably heading back to Syndoc, or to a place far enough away from a town to—

Micah was already cursing himself for not heading off at once instead of trying to orchestrate the investigation at the castle. He, above everyone else, felt exclusively responsible for the princess' kidnapping, and he was adamant that he be assigned to this task, and take with him only the best and most highly trained guards and trackers.

It was for this reason, then, that he was arguing with Earl.

"You are absolutely not coming with me," Micah said staunchly. "I don't care if you got permission from the queen herself."

"I did, actually," Earl said politely, pulling a signed edict from his pocket, which the bodyguard snatched from him and inspected suspiciously.

"How did you get this?" he asked in bewilderment, squinting at the words on the parchment more closely to be sure the man wasn't trying to pull the wool over his eyes.

It was definitely an order signed by the queen, and the order seemed to be — by what he could make out of the curly script — one that demanded Earl Brandworthy go along with the contingent Micah had arranged. After a few more moments of squinting, he decided that it seemed legitimate enough. Although why Queen Opal thought it a good idea to send the Royal Event Coordinator on a search and rescue mission was beyond him.

"By the will of the queen," Earl said, giving no further explanation.

"You'll be useless in the field," Micah said, turning his attention from the puzzling slip of paper. "There's no point in your going at all. You'll slow us down."

"I'm a commoner," Earl said, seeing the flint in Micah's eyes and speaking calmly. "I know these people in a way that you never could. And even if you did — you're a guard now. They won't trust you."

Micah couldn't deny the man's logic. The clanking of armor set the peasant's teeth on edge even before the guards came into sight; he knew that much.

"I can get information from them you never could," Earl said, once his first argument had sunk in. "Little things make a big difference if the kidnapper is clever."

Although there certainly weren't many kidnappings in Folall on a yearly basis, there was an extensive collection of royal crimes that were meticulously recorded and studied by those either too interested or too bored for their own good. Earl knew Micah had read the histories as part of his promotion, and Earl — well, it had been a rainy day, and nothing spices up a dreary afternoon like intrigue and murder. In those records, it had always been the smallest clue that had solved the mystery or led to the killer.

"I'm going," Earl said firmly, after a pause. "It's already been arranged. I won't slow anything down."

Micah gave him a long, searching look.

"I don't know what you're on about," he finally said, handing the paper back to Earl. "But if the paper says so, there's nothing I can do about it. But you'd better not get in the way. I'm going to find the princess, and I'm going to find her alive, if it's in my dying breath."

"We only have the same goal," Earl said, making brief eye contact with the guard. "I promise you."


When Amethyst woke up again, it was to the peculiar sensation of bouncing and jostling. She was very disoriented, and adding to this disorientation was the sudden realization that she was a lot smaller than she used to be. Smaller than she had been in a very long time. She jerked upright, hitting her head against something behind her, and a woman's voice grunted, though she seemed otherwise unharmed by Amethyst's head.

"Awake again?" she said.

Amethyst didn't immediately respond; she was still trying to wrap her mind around whether this was a continuation of her strange dreams, or if she had in fact opened her eyes to reality.

"Well, you're not kicking this time," the woman said. "That's an improvement. I don't like drugging you, you know. I don't hate you as much as you seem to think I do."

Amethyst wanted to ask why she had kidnapped her, then, but the gag was still firmly in her mouth.

"Are you hungry?" the woman asked. "Just nod or shake your head."

Amethyst had to think about it for a moment. Her stomach was quick to make sure she responded correctly; it growled ferociously. She nodded her head vigorously, and the woman chuckled.

"I'll get something from the saddlebag when we stop next, and you can eat it as we ride. You slept through breakfast."

Amethyst nodded distractedly, looking down at her body with some confusion. Surely she was not seeing what she thought she was seeing. But a few quick, distinctive motions with her arms was enough to convince her that the childish limbs tied in front of her were, in fact, her own.

"I couldn't keep dragging you around as a full-grown teenager," the woman said, apparently noticing her odd twitching. "I'll change you back if you stop fighting me."

Amethyst didn't like the give-and-take the woman was suggesting; she narrowed her eyes. If this kidnapper thought she was going to compromise herself into her own death, she didn't know the first thing about her.

"On the other hand," the woman continued, "maybe I'll keep you like that for a while. That way if you do decide to run or kick, I don't run the risk of losing you."

Amethyst didn't pay the woman any mind; she was looking around to see if she recognized the countryside. It was a useless task, as she had never been outside the castle, much less Folall, but she had read about the surrounding countries and their terrain. And she could tell from the sun, situated overhead but slightly to their left, that they were headed south.

"Actually, I might just turn you into a frog," the woman mused, clearly unaffected by Amethyst's stony silence. (To her credit, Amethyst's gag made it difficult to tell whether the princess was being reticent or scared. The woman knew enough about Amethyst to guess that it was the former, but she didn't much care.) "I've had great luck turning royalty into animals. They almost always get turned back again."

Amethyst couldn't help that her interest piqued on that statement. Was this the dreaded witch, the one who caused havoc throughout the northern countries but was never caught? Stories of the Credin and Acine families came suddenly back to mind. Prince Joseph who had been turned into a snake, Princess Geraldine who had been transformed into a deer, and even Prince Thomas (though he was not from the north) who had been turned into a frog. They had all been restored, miraculously, but not before coming close to a tragic and accidental death at the hand of their own countrymen.

"Thinking a little more seriously about not kicking?" the woman said. It might have been a cruel-sounding statement, but for the humor hiding beneath her tone.

Amethyst twisted around in the saddle and glared, willing that her thoughts would somehow transmit themselves into the woman's head.

"Perhaps not," the woman said. "You're a spiteful little thing, aren't you? But I suppose I knew that. You even screamed when I showed up at your christening. Not an upset scream, mind, but an aggravated one. I don't think you like that I took the attention away from you."

Amethyst had no idea what she was talking about, and it showed on her face. The woman's eyebrows arched, disappearing into her curly hair.

"Don't tell me they didn't tell you about the curse," she said, examining Amethyst's face. "I hate it when they don't know. There's always so many more tears..."

Then Amethyst understood — the story of her christening had never been told to her in completion, but as the woman spoke the pieces she had finally clicked together. The infamous Witch Of The North must have been the one to curse her — no wonder her parents hadn't told her. That was much more frightening than anything she could have come up with. (Incidentally, she had always theorized it was a band of rogue fairies who broke into the festivities and cursed the human princess so they could usurp the throne. Although why they would choose death by a spindle, she couldn't say.)

"There it is," the woman said in obvious relief, seeing the comprehension dawn on Amethyst's face. "There's one less story I have to tell before I kill you."

Though her head was whirling with the gravity of the new information, one thing was clear to Amethyst: she had to get away from this woman. No matter how disarming or frighteningly normal she appeared, she was obviously prepared to kill her. And no person, even a kind and patient one, would wait around for their own deaths. So Amethyst, being neither kind nor patient, was even less likely.

With a swift and unpremeditated action, Amethyst threw all her weight to the left, intending to disrupt her balance enough to fall off the horse. Although she would be battered and perhaps broken, she would nonetheless be away from the Witch — which was as safe as she could hope to be at the moment.

Unfortunately, the Witch seemed to have learned a thing or two in all her kidnapping exploits; Amethyst found her legs tied neatly to little loops in the saddle. Her jostling around only succeeded in making the horse shake his head at her in annoyance.

"Don't make me drug you again, Amethyst," the woman said, her tone stern and motherly. "I was hoping to have a chat with you at some point. Anyway, carting around unconscious people is not my favorite pastime. Awfully boring."

Amethyst was still disgruntled that her brilliant plan had come to nothing, but she wondered just how socially-starved this woman must be if she considered a one-sided conversation with a gagged prisoner to be a "chat" of any kind.

"If I wasn't so sure you would scream, I'd take the gag off," the woman said, as if reading her thoughts. "As it is, we're too close to a town. We'll be riding through, but I don't need you drawing any attention to us."

Amethyst was already beginning to think of ways to get the townspeople's attention when the woman's voice interrupted her once more.

"What's your favorite animal?"

Amethyst glared at her. The woman shrugged.

"Suit yourself," she said, and promptly turned Amethyst into a squirrel.