When he left me after that conversation, I felt much better than I had in days. He had promised that he would come back as soon as he possibly could, but he didn't want to meet my mother then either. He said that it was too soon, that we should focus on each other for a while first, and I foolishly agreed. Just before he left, he cupped my face in his hands and said he loved me, that nothing could possibly make him change his feelings toward me. I said much the same of him, and he smiled tenderly down at me, those gorgeous azure eyes swallowing me whole, and then he had brushed his lips lightly across mine. When I would have pulled him close to kiss him more, he put a finger to my lips, whispering, "Not now, love. I fear I would not be able to control myself this time." With that, he laid a pink rose at my feet whisked away.

"Now how does he do that?" I asked myself. It was beginning to get irritating. I picked up the rose and made my way out of the maze, much more cheerful than I had been when I went in. Almost immediately one of the stewards ran up to me and berated me for hiding when my mother wanted to speak with me. I thought it best to let him rant at me than try to explain that I would have been easily found had anyone remembered that I liked to go into the hedge maze when I wasn't feeling cheerful.

When we reached my mother's solarium, the steward went in first to present me and then scurried away. I never did understand why a servant needed to go in and say who was coming to see the queen when she knew perfectly well that it could only be me.

I made myself comfortable in a cushiony chair and greeted my mother happily.

"Well, someone's mood certainly has changed for the better since this morning," she commented.

I blushed.

"Darling, we need to talk about your recent behavior," she began sternly. "You've been mooning about lately, so much so that your senshi have left the moon entirely. Your instructors are so infuriated with you that I have had to give them a substantial pay raise in order to keep them around. They are the best in this solar system, Sere, and it took a lot to convince them to come here in the first place. Only the fact that they were also teaching Mercury kept them here in the first place, but with her gone, well...

"I would have talked to you about this sooner, but with all the troubles we're having with Earth at the moment..." She massaged her temples wearily.

Jumping on the change in topic, I asked, "What troubles with Earth?"

She smiled tiredly and said, "Well, you will be queen one day...I might as well let you in on it. The Earth prince seems to have disappeared about a month ago. The king and queen down there are very worried about him, and to make matters worse, the Earth's Generals have disappeared as well, taking several valuable items with them. No one is quite sure how it happened, but a theory has been going around that the Generals kidnaped Prince Endymion to use him as a ransom, but I don't feel quite right about that. If he had been kidnaped, wouldn't the king and queen have been notified of the terms for his safe return? No, something doesn't seem right." She stared at nothing, pulling at her lower lip–a thing I almost never saw her do, and the fact that she did it now meant that she was greatly concerned about this entire thing.

I could only sit and stare with my mouth hanging open, hearing that Endymion and his Generals had disappeared like that–and a month ago! I had just seen him today, and last night, why hadn't he gone home? A sneaking suspicion lurked in my brain, but I pushed it aside as ludicrous. He was merely in hiding from these villainous Generals is all, I told myself. He can't very well go home, because that would be the first thing they would expect him to do and they would be ready for him.

But why hadn't he told me this?

My train of thought was broken when my mother said, "That's why I'm so concerned about the stranger at your ball, dear. Nobody knows who he is, if he is involved with these Generals–or even if he's one of them. The way he disappeared before anyone could say anything...You will let me know, dear, if you see him again? If he tries to speak to you? It seems that if evil were to attempt to take over this solar system, they would want to target the main defense of it–namely you and the senshi. I would very much like it if you would convince the girls to come back, I feel very uneasy with you being so unprotected. Remember, a team of individuals committed to a cause can achieve what one alone may not be able to."

I nodded numbly, trying not to tell her everything about Endymion's appearances. He had, after all, asked me to keep it quiet for a while. Surely it was only to protect him from those Generals, I protested vehemently to myself, trying to justify the untruth. It was hard to lie to my mother, especially when I noticed that she was so frightened. There were wrinkles on her face that had not been there a week ago, I was sure of it, but because I loved Endymion I could not betray his secret even to ease my mother's fear.

Sighing and now feeling inexplicably miserable, I left the solarium to find some food. Lately, dinners hadn't been a large affair with all the overtime meetings and things, so it was generally up to me to get some food into my belly.

Remembering what my mother had said, I dialed my friends' wrist communicators and meekly begged them to come back to the moon and we would have dinner together. They agreed, seeming heartened by my humble request, and told me that they would be on the moon within the hour.

Excited to have some company, I ordered our favorite food from Earth–Chinese! Egg noodles and chow mein, lo mein, kung pao beef, chicken and pork, and of course the fried rice. The food got there shortly before the girls did, and I set it all up on the huge table in the grand dining hall of the palace, and when the girls arrived we all chowed down and talked and laughed like we used to. It was, all in all, a very relaxing evening, and when we were finished with our meal we watched sappy love stories and giggled, gossiping to each other.

When they had gone each to their own rooms for the night, I laid in bed wishing that I had told them all about Endymion. They were, after all, my team mates as well as my best friends. We were supposed to protect our sector of the universe together, but that could only be done if we all had all of the information. I told myself that I would tell them in the morning, but somehow I kept putting it off, thinking that there would be time to tell them. Then, of course, there was no more time, and my first betrayal of them was complete–all in the name of love.

Alas that this betrayal was not the only one.