A/N- Woo hoo, a quick update this time! I'm quite chuffed with myself. Because its so quick after the last one, I don't need to write a recap. Thanks Kain, Millen, Estrelita and 018481 for the great reviews. There's a big plot twist at the end of this chapter, and I'm finally beginning to reach a revelation I've been working to since chapter one. It's taken a while!

A Princess's Duty

XIV

Treason

Ryu stood unarmed, defenceless before Edmund, who regarded him with a curious, but angry stare. With a single sweep of his hand, Edmund dispelled Ryu's disguise, the butler's face melting away to reveal his enemy's.

"Ah!" exclaimed Edmund, his eyes wandering to Ryu's tell-tale hair. "You're Ryu! You're that dragon-man who attacked me!"

Would Nina mind very much if he flamebreathed her cousin? Reluctantly, Ryu got the feeling that she would.

"Your spell is no good to you now. It was very clever magic, but not clever enough."

What if he damaged him just a little bit? A slight singing couldn't hurt too much… right?

"Aren't you going to speak? Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" asked Edmund impatiently.

"Well, sir… I find there's very little to say," said Ryu, slowly.

He lunged for the window.

Ducking out of Edmund's reach, he threw himself shoulder first at the pane of glass. He felt the air rush around him, and the ground rush towards him. He twisted in midair, and met the ground in a roll. He leapt to his feet, and sprinted away over the front garden.

Distantly, he heard Edmund yelling, and heard footfalls crunching behind him rapidly on the gravel. An irritating thought occurred to him- that Edmund had wings, and had followed him, much more easily, out the window.

Ryu closed his eyes as he ran, biting his lip and concentrating hard. If he could transform before Edmund and his men reached him, he could escape. Already, he felt his body swelling with the energy of the brood, heat encapsulating him.

And suddenly, he was down, flat on his face. Edmund had caught up with him and pounced.

Damn, I forgot how fast Wyndians are, thought Ryu, his face pressed uncomfortably into the sharp gravel. Them and their bird bones and aero-dynamics…

Edmund's bulky bodyguards tied Ryu's hands behind his back, dragging him back up to his feet.

I can't do anything to hurt Edmund… Nina would never forgive me. He eyed the man irritably, as he stood watching, arms crossed, with a smug look on his face.

Now Rei and Momo had spotted them, and were hurrying towards Edmund's bodyguards, looking ready to attack. Ryu quickly gestured them away, mouthing, "It's no good." Reluctantly, they stopped, standing awkwardly in the crowd that had gathered to observe the action.

Edmund rounded on him. "What, exactly, do you have against me?" he demanded. "What is it? Tell me. This isn't to do with the grassrunners, is it?" A little bit of hesitation crept into his voice as he said this, and Ryu decided it sounded like a good excuse as any.

"Yes, yes it is," he said firmly.

Edmund threw up his hands in exasperation. "What I did was just and fair," he said, sounding like a man who had repeated this many times before. "They took our things first; snuck into our camp and stole it all! I really don't know why everyone is making such a big deal out it. If you're worried about what they said, then forget it; they were bluffing."

In this darkness, had Ryu stumbled upon an unexpected goldmine?

"Still, what you did was unacceptable," he bluffed.

"I merely compensated for our goods, and the trouble it took to hunt the thieves down, nothing more. An eye for an eye." He paused, and looked at Ryu hard. "The King mentioned that you know Nina; what relation is she to you?"

"I'm planning to steal her from you," said Ryu, who, knowing he wasn't going to be able to get out of this, had decided it might be fun to wind Edmund up in the meantime.

"Oh you are, are you?" he leered at Ryu, the only evidence of his wine drinking marathon only minutes earlier. "You might find that difficult, considering that we're getting married next week."

"Oh, I don't know," sighed Ryu. "I shouldn't think that it would be too difficult, especially since you're so aesthetically lacking compared to moi…"

"We're resulting to common insults, now are we?"

"My sword's bigger than yours too."

"What the devil does that have to do with--" his brain, soggy with drink, finally processed Ryu's insult. "Now that's just childish," he said, cheeks flushed. He turned away, trying to recover himself, and called, "Steve! Colin! Get this man to Castle Wyndia; I dare say that the King will be very pleased to see him." A look of triumph settled upon his features.

Ryu eyed the two muscled bodyguards, who swiftly clamped hold of his arms like vices.

I could blow these guys over with a single breath in my dragon form, but if Nina finds out, it'd defeat the object of me coming here in the first place…

Resigned, he allowed the men to drag him away towards an old cart and horse. Edmund came with them, Rei and Momo following at a safe distance. They bound his whole body, and tossed him in the cart like a sack of grain.

Edmund climbed in next to him. "I'm not leaving anything to chance this time!" he said. "You won't escape now."

With a crack of the whip, the cart trundled away down the path, several of Edmund's bodyguards leaping in at the last moment, sending the whole cart shivering.

Rei and Momo exchanged a glance. "What should we do?" she asked.

"There's very little we can…" said Rei, with a slow sad shake of the head. "We can't hurt Edmund, and now we won't even be able to find out if Ryu learnt anything. We'll just have to hope Ryu can find a way out himself- he's in safe hands, at any rate. Whatever their differences, Nina won't let them treat Ryu badly."

They watched, despondently, as the cart travelled out of sight.

"Hey, you were with that man, weren't you?" questioned a voice from behind. Instantly defensive, Rei quickly swept around, answering a convincing, "What do you mean?"

He found he was quite surprised at the face he was staring at. Instead of a bodyguard or a butler, he faced down a young teenager. Looking at his clothes, Rei knew instinctively that he was no servant. He realised that this must be Edmund's brother, Frederick.

"It's alright you know," said Frederick. "I'm not going to turn you in."

Rei simply stared back, his lips sealed.

"I saw you gesturing to him," said Frederick, grinning.

"Oh…" said Rei.

A change swept upon Frederick's face, and he bit his lip, looking worried.

"Is that why he wants to find out about what happened in the South? To tell her? He and Nina are friends, right?" he asked abruptly.

Rei looked baffled. "Well, yes, but what do you mean about something happening in the south?"

"Well she's going to be shocked when she finds out, isn't she?" He glanced over Rei's shoulder, looking distracted. "To be honest, I've been thinking of telling her myself. She's going to find out soon anyway, so its better that she hears it from me rather than someone else…"

Momo held up her hands, stopping him in his tracks. "Hold on- what are you talking about?" she asked. Frederick stared hard at her, thoughtful.

"You're friends with Ryu, I know that. But is Nina your friend too?"

"We've known her for years," Momo said with a soft smile.

Frederick stopped for a moment to think, and then nodded decisively. "I'm Fred, Edmund's brother," he said.

"Momo."

"Rei."

"Momo and Rei," he said with a smile, before it died on his lips. "You need to come with me. I have to explain some things, and I'll need your help. It's getting quite serious now. This really isn't the best time for a wedding…"

x

The Wyndian guards tossed Ryu into a grimy cell, and he landed hard on the concrete. Ironically, he was in the same cell he'd been thrown into as a child- though at the moment, he didn't find that fact very funny.

The iron gate closed with a sharp clang behind him, and Sheila swept in, leering down at him through the bars.

"Back where you belong I see, scum," she said, a large smirk stretched across her face. She seemed to be enjoying the irony a lot more than he was.

"Yeah, yeah Queenie; I get the joke," Ryu said, rubbing his bruised behind.

"Don't you sass me boy- don't you know that your life is in my hands?"

Ryu had many smart sounding retorts in mind to this- but he decided at the last minute that the smartest option might be silence.

Outside his cell, the Queen began to pace, her train brushing along through the dirt behind her. "For too long," she began, "for too long you've interfered with this family, and especially with my daughter. This ends now. I don't know how you've done it, nor do I care, but somehow you've spellbound her, and filled her head with nonsense about goddesses and destined cycles…" she shook her head in disgust, and turned directly to him. "Nina is going to be married to a good man, one that will look after her and carry on our line. And you will not interfere. Is that understood?"

"Nina doesn't need someone to look after her," Ryu said.

"Oh yes she does," Sheila fumed. "To protect her from the likes of you! Once the wedding is over you will be put on trial. Don't expect too much; you'll never see the light of day again."

A smile lighting on her face, she stalked from the room, to where the captain of the guards stood with another man, apparently listening in.

"Your majesty," he said, following her up the stairs into the courtyard, his buddy following him. He sounded concerned, and she slowed, her face set into a frown.

"What is it?" she said.

"I was wondering if… if you remembered that day when Princess Nina disappeared, and we found her outside, with… ah, a man." He seemed reluctant to bring this up, and no doubt for good reason. Sheila's face soured even more in response.

"Yes, I remember," she said, sounding very much like she wished she didn't. "What of it?"

"Well," he said cautiously, glancing to the guard beside him. "Eustace here remembered something he thought you needed to now… he was on the search team that day. He thinks that the man the Princess was with, and this Ryu, well-"

He didn't even have to finish. Realisation flooded through Sheila's mind, and this obvious fact that had remained clouded for so long became clear as day. The chicken farmer and Ryu the dragon clansman became the one thing.

The captain was right to be hesitant in his explanation.

"THAT-…-THAT--" Sheila couldn't even pick a word nasty enough for him. Nina's behaviour, which had remained a mystery to her mother for so long finally made sense.

The girl had fallen in love with him.

She took a step back towards the dungeons, her hands balling up into fists. She halted, and reminded herself of the need to remain calm. To think about this logically. She took several deep breaths, fighting the simultaneous urge to both beat Ryu into a pulp and to run upstairs and scream at her daughter.

She forced herself to think about the wedding, about how close it was. She couldn't do anything to jeopardise that now. It was too important.

The captain sensed her distress. Bravely, he approached her and placed a comforting hand upon her shoulder.

"Don't worry your majesty; he'll be dealt with soon. He'll rot in that cell. Like you said, he'll never see the light of day again."

"Too right he won't!" exclaimed the Queen, slapping his hand away. She raised her own, and began ostentatiously counting on her fingers. "Two counts of kidnapping, the attack on a royal prince's life, not to mention, seducing my daughter! This goes beyond the realm of imprisonment.

"After the wedding, for treason, I want him hanged!"