Kate led me to a back hallway, and waited a few minutes, to make sure that no one had followed us, or knew where we were. She counted five stones up from the floor, and ran her hand across the stone she had selected, before pushing right in the center. To my surprise, a door swung open.

'How did you know this was here?' I hissed.

'Shh,' Kate whispered, pulling me inside the passage. She lit a torch and shut the door as quietly as possible.

I looked around and saw a spiral staircase leading upwards.

'Are you going to tell me how you found this?' I asked.

'Snooping in Henrietta´s room,' Kate replied. 'I don't think Henrietta realizes that there is a hidden door behind her wardrobe.'

'How did you?' I asked.

'While snooping, I noticed a hollow noise when I accidentally hit the back of the wardrobe,' Kate replied. 'Come on.'

We climbed the stairs up to Henrietta´s room. We listened for a bit, to make sure that nobody was in the room, before opening the door and pushing the wardrobe aside. Fortunately it was not a big wardrobe, and fairly easy to move. Kate pulled a garden snake and a toad out of her bag, and quickly stuffed them in Henrietta´s bed.

I laughed. 'I just hope that Henrietta doesn´t kill the poor creatures,' I said.

'She´s too afraid. I read it in her diary,' Kate said.

The next morning, it seemed the whole school knew about Henrietta´s finding the snake and toad in her bed. Kate and I did our best to not laugh. Henrietta, of course, suspected us anyway, and found her ways to get back at us. We each found our rooms ransacked once, and occasionally a dress of ours would turn up ripped or dirty, though we had not worn it in some time.

Though Henrietta was not at school every week, she certainly managed to keep me on my toes. I had no idea who believed what about me now, and could only hope that with time, others could see that I was not everything that Henrietta said.

About two months into the term, I began to realize that my ballet/jazz instructor hated Henrietta as much as I did. Whenever someone mentioned Henrietta as a model, this particular dance instructor would purse her lips together in annoyance, and make some remark about what an impertinent, disagreeable little git Henrietta was.

Then one day, Henrietta waltzed into the studio while we were stretching.

'Oh, Miss Marie, do you have a minute that I could ask your opinion?'

Miss Marie reluctantly agreed.

'I have had my eye on Lucia, the girl over there for some time. She has so much potential that I would appreciate it if you could give her a little extra attention,' Henrietta said, in her sweetest voice.

'Don´t worry Henrietta,' Miss Marie said.

After that, Miss Marie did not waste any time in singling me out as an example of the way things ought not to be done. I was no better or worse than most of the other students in the class, but that did not stop Miss Marie from finding fault with me. I tried to approach her one day, telling her that Henrietta hated me, that this was only some plot to discourage me and make me look bad, but Miss Marie did not listen. Fortunately Kate came to my defense, explaining to Miss Marie that both Henrietta and I were in contention for being made heir to Queen Achren, our aunt. After that, Miss Marie lightened up on me, though I was never her favorite student.

Henrietta tried the same tactic from time to time with another teacher, but without the same success. Few had the same prejudice towards Henrietta that Miss Marie did, and so did not have the same interest in pushing me down.

I was glad to go home when the first term ended. We had three weeks vacation to be at home with our father. Our first night home, father held a party in honor of our coming home after a successful first term. And, I suppose, because he wanted to see if we had actually learned to dance and keep up polite conversation yet. I am sorry to say, Kate and I somewhat disappointed him. Father appeared to have forgotten that it may take all of four years to truly master some of the dances, and longer to learn to properly keep up a polite conversation.

Aunt Achren was also at this party, and a few from her husband´s family, as well as the nobles that my father had invited from Tel, our own country. I cornered my aunt part way through the dance. I wanted to know what she was going to do about me and Henrietta. Had she made up her mind yet?

When I asked her, she chuckled, and pulled me aside into the library.

'See here, Lucia,' she began. 'What would you think if I made Henrietta queen right now?'

'Oh dear Lord,' I said.

'Exactly. She would not be a good queen. Maybe one day she would be, but not now,' Aunt Achren said. 'Now what would you do if I said that I wanted to make you queen right now?'

'But I´m not ready to be queen!' I exclaimed. 'I don´t know anything about being a queen! I mean, I´ve seen how you behave in public, and how father behaves at parties, but still. . . .'

'I´m glad you think that way,' Aunt Achren said. 'It is often those who think that they are incapable, or temporarily not ready, that prove to be better leaders than those who think themselves to be the best person for the job. Not to say that self confidence is bad, or that those who think highly of themselves have no cause for it, just that those who do not have much confidence will often find themselves to be more capable than they once thought.'

'Sometimes I think that Henrietta has too much confidence in herself,' I said.

'Why?'

'She thinks that being the oldest makes her the best,' I said. 'But what about her sister Hedwig?'

'What about her?'

'Well, what if she turns out better than Henrietta? More talented, smarter. And what if you make Henrietta queen after you, thinking that Hedwig and I, and any of their cousins or siblings are too young for the job?'

'You think I´m that stupid? I do trust certain of my counsellors to act as regent until someone grows up,' Aunt Achren said. 'But, I will wait as long as I can before I choose, so that I may see what you all will grow up to be.'

I went to bed that night, still not very reassured. What if someone poisoned our aunt before naming a sucessor, and Henrietta claimed the throne, claiming that she is oldest, therefore has the most right to the throne. Kate had once said that making Henrietta the future queen would be like opening the door of the tiger´s cage. Henrietta would take that as license to do what she would.

I tried not to be preoccupied during the rest of my break. I cooked with Maggie, went to market with Bronwyn, and did all the other things I loved. Kate and I spent much of our time with Roan and Per, when we were not getting weapons training from the captain of the guard.

We learned much from Per about the elves. They mostly lived in the woods and mountains, and kept to themselves for the most part. As it turned out, Per was an elven prince, sent to Tel with his uncle and aunt to help establish friendly relations with us humans. Elves were not quite immortal, but had such long lives that many thought they were immortal. Many elves lived for five hundred years, occasionally all the way to a thousand. The best part, in my mind, was that they physically stayed young almost until the day they died. An elf could be five hundred years old, and look like a twenty or thirty year old human. Per himself was only twenty, a young un by elf standards.

Centaurs, on the other hand, did not live much longer than the average human, maybe to one hundred or one hundred twenty, as opposed to eighty. Kate and I were both quite fascinated to stay with them, listening to stories of their homelands. We were both quite sad to leave for our second term at finishing school.

The second term started well, and life was quiet for quite some time. I still wondered, however, when Henrietta would pull her next trick. She did not seem too pleased to hear that I was not scared away from school, and still did quite well in comparison to other students. I noticed that Henrietta seemed quite edgy much of the time. I supposed it was because she was already eighteen, marriageable age. Her parents, no doubt wanted to wait a little longer before pushing her into marriage, hoping that being made heir to a queen would increase her value, and they would have a better chance of her being noticed by a prince from another country, instead of just any wealthy family.

I was quite relieved that Henrietta played no major pranks on me that year, but continued to whisper bad words about me into the ears of the people with power. She also seemed to have recruited Hedwig in the fight against me. Hedwig was too nice to play pranks herself, but she was quite determined to beat me in every subject. When she did succeed, she gloated. But on the whole, our second term was not so bad.

Over the summer vacation, we returned to Aunt Achren´s, where we learned to take care of dragons, and took up dance again with Murphy. Murphy was quite pleased with our progress over the past year and praised us highly. This made me all the more determined to beat Henrietta.

That fall when we returned to finishing school, we learned found that the whole school seemed to know that we lived with our aunt, at least part of the time. And we became stigmatized for it.