I returned to my room, got my portfolio of calligraphy samples, and rejoined the impostor Doom. As we went down the halls of the castle to his mother's suite, I asked him if there were any particular stories of hers which he remembered from childhood. He responded with the tale of Koshchei the Deathless, a Russian fairytale with a warrior princess as its heroine. I had always liked it myself.

When we reached her room, however, her attendants and several of the castle's medical personnel turned anxious faces toward us. "My lord—thank God you're here! Your lady mother—she seems to have had a stroke."

"What? Mother!" The impostor rushed to her side, and was engulfed in the crowd.

I knew better. What had happened to Cynthia Von Doom was not a stroke, but an exorcism. Victor had started spell-casting and done it by way of a warm-up, as he told me he would.

I was forgotten in the moment of crisis. As I had nothing better to do, I sat down on a mauve satin bench in the hall and sorted through my examples. Sooner or later, trouble would find me. All I had to do was wait.

It didn't take that long. Before long, Kristoff sauntered down the hall and stopped. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Your honored father was thinking of commissioning me to do some work for your grandmother, but she seems to have suffered a stroke. He hadn't dismissed me, so rather than disappear rudely, I thought I would wait for a while."

"Oh, yeah. They said she was sick. So that's the stuff you do?" He squinted at my pages, leaned over, and picked one up. "What's this? I can't even read it."

"It's a Hungarian cradle song, the one that goes

'The spring wind blows the waters, my flower,
every bird searches for a partner, my flower,
And I, whom should I choose, my flower,
I choose you and you choose me, my flower.'"

"That one." he said, dismissively. "Is this kind of writing really hard to do?"

"Not for me." I replied.

"Really? That's nice. Want to see me do some magic?" Before I could reply, he flash-flamed his hand, and the page with the flower song was a flake of ash. He smirked. "Now you see it, now you don't." He waited for my reaction.

I had noticed something: the little red light on the monitor box for the nozzles by the ceiling which sprayed the flame-retardant foam had blipped on for a moment when he did that. The system was active.

Time for Discord to start this apple rolling…

"Dear me." I said, in pleasant conversational tones. "Let's book you a show in Vegas, shall we? Talent like that mustn't go to waste."

"Are you mocking me, or what?" he asked, suddenly suspicious.

"Or what." I said. "Listen, you nasty little drip of snot, if you don't leave me alone, I'll tell your father about your stash of drugs. Then you'll regret it."

"What?" He gaped, foolishly. "How did you—? What did you just call me?"

"I called you a nasty little drip of snot. I might just as easily have called you a sexually degenerate little weasel, but that would be an insult to weasels everywhere. Where do you get off treating girls like they were disposable nose-wipes?"

"You can't talk to me like that!"

"You seem to have a very narrow idea of what I can say. My vocabulary is larger than you think. You are a vice-ridden glob of phlegm. I say it to your face. What are you going to do about it?"

He screeched in fury, his flames blooming around him as he drew back his arm to shoot a firebolt at me that would incinerate me like he had the paper…

And then the flame-retardant started to spray.

The nozzles targeted him, so I missed the worst of it. Some of it splattered on my skirt and my sandals, and, sadly, my portfolio.

The alarms cut in, too, so it was no surprise that the impostor burst out of his mother's sickroom to bellow in purest fury, "What the hell is going on out here? My mother may be dying in there! Is this your idea of respect?"

"It was her!" Kristoff leveled a dripping finger at me. "She insulted me! I had no choice!"

"My lord." I had immediately assumed a horror-stricken face, put an anguished throb in my voice—keeping it low and soft, of course. "That isn't how it was! I wasn't sure whether to stay or go, so I waited—and when Prince Kristoff came up to me, he—made a suggestion—."

"I did not! You lying bitch! Father, she's lying, I swear it!"

"He suggested that I come back to his room with him. Even if I wanted to take a fourteen year old boy for a lover, I don't want to end up in the burn ward. When I said no, he said he had some drugs, some 'prime shit', that he would share with me. When I said no again, he became abusive and obscene. When I said I would tell you, he—he—If it weren't for the fire-control system, he might have killed me." I was shaking as I said it. Anyone would have thought I was on the verge of breaking down.

"You liar! Father!" Kristoff appealed to him, but the false Doom was looking at me.

"Where did you hear about his lovers ending up in the burn ward?" he asked me, angry.

Of course that was the sort of thing he would want to cover up. "From your own lips. You said it yesterday, when I was no further away from you that I am now." I said, in perfect honesty.

"Ah." he said, momentarily nonplussed. "I did not realize you had heard that. And you! What is this about you having drugs?" he turned to Kristoff.

"Father, I don't! I swear! She's a liar, she's making it up!"

"Silence!" his father shouted at him.

"He said he had his stash hidden in his bedside table. He was afraid it had been ruined by the flame-retardant, but when he went back for it, it was fine. He made the servants leave the room before he retrieved it. He said so." I told him. "My lord, may I have your protection? I do not want to be burned to death."

"He shan't harm you." The impostor promised. "If you are telling the truth, that is. What have you to say for yourself?"

"Well, she's lying! She's a treacherous lying bitch! I don't know—." He spluttered to a halt when his father raised a hand.

"Guard! Have Prince Kristoff's new rooms searched—with a sniffer—for illegal substances. Look everywhere. Report back when you have either found something or are very certain there is nothing to find." Doom the fake uttered curtly.

"No!" Kristoff ordered. "I command you not to do it. I don't have to prove anything."

The guard looked from Kristoff to Doom, who looked at his adopted son with something less than paternal fondness. "Your orders are followed only because I lend you something of my authority. I now revoke that. If there are no drugs, than you have nothing to fear. If there are, however…." He let the sentence end there. "In the meantime, you—and you—." He indicated me. "will wait here. Guard!"

A different guard appeared. "See to it that both of them stay where they are. Kristoff, you are not to leave, nor to try to escape, nor to harm this lady in any way whatsoever. Do not even speak to her! I am going back in to my mother. If you disobey, it will go hard with you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord." I said.

Kristoff's face twisted. "Yes, father."

We sat down to wait. Kristoff glared balefully at me, but that was all.

TBC…

A/N: I must thank Kilmarnockrea (sp?) of the Mcmahoniacs for the song lyrics in this chapter. She is Romanian by birth, where, if Latveria existed, it would be located. She very generously provided me with details to help make this fic even more real.