My patience for editing is slim, so forgive me my errors. Without a beta reader I find that life can be a little hectic for me to turn out perfection every (any) time. I never had luck with beta readers (as in they never got my work back to me) so I continue on as a solo act.

Enjoy. I'm personally just happy when I get closer to the E/K goodness. That's a chapter away, but setup is important, right? I tend to think so, even for a silly little fairy tale like this one. It isn't flowing as easily as Sleeping Beauty did, but that's probably just because I like Sleeping Beauty better as a story.

Anyway, the project continues, with my atypically short chapters.

Disclaimer: (see Ch 1)

Chapter 2

"Kaoru! Get that water over quick! This one is just about ready to drop!"

She grabbed the bucket from where it lay near the well and moved as fast as she could towards the trough inside the long stable. Shishio's soldiers shouldn't treat their animals like that in the middle of summer. The animals may be well fed and well treated, but they were not immune to dehydration or fatigue. Shishio's soldiers were not the most considerate of men. At least the horses were better treated by those rough men than the peasants nearby. Thoughts like that only served to raise her temper by large intervals, and it was too hot today to be getting upset.

"What was it today? 'Tax gathering'? More recruiting? Seems like every mother's son old enough to hold a sword was brought here months ago."

The old man who ran the stables, and had known Kaoru as a child, took no real note or offense at her words. She was only unguarded around him, speaking out against the king, and as she had always been kind to him and his two granddaughters he let her live as normal a life as possible here among the smells and sounds of the stables. Heaven knew that her life had never been pleasant or normal as a rule.

"Isn't for the likes of me to say what those 'knights' have been up to. But if they keep treating the animals in such a way I shall have to send word up to His Majesty. I doubt he would approve of their lack of discipline." He added with a snort. "Good horses are hard to come by, and expensive, while soldiers are cheap."

Kaoru frowned. "Life didn't used to be so cheap, horse or man."

"You best keep your voice down when saying such things. Brush this beast down, he could use some attention. The good kind." The old horse doctor didn't want Kaoru to get herself in trouble with that opinionated mouth of hers.

"Of course." She never bowed or scraped to anyone. It wasn't her way, but she would do her duties. Cleaning and tending the animals was a more tolerable way to live than begging in the streets. She wasn't fit for most ways of life outside of the palace walls. In fact, she hadn't seen the outside of the palace walls for years.

It had been nearly two years since her father's death and still Kaoru was helpless and trapped in this life as a stablehand. Somehow this life had become terrible to her, but a lot of that probably had to do with the fact that before she had done it by choice and now she did it to survive. As long as she was useful and unrecognizable then she was under Shishio's radar and therefore alive. And as long as Kaoru was alive then she could think and plan and dream of the day that she got to revenge her father's death. First she would find a way to kill that damned usurper, and then she would kill the traitorous queen herself. It would have to be painful. Something where she could stab a lot and hear that woman scream.

Vigorously she brushed the horse as her anger fueled her in the hot weather to be active despite exhaustion. She was good at what she did, and eventually pride in her work took the place of her anger. This was her world for now, the horses, the few stablehands who worked here, and a handful of people who still knew who she was and who had survived the purge. They were few enough as it was, and she didn't want to endanger herself or them. She didn't begrudge them their turned loyalties because keeping your blood in your body was a powerful inducement for turning a blind eye to the evil nature of your employer.

Two years was a long time when every day you woke up with the knowledge that the people you hated most in the world slept mere yards away from you, through twisting hallways and behind locked doors in rooms that were once so familiar. Kaoru wished now that she had not spurned the privilege of her childhood because being dirty all the time and in second hand clothes she had patched herself was misery when there was no bath at the end of the long work day and clean nightgowns to crawl into a soft bed with.

The princess she had been was almost a memory of a stranger. There had been little enough to rejoice in back then. . . a father who wished to forget her, a stepmother who wished to dress her up and present her like a trained animal to her glittering friends, and no real friends she could trust or talk to. Back in those days she fancied that it would have been better if she had never been born. Her mornings were filled with lessons from a tutor and her afternoons with climbing trees, watching the knights train, or trying to steal a ride on a war horse in the stables. That's what she had been doing the night the fires came.

It had been a particularly bad day. Her father was in a deep depression over the way Yumi had been wasting away. Kaoru could do nothing for her, and she was certainly not the cause, but still it felt as if her father were blaming her. That silent blame was more than she could take, and her hurt transformed into a willful anger. Her spoiled sixteen year old self had wrathfully awakened the old man who ran the stables and demanded to be let in to pick out a horse for a night ride.

Shaking his head, warning her of the dangers, they had been in among the smells of sounds of the stable at night when the agitated movements of the horses rose above their quietly arguing voices. They smelled smoke, and they heard the clash of swords. An alarm call went up, and the old man told Kaoru to hide in a stack of hay while he discovered what the matter was.

Never one to follow orders quietly for long, she crawled out of the hay, brushing off the itchy stuff and picking it out of her hair as she climbed to the top of a pile of the cubed stuff and looked out a high window. The sight that greeted her eyes stole her breath even as a whiff of smoke polluted her lungs and forced her eyes to water. After coughing, she brought her sleeve to her mouth and looked out one more time to confirm the vision in front of her.

Men in dark armor fought her father's knights, notable more for the fact that many were in mismatched or hastily donned armor or even nightclothes. They were sleepy, and they were off guard. Blood was everywhere in her field of vision, and she sat back down heavily, breathing quickly through her sleeve. The water in her eyes was not solely from the smoke any longer. What of her stepmother and father? Were they harmed? Should she escape or look for them? How could she get out when those men in dark armor seemed to be swarming the place?

Deep calming breaths that she thought she was taking turned out to be panicked hyperventilation. She wanted to fight. She wanted to help. But she had not been trained, except for basic self defense, and she had no weapons except for what could be found in this barn. The pitchfork at the bottom of this stack of hay would be a good start. She crawled back down and grabbed that, hiding as well as she could in the darkness until she could form a plan of attack.

The door far away from her had creaked open and Kaoru had poised herself to strike, trying to mentally ready herself for the first time she would kill another human being. Honestly, to this day, she felt as if she could not have done it even if it had been one of the men in dark armor. In self defense the goal had always been disarm and disable, but no maiming or killing. It felt barbarous to be even contemplating it.

No rough face had appeared in front of her, but the powdered and made up vision of her beautiful stepmother. Kaoru sighed her relief, and then felt her body tighten in alarm. What if someone had seen her come in? She was in as much if not more danger than Kaoru. Faster than she had ever been before because of the adrenaline flooding her body, Kaoru grabbed her stepmother and pulled her into the shadows.

"Did anyone follow you?" Kaoru saw her open her mouth and then interrupted her before she could answer. "Take this, I'll grab some horseshoes and maybe we can slip through to the edge of the grounds. I know that if we can get to the edge of the orchards then maybe a branch will lead over the wall and we can. . ."

"Kaoru."

". . . but I don't know if you can climb as well as I can, or make it over in that gown of yours. And you should make sure you keep your head down so that people think we're just scared servants. . ."

"Kaoru!"

"What of my father? I can't expect you'd know. Never mind, we'll have to leave and hope that he's gotten out on his own. He may have looked frail, but I've seen him fight and. . ."

The slap that Yumi gave to her cheek stopped Kaoru's constant nervous chatter as she tried to scheme a way out. Coldly the story had poured out of that poisonous woman, of her alliance with Shishio, of the death of the king, and of Kaoru's options. She could live as a servant or die as a princess, and it was up to her.

The words had been on the tip of her tongue, the readiness to die with honor. Even the warm spittle in her mouth seemed to be waiting for her stepmother's expressionless face. It would be strangely satisfying to watch the ugliness she would no doubt show when Kaoru spat on her in defiance. However, a cold voice in Kaoru's heart calmed her. Wait, it told her. That first half a year, she would wish many times she had not listened at that crucial moment.

Every day following the massacre at the castle there were hangings of her father's supporters. It started with important political figures, their bodies transported all over the countryside and dragged through villages and cities before they were hung along the side of major roads as an example. Those who crossed Shishio would only find death, gruesome and public. Eventually, the executions of the old king's loyal knights became spectacles with a jeering audience calling for blood. People were scared, they were unsure, and the way they turned on one another so quickly had horrified the princess. All hope of a counter attack, of being saved and avenged, had to be pushed back for more practical concerns like getting done with her chores so that she could get a meal that night.

Eventually, the hangings stopped, the bodies taken down. That's about the time the call went out for more men. Shishio needed an army, a large one, and those that did not comply with his conscription notice were put into a position where they either agreed or they were killed. Infantry trained in the winter, were sent back to their farms to work in spring so that there would be enough food to pay for taxes and to feed the populace. Life was grim, but people adapted. You became what you needed to be, and who you were had to be put aside.

She wished every day for the strength to retain her will and her resolve. So long as she didn't fall into despair she had a chance. Kaoru was a princess, even if those who knew could not acknowledge it. Of all the people in the kingdom, she felt like she had been stripped of more of her identity. Sometimes she questioned whether it was an identity she even wanted to admit to at the crucial moment. It hadn't brought her anything but pain.

"That's it. I'm going to have a bath." Kaoru felt more dirtied by her gloomy thoughts than by her job. She dropped her brush down, and marched out of the stable as her fellow servants looked at her with curiosity. Kaoru was always putting on airs, in their view, and they had gotten used to her regal ways. Mostly, she got away with it because while she was bossy she was also kind. If she wanted a bath enough to risk a whipping for skipping out on work, then that was her choice. It wouldn't be the first time. Flies buzzed, horses ate and drank, and life went on inside their little world of the stables.

In an entirely different world, everything was changing.

Yumi had spent an almost disturbing amount of time in front of the mirror recently. It wasn't that she was getting a different answer than usual, because it confirmed that she was the fairest in the kingdom every time she asked. But, in the past few months, it had been, well, hesitating before it answered. The first time she had noticed the pause, she had asked Shishio if it was possible for the mirror to lie, or to break. He had told her that it was both impartial and magically sound in that smoothly confident voice that she admired. Anything wrong was probably in her imagination. She had readily agreed. That was easier to accept than the truth.

However, last night when she had asked, the hesitation of the mirror had been long enough for her to no longer be able to fool herself. She had been sleeping badly for days, waiting for the news. Someone was either as beautiful as she was, causing the mirror confusion, or someone was tampering with the mirror to make her miserable. Yumi hoped for the former, because that could be easily dealt with.

If there was someone more beautiful than she, then she would simply send her assassin, her Hunstman, to have the individual killed. It was so easy, it almost made her want to laugh, but she had to wait until the mirror told her who had surpassed her. That was what was disintegrating her sanity these days, the waiting. It still might be a problem with her overactive mind, just as her beloved Shishio had said. He was almost certainly right. However, just in case, she had made sure that Soujiro had not been sent out on other missions to take care of any inconvenient political matters. She wanted Soujiro to deal with this personally, as the most loyal of Shishio's assassins. He had been trained and raised under the old king, but he had clearly stated that his loyalty was to the crown and not to the individual who wore it. There had been no reason to doubt his resolve as he performed all his missions with complete success and discretion.

Sitting at her dressing table and mirror, she bit at her lip. Was it too early to ask the mirror again? She was still in her clothes from the day before, having not bothered to change for a night of sleep that wouldn't come. Waiting was one of those things she absolutely despised to do. All this worry and stress would cause lines, she knew, and now more than ever she was concerned with keeping her beauty so that the sight of her form would please her Shishio.

Blast it, she would ask the mirror now. If she had to ask every hour or every minute, it didn't matter. She would demand to know until the mirror told her who her invisible tormentor was, this unknown competitor. Yumi swept away from her table of perfumes, makeup, and jewels. Those things meant nothing to her compared to an intangible title. The cover on the mirror was swept away, dropping to the ground, and revealing her reflection in the darkly tinted surface.

"Mirror, mirror, tell me who is the fairest in the land."

The glass went from reflective to opaque. The various shades of grey swirled in it, coalescing into a face with sightless pits for eyes and a mouth and nose which churned as violently as the rest of the face. The slight vertigo that often accompanied staring too closely at the face was not present today for it was indistinguishable from her tiredness. The mouth stretched and distorted as it answered, as if it was having trouble holding together a recognizable form. It looked like it was in pain, but the voice was still monotone and without inflection, husky and slow.

"Queen, the answer to your question is embodied in this maiden," The face disappeared, fading away to reveal in startling color the swimming form of a girl the traitorous Yumi knew all too well. She knew her mercy would come back to haunt her, but she didn't think it would happen this quickly. "The princess, Kaoru."

Kaoru scrubbed at her face in the reflection, immersed up to her shoulders in the nearby stream that ran through the edge of the palace gardens. It would be a river except that most of it was routed through the palace garden for irrigation. What was left was substantial and tame enough that sometimes the servants and children of servants swam in it in the evenings on hot days. Kaoru hadn't even bothered to remove her clothes. The cloth would dry quickly on a hot and dry day like today.

Now that she looked at the girl, it seemed self evident that this problem would arise. Her hair was too black, her lips too pink and full, her eyes an enduring shade of blue, and her skin too fair even after a couple of years of hard labor at the palace. Yumi catalogued each of these features in her mind, memorizing her enemy intently. Any love that she had carried for this girl had long since been buried, and the pity she had felt for the teen was nothing compared to the hate she felt for this rival.

"Enough, mirror." The image was banished and the mirror returned to its resting state. Yumi closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a strange stillness overcoming her. The relief was immense. Not only would she get rid of her rival, but she would eliminate a loose end that had troubled her mind every so often for two years. It was one of those things that would crop up in her thoughts, but was easily dismissed. Now, she would finally wipe out the Kamiya line and assure Shishio his firm rule over the kingdom. As long as the girl was alive, she could always claim right to succession. . .

It would not take long to find Soujiro; he would be training on a day like today. He trained every day. An assassin who was unfit for his job would soon find himself dead, and no one knew more about death than that amiable young man. More people than she could imagine had seen their end in that smile he wore all the time like a mask.

Deep beneath the castle, in an empty room lit only by oil lamps all over the walls, Soujiro Seta was relaxing his body after a long workout. His breathing was calm and his eyes alert as he noted the door to his practice room open. His mistress, the queen, appeared with a name written across her face. The smiling young man wiped sweat off of his brow and gave a low bow. It seemed he had a job to do.

"My Huntsman, I would charge you to do me a favor. . ."

"Whatever you wish, Your Majesty." The upbeat tone he always spoke in disconcerted Yumi. A killer since the age of ten, at the beginning of his apprenticeship, he was fifteen and as innocent seeming as he had been before his sword had drawn blood.

Yumi conquered the fractional moment of doubt, and continued on to issue her command. "I would have you escort a lady to the edge of our lands. Once there you shall dispose of her as you see fit." She thought a moment, tapping the edge of her painted lips with one finger. "I shall give you a box. When you return I expect to see a heart within it."

"Who am I escorting?" Soujiro did not move, and Yumi thought of how patient he was, how clever. Shishio would have to be careful of this one, and she would remind him of that in their chamber this evening.

"Kaoru Kamiya."

There was a slight downturn of the boy's eyebrows. "I was not aware the dead needed such attention."

"I think you shall find her very much alive, and stinking of the castle horseflesh." The boy nodded with renewed understanding, never asking how Yumi had gotten her information. "Leave tonight."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

In just three days, the time it took to reach the kingdom's closest border, in the east towards the mountains, she would reclaim her title.

"It's nothing personal, Your Highness." Soujiro spoke to the now conscious and kicking form of the princess tied securely to the back of his horse. It had been rather convenient for him that she had been so close to the very thing he had needed to strap her too, although he had gotten very damp while rolling her up to disguise her from prying eyes on the road. "I imagine your head is hurting more than you realize, even though I did attempt to knock you out in as merciful a manner as possible."

From under the blanket there were more struggles, muffled words, and then finally a sudden cease of movement and a groan.

"We'll be stopping soon for a little bit of food, and if you promise to be good then I'll untie you for a spell." Soujiro had never been inhumane. This was a rather unusual request as a whole. Usually he never had to spend much time with his victims. He would go in, do his job, and then exit again like a shadow. This face to face business and the three days of travel beforehand seemed all highly irregular. Worst of all, he was dispatching a member of the royal family. That stuck in his mind, turning his stomach as if he had eaten something rotten.

Kaoru did not catch any of the inner torment of her captor, though she looked mad enough to want to cause some more direct torment on her own. The first breath of fresh air she had since she woke up was found in an open field of wild grass. A clearing had been stamped down and a boy she vaguely recognized was building a fire. It had to be late because the light of the day was almost gone, and it was light long past supper in summer.

"I'm going to take out your gag and give you some water. Please don't scream. It will hurt your throat and no one will hear you. We rode hard for at least eight hours." Soujiro took out the gag and while Kaoru did not scream, she also refused to drink anything. The boy gave a long suffering sigh and began to fix himself a meal.

The stars had come into full view and Soujiro had begun to clean up his meal as well as dispose of the portion that Kaoru had refused to eat when she finally spoke.

"Who are you and what is going on?"

"Ah, those are both fair questions, Your Highness. . ."

"Kaoru." She inserted sharply from habit, then bit her lip.

". . .Miss Kaoru." He corrected himself gladly. "I am the royal Huntsman, and I was ordered to take you into the mountains beyond the eastern border and dispose of you. But just because those are my orders doesn't mean we can't be civil."

This kid had to be demented. "How could a kid like you be a. . . let me guess, your master died two years ago or thereabouts?"

"He chose a rather impractical sense of loyalty at an inconvenient moment, this is true. But I assure you I was fully ready to take over and I haven't failed a mission yet." He sounded truly proud. Kaoru tried to get that lump in her throat to go away, but if anything it got bigger.

"You're making a big mistake. You must think I'm the princess, but I'm just a stablehand. If you get me back soon, then no one will know you made a mistake and we can all forget about this. I can understand the mix up since Kaoru was a very popular name in my generation. It fell out of use around the time the princess was born, I'll admit, but. . ."

Soujiro shook his head and laughed. "Miss Kaoru, you are a very bad liar. It doesn't suit you."

So Shishio had finally found her and sent a private executioner to finish the job he had started two years ago. Lying on the ground, Kaoru felt a grim sense of dread clutch at her. The ropes around her arms and legs were tied securely, tight, but not painful in their pressure. The boy seemed sincere. Things looked bad for her.

Not much left for her to lose, she decided to be practical. "I'll take that drink now, if you please." Soujiro was more than happy to oblige.

It was useless to struggle (a few attempts to do so only ended in bruises and amused scolding from the Huntsman), so instead Kaoru did what she was good at while they traveled: she listened. Eventually everyone opened up to her; she was that kind of person. Although loud by nature, her brashness was often a protective response for those she cared for. She was a champion of the weak, a soft touch who responded with help for anyone with a sob story. The evils she had seen had only further impressed in her the need for goodness and kindness, even if it was tempered by a healthy amount of self preservation.

What it meant at this time in her life was that she was uniquely suited to get people to trust her, and trust her they did. It was in the middle of the second day that she had gotten Soujiro to open up a little bit about his life and past. They were not happy topics, but then she had never pretended that things were perfect when her father ruled. In response, Kaoru gave back her own story of her anger and her loss. She did everything but plead for a chance to live, to have the time to avenge her family and reclaim her heritage. Soujiro also listened, and when she had finished talked he smiled as he always did and suggested they pitch camp. There was no way she was going to shake his resolve, is what she thought, but until the moment he slipped the knife into her she was going to try.

The mountains were so close, and she vaguely remembered how she had once wanted to visit them. She had stolen a horse and rode for a day towards them, spending the night in a field as scared as a child could be while alone and in the dark. A search party finally found her, dirty and hungry, a day and a half later. It had taken until the morning after she left before anyone noticed she was missing. Her tutor had raised the alarm. She commented on this to the Huntsman, who she was calling Soujiro at his request.

"I'm sorry, Miss Kaoru." She wouldn't let him call her 'Your Highness' even after she had given up and admitted to her identity by no longer insisting to the contrary.

"Why is that?"

For a second she thought his smile faltered, but it could have been a trick of her mind. "Under different circumstances we might have been friends."

There was nothing to say to that, and the night passed in silence, but hope kindled in her heart. If she had become human enough to him, perhaps he would show her the mercy that his other targets never got. He knew that she couldn't lie to save her life, literally, and her sincerity had shaken hard hearts before, knight captains, gardeners, cooks. . . before she had fallen from grace she had had a network of friends on the grounds to make up for the lack of parents. Now, when it counted, she hoped her strength of personality would be enough to save her life.

They had been going up a steep slope for some time. Soujiro was walking the horse, and Kaoru was next to him being similarly led by a rope around her wrists. The trees around her smelled like spicy sap and she noted how unusual they were with needles instead of leaves. Everything in this forest seemed sharp, and it didn't seem friendly. It being the probable site of her death could have had something to do with her perception.

When they reached a clearing Soujiro stopped them, tied his horse to a tree and came back to where Kaoru was standing. Running from Soujiro would only seal her fate, force his hand into killing her, and she didn't want that to happen. The urge to bolt was strong, though, stronger than ever now that he was walking towards her with a strange glint in his eyes and an object in his hand.

He stopped in front of her, showing her the ornate wooden box, scenes of strange ritual carved into its dark polished surface. "See this, Miss Kaoru? The clear implication was that I would return with your heart in this box."

Kaoru felt her heartbeat quicken, and her breaths grow shallow. She had never been able to conquer the rush of feeling to her head when she was in danger. It often paralyzed her first before she could think or act. Those long moments in the haystack before she had climbed out came back to her vividly, flames and smoke dancing in her mind's eye.

"It's very pretty, lined with red velvet and everything." He opened it up so she could see it. How could Soujiro be this thoughtlessly cruel to her? "But I rather think that it wouldn't suit your heart at all. Maybe purple. Or blue."

His knife came out of the sheath at his waist after he dropped the box to the forest floor. She closed her eyes and tried not to think of what awaited her on the other side. In a shocked twitch she realized that the swish of the blade had not been followed by pain but by the return of circulation to her hands as the ropes fell away. Soujiro had cut her free.

"I'm not disobeying any orders, mind you." He told her when she was about to hug him and start crying. The corners of her eyes were leaking, and she sniffled. "I am disposing of you as I see fit, and as long as you don't return to the kingdom I can't see any problem with letting you live. Once you get over the mountains, deeply into the next kingdom over, I'm sure you'll find work. It will be harvest season soon enough."

There was another pause, as Kaoru felt her mouth move but no words come out. She wanted to thank him, but there was more guilty relief than anything. It hadn't been false, she really did like this boy, and she was worried about his decision now that she felt sure she was going to live.

"What about you? If I'm ever found. . ."

Kaoru's obvious concern for him made his smile turn up a notch. "Don't be found then." His voice softened. "You can't afford friends with a job like mine, but now that I finally made one it would be a shame to lose you."

"Goodbye, Soujiro." She hugged him once, quickly, before moving in whatever direction up took her.

"Goodbye, Miss Kaoru."

As she passed out of sight up into the dense woods Soujiro thought about how he would have liked to be her Huntsman. Maybe, someday, he would be. Movement caught his eye as a deer quite a distance away moved down the mountain towards a stream they had passed not long ago. Those large childlike eyes of his fell down to the box, open on the ground, its red velvet already making its interior look bloody. He still needed to bring back a heart.

He walked back to his horse and pulled out his crossbow, catching the deer in his sights.

Until that day he was Kaoru's Huntsman. . .