Sorry for making you guys wait again. Life has been hectic.

By the way, for those of you who didn't notice earlier, the rating has been changed to T, mostly for things that will take place in future chapters (both violence and mature content/references).

Chapter Ten

In Which there are Many Awkward Moments

It was impossible. Absolutely impossible! There was no way that tiny vile of liquid I had impulsively poured into the queen's drink actually worked. It was ridiculous. Rima must be playing some kind of game. Rima was smart: maybe she knew that I put that potion in there, and now she was just messing with me. She was just playing a cruel joke. That was all.

I believed it. That was all there was to it: Rima being spiteful. She was entertaining herself. The love potion was not real. It couldn't be. I decided to let Rima play her joke, and see how long it would last.

Thankfully, Raven brought our dinner to us right then, breaking what would have been a terribly awkward moment. The food was all exotic—strange fruits I'd never seen before, some sort of bread that had a pinkish tinge to it, and what looked like water with blue food-coloring in it.

I stared at the meal for a moment, partly in astonishment, and partly in apprehension. Raven looked at as both expectantly.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, placing a hand on her hip.

"Oh... um... thank you for feeding us," I smiled. Rima nodded in agreement and smiled, too. The faerie girl smiled back, nodded, and left.

I stared at my food a while longer before prodding it with my fork. Glancing at Rima, I noticed that she had already begun to eat the pinkish bread. When she noticed my gaze, her cheeks darkened considerably.

Concluding that the food was safe, I began to eat my meal. It was actually pretty good. The fruit tasted similar to an orange, but the blue beverage was too strange for my taste. I set it aside and ate everything else.

Rima, however, drank the whole of hers. When she was finished, she stared at me for a while. It was quite unnerving.

"Is.. there something you want, Rima-chan?" I asked.

"Are you going to drink that?" she pointed to the glass of blue liquid. I shook my head.

"No."

"Can I have it?"

"You want it?" I raised an eyebrow. "But I already drank out of it."

"I don't mind," she was blushing again.

"Well... I don't see why not," I said, turning away from her. I'd known that Rima could force tears since I first met her, but I never knew she could fake-blush. That girl would be a huge success as an actress.

Raven came back a while later and gave us directions to our 'sleeping quarters'. I repeated them to myself over and over again in my head as Rima and I walked down a long hallway. After passing through a giant doorway, we found ourselves at the edge of a grassy field in what appeared to be a courtyard. Spread widely across it was a sight to behold: faeries—at least a few hundred of them—were garbed in armor or padded in leather, almost all of them holding some sort of weapon.

We just stood there for a moment, staring in awe as we watched the faeries practice swordplay, archery, jousting, and just about anything that had to do with battle. It was then that I recalled that we would have to cross the field in order to get to the door on the other side, which led—in a roundabout way—to the place where we would stay that night.

I scanned the courtyard carefully and decided on a route I thought looked safer than the rest. Glancing at Rima, I grabbed her hand to make sure we wouldn't be separated in the maelstrom. A slight blush tinted her cheeks as she laced her fingers through mine. I decided to ignore this and concentrate on getting across the field in one piece.

It ended up not being as big of a deal as my mind had originally made it, because as we wove between faeries and horses and practice-dummies and piles of equipment, some of the faeries would stop what they were doing for a moment to let us through. So it only took a few minutes to cross the field and enter the door on the other side.

When we were safely in the corridor, I began to let go of Rima's hand. She must have felt this, because she held on tighter. For the moment, I pretended not to notice and just let her hang on, but I was seriously debating with myself inside my head. How long was Rima going to keep this game up? Somewhere deep down, I was beginning to have doubts that it was even a game. Yet my mind refused to let me think that. I didn't want to believe that the love potion had worked.

There were two hallways that forked off the corridor ahead of us, and something in the pit of my stomach was bothering me. My thoughts had distracted me for long enough that I had forgotten Raven's directions, and now I had no idea which way to go. Thankfully, Rima seemed to have remembered, and headed straight down the corridor we had been following since entering the building. It didn't seem quite right to me, but since I didn't have any better ideas, I went along with it.

Up until now, neither of us had said anything. Rima was the first to break the silence.

"Nagi," she began. I didn't let her finish.

Pulling our hands apart, I stopped right where I was. She stopped, too, and looked at me in confusion.

"What's wrong?" she asked innocently.

"'What's wrong?'" I repeated, my voice a bit louder than necessary. "I should be asking you that question! What kind of a game are you playing?"

"What do you mean by 'game'?"

"Why have you been acting so strange? Calling me 'Nagi', and blushing all the time, and being nice to me, and lacing our fingers together, and not even making mean comments or calling me names!"

"Mean names?" she frowned.

"Yes, like you used to call me 'Purple-head', or 'Cross-dresser'," I was nearly yelling.

"I'm sorry for calling you those things," she hung her head.

"See? Just like that. Why aren't you being nasty to me?"

"Why would I be nasty to you? I love you."

Knowing Rima, this would be as far as she was willing to take this game. I was going to put an end to this now; I wanted the old Rima back.

"No, you don't. You hate me, remember?" I brought my voice back to a normal volume, although it was still full of irritation.

"I don't hate you! I love you!"

"Then prove it!"

Silence.

I could hear the wind rushing through the stone corridors, and the ever-so-faint noises of the courtyard.

She looked up at me, frustration clear on her face.

"How?" she demanded.

I stared at her a moment, knowing it was my chance to end this.

"Kiss me."

She would never do it. She hated me with all her guts, and even if she didn't, she would never let go of her pride enough to do such a thing.

It was because of that that I was in complete shock when she stood on her tip-toes, placed her hand on my cheek, and brushed her lips gently against mine. I melted into it, holding her close to me and kissing her back. She wound her arms around my neck, and deepened it.

It was so much better than the time we had kissed at the park in Japan to break the curse only a few days ago. This time, Rima seemed to be enjoying it, too, and I would have been content to just stand there in that corridor all day, kissing her.

But I realized then what this meant: the love potion had worked. Everything Rima had said or done since drinking that potion was completely against her will. She may even be conscious of it, like she was when Ardi cursed her with the lie-curse in London.

I pulled back and pushed her away, turning so she couldn't see my face. I could hear her gasping ever-so-slightly behind me, and I clenched my fists. It was all I could do not turn back around and start kissing her again.

I was extremely grateful when I heard soft, rapid footsteps heading towards us. However, my hopes sunk when I saw who it was.

Ardi and Raye.

The goblins took one look at us and both of them burst out laughing, rolling on the ground and howling their lungs out. "She... took the.. potion... didn't she?" Raye managed between guffaws.

"How would you.." I began, staring at them. They finally calmed down. "How do you know about the potion?"

"Let's just say you have a lazy faerie godmother," Raye said helpfully.

"She means, Cassy's supposed to keep an eye on her godchildren at all times, but she's too lazy, so she hires us to watch you."

"You mean we're being babysat?" Rima raised an eyebrow.

"No, not like that. We just pop in every-so-often and make sure you haven't killed yourselves."

"Then how would you-"

"Anyway," Raye continued, "Aren't you guys looking for something."

"Right this way," Ardi didn't wait for either of us to answer, but began trotting off the direction Rima and I had come. Raye scampered after him, and Rima and I followed the goblins. I wasn't sure where they were leading us, but I was beginning to trust them. However, I was still surprised when they stopped in front of a door and claimed that it was our 'sleeping quarters.'

Ardi opened the door and we peered in. There was one open window with cloth curtains drawn aside to let in some light, and the room was, like ever other room in this place, made of stone. It had a large wooden wardrobe and a door to what I assumed was the bathroom.

I bet you can guess by now what was jutting out into the middle of the room, it's headboard pressed against the wall. Yep, that's right: one bed. This was becoming clichéd.

I eyed the stone floor warily, the idea of sleeping on it growing less appealing by the second.

"Well, see ya!" said Ardi, and the siblings left.

"Looks like I'll be sleeping on the floor again," I sighed. Rima looked at me questioningly.

"Why would you do that?"

"So you can have the bed."

"But it's huge! I'm sure there's enough room on it for both of us."

And that was how I ended up laying awake late at night, staring at the ceiling, in the middle of a giant bed in Queen Titania's palace, with Rima sound asleep only a few feet away. Needless to say, it was a long time before my eyes drooped closed and I was able to rest, regardless of how tired I really was.

~Rima's POV~

I slit of light coming from between a pair of curtains woke me, and confusion took over my head. I was in a bed in a room with walls of stone. There was a wardrobe in a corner that had lots of intricate carvings all over it. Shifting slightly, I noticed that the bedposts were also elaborate. Where the heck was I? And how did I get here?

I slowly rolled onto my other side, and my brain froze when I saw a mass of long purple hair flowing all over the place. And there was Nagihiko, sound asleep. There really wasn't much more to it than that. I could say he looked much more innocent when he was asleep, but Nagihiko rarely truly looked guilty of anything in the first pace. That is, besides cross-dressing. He always looked guilty of that, except when he was actually dressed as Nadeshiko. But back to the main point, he looked very... normal.

It took a moment or so for it to occur to me that Fujisaki was asleep right next to me. And then I realized that we were in the same bed... and then my mind went spastic.

Purple-head woke up when I yelled at him, and he looked at me in confusion.

"What's wrong, Rima-chan?" he asked sleepily.

I couldn't even bring myself to say anything. I tried—I really did! But no words would come out of my mouth.

"Are you still..." Fujisaki began. "Er... what I mean is, the potion... umm..."

"What happened?" I finally managed. "I was eating dinner, and then I drank that drink, and then I woke up here. What happened?"

"Erm..."

"Tell me exactly what happened."

"Well... Susie Evergreen gave me a love potion, and I put it in Titania's drink hoping that it might make her want to take our curses away. But then you drank the potion and..."

"And what? What did we do last night?" I demanded, becoming more and more shocked by the second.

"Um..."

He couldn't lie. There was something he didn't want to tell me, and it was making me nervous. I started yelling at him, but couldn't bring myself to complete any of my sentences, so nothing I said made any sense.

"Rima-chan, it's fine. Everything's okay," I tried to calm me down. "I'll tell you exactly what happened last night."

My face was red with anger, but I stopped talking and glared at him while he spoke.

"You started acting funny, and we ate dinner, then came here."

"That's it? Nothing else went on between us?"

"Well, we held hands when we were crossing the courtyard so we wouldn't get separated."

"Is that all?" I glared even harder.

"N-no. You k-kissed me." He was blushing really hard.

"WHAT?"

"You were the one who kissed me, not the other way around!" he protested.

"It was on the cheek, right?" my voice dared him to say otherwise. But I knew he couldn't lie if he had to.

"No. The mouth," he said, looking anywhere but at me.

"How long did it last?"

"..."

"Fujisaki," I warned.

"Longer than it should have."

"But you resisted, didn't you?" I asked, truly hoping that he had.

However, at that moment, there was a knock on the door, and Purple-head ran to answer it. Shymaera was on the other side, and she stepped in when the door opened.

"Your audience with Her Majesty is in forty-five minutes. I came to make sure that you were ready."

I jumped off the bed, and my bare feet collided harshly with the cold stone floor. Picking up my backpack, I began to open it, but the faerie stopped me.

"I'm afraid that whatever clothing you have with you will not be appropriate for a formal audience with Titania. I shall give you both some clothing that will be proper." She pulled something out of nowhere and handed it to Fujisaki. "You may keep it."

He disappeared into the bathroom (which was, surprisingly, inside) and came back out a few minutes later wearing plain brown pants and a blue tunic with fancy designs embroidered on the sleeves and hem. Shymaera gave him a pair of boots and shoved him out the door, closing it behind him.

"Here," said Shymaera, shoving a dress not unlike her own into my hands. "Put it on."

"But," I began, "This-" She hushed me and gave me a push towards the bathroom.

I tried the dress on, and took a look in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall. It was a pale, shimmery blue that was every-so-slightly transparent—not half as bad as some I'd seen around here—and fell about my feet, nearly touching the ground. The sleeves were elbow-length, and had a sort of tattered look at the ends, as did the the hem of the dress. I blushed slightly as I stared at myself in the mirror: the dress had a very low neck line.

It was exceedingly uncomfortable. I tried pulling the neckline up, but it just fell back down. Over the past few years, my chest had finally grown a bit. It wasn't much, but it was enough that this dress was very immodest. After several more useless attempts to raise the neckline, I sighed in aggravation and stepped out of the washroom.

Shymaera glanced at me and said, "It works."

"But it comes way too low!" I protested, gesturing to the collar of the dress. She shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Rima, it was the only one I could find in your size."

"Fine," I huffed, pulling some of my hair in front of my shoulders in the hope that it would possibly hide some of my cleavage. It didn't help much.

~Nagi's POV~

Rima and Shymaera finally came out of the room, and the fairy said something to Rima before walking away. I looked at the petite blonde, and my eyes were immediately drawn downward. At first, I was surprised to see that she was no longer as flat as a board, and I chuckled inwardly at Rima's pitiful attempt to hide her exposed chest with her hair. Averting my eyes, I noted that she was glaring at me.

I walked over to her and tugged at the shoulders of her dress. Rima gasped and stiffened. "W-w-what are you d-d-doing?"

"I'm sorry, Rima-chan, but this dress comes far too low. There is no way I'm going to let you walk around like that when there are plenty of male fairies around here that will be looking at you. So I'm trying to fix it."

"It's not like I picked this dress," she said, crossing her arms.

"Don't do that," I said.

"Do what?"

"Don't cross your arms. It makes the collar fall even lower," I said, still fiddling with the shoulders of the dress.

"It's really loose in the back. I think that might be part of why it does that," she said. By now her face was bright red.

"That's because fairies need low-backed dresses for their wings," I reasoned, moving some of her hair off her back so I could try to tighten it. "Do you have a hair pin?"

She handed me a pin out of nowhere, and I pulled the back of the dress together and pinned it in place. Then I spun her around to find that I had been somewhat successful in that endeavor.

"Well, it's a little bit better," I pointed out. Rima nodded, still blushing, and turned the other way.

We walked down the long hallway and back across the courtyard, which was not half as crowded now in the morning. When we reached the large double-doors that we had seen the day before, Raven was there, and took us through the doors into the giant throne room of Titania.

A long, narrow carpet led to the dais, where sat two thrones, one empty, and the other occupied. The faerie sitting in the throne stood. She was very tall, with icy blue eyes, alabaster skin, and thick, chocolate-colored hair that swirled in tight ringlets down her back. Her face was stern and angular; a sinister beauty. She wore a sleeveless dark purple dress that showed off her deep curves and wide hips, its neckline exposing far too much of her large chest. The silver band around her head and the dark purple cape flowing behind her defined her nothing less than royalty.

"You are the mortals that wished to speak with me, I presume." Her voice was hard and cold.

"Yes... Your Majesty," I wasn't sure how to address her, but no one seemed to mind my choice of words, so I continued. "We've come to ask a favor."

"And what might that be?"

"We want to ask you to remove our curses."

"I see. And how did you come to be cursed?"

"Our faerie godmother cursed us," Rima said.

"I'm sorry," Titania shook her head. "In that case, I shouldn't do anything about it. Faerie godmothers have the right to do whatever they think is best for their godchildren."

"Isn't there anything you can do?"

"I do have the power to overwrite whatever a godfaerie says. However, I have my own priorities."

"What does that mean?" asked Rima.

"I'll remove your curses," Titania replied, "On one condition. My husband, Oberon, King of the Faeries, is deathly ill. The only thing that can cure him is the sap of the Agara Tree, located in the land of Erayu. Get this sap and bring it back to me, then I shall remove your curses. However, my husband's own servant, Puck, also has offered to look for the cure. If you are not back soon, I will send him to find it. If he manages to bring it back to me before you do, your curses will not be removed."

I glanced at Rima and couldn't help but notice the fear on her face. I realized that what Titania had said had been stated as an order, even though she had meant it as an offer. Rima nodded to me, and I addressed the queen.

"We accept."

A/N: That blue button down there will magically turn purple if you click on it. XD