Co-written with miss mika namariya! We own nothing. :)

"Okay, so I've been thinking," Kyoko said, appearing out of nowhere and ignoring the way that the prince startled so badly he almost knocked over his water, "that we're going about finding your True Love the wrong way."

Kuon took a sip of his water, wondering if she had finally considered looking in a mirror. "Oh?" he asked.

"Ribbit," Sir Hoppington announced himself from Kyoko's hands.

"We need to start with what's tried and true."

"That being…?"

She held Sir Hoppington up to his face. "Give him a kiss."

Sir Hoppington blinked blandly at the prince. Kuon blinked back.

"Go on, don't be shy!"

She was looking at him so eagerly that he had no other choice. He let out a small sigh and planted a chaste kiss on Sir Hoppington's mucousy mouth. Kyoko held her breath, waiting, and….

Absolutely nothing happened. Well, aside from Kuon getting mucousy. Both he and Sir Hoppington pulled a face. Kyoko deflated and padded over to put Sir Hoppington back in his tank.

"Okay, so that didn't work. Should we try the pond?"

"What?"

"There's lots of frogs in the pond." She stared at him. "You know… in case your True Love got cursed and became a frog who isn't Sir Hoppington."

"I don't think my True Love is a cursed frog."

"Obviously not! They'd be a cursed human who turned into a frog."

"I — no. I don't want to kiss any other frogs."

She stared at him for a moment, thinking hard. "That's fair. Sir Hoppington might get jealous."

"Yes. Exactly." Also, you're not a frog.

LINE BREAK

"How do you feel about potions?" She asked him on his walk through the palace gardens one afternoon, dropping down out of a tree.

"Depends on the potion," he replied as she fell into step beside him. "Not a big fan of love potions."

Kyoko shuddered, looking more disturbed than he'd ever seen her. "They're awful things. Tasty, though."

"You've had a love potion?"

Kyoko didn't answer for a long time, long enough that he had to look down to make sure she was still next to him. Finally, just when he was about to change the subject, she said, "A fr— an acquaintance of mine at the academy slipped me one. He made a big show of it, too, making sure he was right in the middle of the courtyard when it hit and I started — well. He let me go on for a while, making a fool of myself, before shooting me down in front of everyone. It was awful. Moko was the only one there who didn't laugh." Her eyes finally lit up again. "She slapped him!"

"Good." He shook his head. "Um. Not good that you had to go through that. Good that she slapped him."

Kyoko nodded. "She had me kiss Princess Rosa, and that broke the potion's effect."

Stab. An arrow through his heart. "Oh."

"Anyway! My point!" She had her usual energy again, bolstered by the thought of her beloved Princess Rosa. "A common theme in True Love Tales is the sleeping death. One party takes it — or is cursed with it — and the other wakes them up with a kiss! So I was thinking that we could have you try some, and have all the eligible folk of the land come give it a try — "

"No."

"Why not? It'd be perfectly safe. I've taken sleeping death many times."

What a bizarre thing to be so blase about. "You have?"

She nodded. "At the academy. Plus, I'd vet everyone who came to try, so you wouldn't have to worry about assassins —"

"— you keep thinking that people want to kill me. I'm actually pretty popular —"

"— while looking for your True Love," she finished.

They had come to the end of their walk, and continued to bicker all the way back up to his rooms.

"I just don't think that a sleeping potion is going to bring me my True Love." Not to mention that literally everyone in the kingdom but you kissing me is a nightmare. He held the door open for her to enter his suite.

"They're perfectly safe!" she insisted, signaling to one of the other guards to follow them in as she did a sweep of the room. "Look…." She pulled out a small, dark vial of liquid from pockets unknown. "See?" She held it up to the light. "It's harmless."

"I really don't think it's necessary," he said, getting Sir Hoppington out of his tank and transferring him to the table. It was really half-table, half-tank, with the tank being a sunken part of the table. Kuon had commissioned it from a local craftsperson so that Sir Hoppington could sit with him while he worked. No, he wasn't spoiling the frog; Sir Hoppington made some excellent points about policy!

Kyoko frowned at him. "I'll prove it."

And before he could say anything, she had downed the purple liquid. She then sat down on the floor, blinked a few times, and fell asleep.

Well, shit, Kuon thought, looking down at his sleeping guard. The other guard, whom she had called into the room earlier, stared at her with equal bewilderment.

"Did she just…?"

"Yes." Do I kiss her? I should kiss her, right? But she's asleep. That doesn't seem right.

"Should I get help?"

Help. That would be good. "Get the Archive." She'd been with Kyoko the longest, she would know the right thing to do here. Or might at least know some sort of non-creepy antidote. Or maybe she would confirm that yes, Kyoko intended for him to kiss her awake, and this was just some elaborate confession of love. He hoped it was the last one.

"Not again," Kanae groaned when she came in and saw the sleeping Kyoko. "I keep telling her to stop pulling this nonsense!"

"She's done this before?" one of the guards asked.

"She likes testing her own poisons," Kanae replied. While the rest of the room was still processing that, she walked over to the table and picked up Sir Hoppington, wincing at his texture. She then set him on Kyoko's chest. He wriggled his way closer to her face and shot out his tongue. It landed smack-dab on her lips.

Kyoko's eyes opened. She sat up with a smile, cradling Sir Hoppington. "See?" she said smugly to the prince. "Perfectly safe."

For reasons she could not begin to understand, he still refused to take the potion. So Kyoko had to come up with other plans.

LINE BREAK

Kanae had been having a lovely afternoon in the library when Kyoko came in, practically dragging her pet prince behind her. "Moko, where are the fairy tales kept?"

She pointed wordlessly at a section of the library, then dodged Kyoko's grateful hug. For a few minutes, it was blissfully quiet. Then Kyoko and the prince returned, their arms piled high with books, and sat down. At her table. Kanae sighed through her nose. This was going to be a long afternoon. "What are you doing?"

"Brainstorming." Kyoko opened one of the books, her touches reverent. She had not suggested this as an excuse to read fairy tales. "We're looking for ways to find the prince's True Love."

"I see." And she did, unlike Kyoko. She shot the prince an amused smile. "So the sleeping death wasn't another poison test?"

"Of course not, it's not a poison." She flipped carefully through the pages. The first story was, indeed, one that featured sleeping death. "I was trying to prove its safety."

"It wasn't that I didn't believe you, I just don't think offering me up for anyone to kiss is the right way to do it," Kuon protested for the umpteenth time.

"Mmrp?" The library cat, Yogurt, had come to investigate. He usually sat on Kuon's lap (and had long since determined that Kanae moved through books far too quickly to make a good nap spot). Today, however, he hopped up onto Kyoko's, curled up, and started purring. Kuon felt a small stab of betrayal. He was the one who had lured the cat inside (with his breakfast, hence the name), and here he was, choosing another lap! Well… Kuon couldn't exactly blame him. He would've liked to nap in Kyoko's lap, too. Especially if she ran her fingers through his hair the way she was petting the cat now. With a jealous sigh, he opened a tome.

"Have you considered irritating a fairy?" Kyoko asked after a few quiet minutes. "You could get turned into a beast and your True Love could come find you and fall in love with you for your personality."

"Mrrow."

"Oh, that's true."

Kuon stared at her. First Sir Hoppington, and now Yogurt? Did Kyoko know Wild Speech or something? His list of questions about her just kept getting longer.

"Yogurt pointed out that you're not arrogant enough to get cursed like that. Annoying a fairy would probably just get you a donkey's tail or something." She considered him for a moment, shook her head, and went back to reading.

Kanae muffled a snicker.

Kuon flipped aimlessly through the pages. His book was old, thick, and had tiny print. He was paying more attention to Kyoko than to it. She was looking at her book so lovingly. He knew that she believed in fairies (her story about how she found Sir Hoppington proved that), so it made sense that she would love their stories as well. She reminded him of one of them, a little bit. The words were out of his mouth before he had time to consider them.

"We could throw a ball."

"That's a SPLENDID idea!" Lory crowed, appearing from behind one of the bookshelves.

Kanae closed her eyes and started counting backwards from 1,000.

Kyoko started planning exits.

Kuon wished that he had never opened his mouth.

Yogurt, sensing chaos, hopped off of Kyoko's lap and went in search of a sunbeam. She would have joined him had she not needed to watch her charge.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Lory was far more interested in getting this idea to Kuu and Julie than in bothering his pupils and godson. At least, at the moment. He would bother them more later. Especially his godson. That was one of his life's joys, after all.

"That was anticlimactic," Kanae said, and went back to her book.

"Okay, so you weren't cursed at your birth or christening, so clearly you need to go rescue someone who is cursed. So we should look into some curse books along with the fairy tales," Kyoko said later that night.

Kuon, who had just had a lovely afternoon reading next to Kyoko, blinked. "That's not exactly romantic."

"Curses aren't supposed to be romantic."

"And why are you so set on my true love being cursed?"

It was her turn to blink. "Isn't — isn't one of you supposed to be cursed?"

"Well, maybe I just want to meet a normal, weird girl and fall in love."

"No, his True Love is definitely cursed. Cursed with obliviousness," Kanae muttered.

"I haven't heard of that one," Kyoko said. "Is it… bad?"

"It's incurable, usually." Cue angry glare from Kuon. "Though it's not deadly, which is fortunate."

Kyoko set that aside for now. She would just have to break through his True Love's obliviousness when they found her! "So! Other things to try — does your family have ancient enemies? Long-time rivals? A nemesis? Maybe they have some sort of mysterious son or daughter you could fall in love with."

"Again, why do you keep wanting me to have so many enemies?"

Kyoko puffed out her cheeks. "I don't want you to have enemies, I was just wondering! I was looking for anything that might make it easier, since you're not exactly being cooperative." She turned to Kanae. "I swear, it's like he doesn't even want me to find them. Like this whole search is a big waste of time."

Kanae, dying of laughter internally, replied, "Well, maybe he's right."

"Moko, don't say that!"

"Look, some people just don't have True Loves. Other people do, but are just too blind to see what's in front of them."

"Well, yeah, but of course he has a True Love. He's a tall, kind prince, for crying out loud!"

"You seem awfully certain about this." Kanae raised an eyebrow.

Kuon perked up. Maybe…?

"I mean, look at him! He even loves animals! He's the archetypical prince in a True Love story!" To prove her point, Yogurt came to twine around his ankles. "He's smart, handsome, and brave!"

Kuon could feel his ego swelling with his hope.

"He deserves to be happy, the happiest he can be! And I —"

Kuon held his breath, his hopes up higher than they had ever been.

"— will never be able to call myself a good bodyguard if I can't make this happen!" She folded her arms with a huff. "Whoever this True Love is, they're really ruining my professional reputation."

Kuon and Kanae were dying inside for entirely different reasons.

"How can I call myself a graduate of LME Academy if I can't find one stupid girl?"

Kanae faked a coughing fit to hide her laughter. When she "recovered," she choked out, "Have you tried looking in a mirror?"

Kyoko's eyes blew wide. "Of course! Magic mirrors! Moko, you're a genius! Do you know where any are?"

"Well…." She deliberated for a moment. The prince was drooping, looking for all the world like a sad puppy. It irritated her to have something so pathetic in the library. "It's not exactly a mirror, but you could try the pond in the gardens at dawn or sunset. I hear it's very magical." Then she deliberately threw the dog a bone. "You two could look in it together, since you're looking for the same thing."

Kuon made a mental note to get more books for the library.

"I guess so," Kyoko said doubtfully. "I already asked the fairies about it, but trying again wouldn't hurt. I just hope it works better than spirit scrying."

"What?" Kuon asked, but he was ignored.

"They're not working? Are you getting sick or something?"

"No, they're fine and I'm fine. I just don't think they're understanding what I'm asking for. When I ask them to search for his True Love they just get all confused and circle around."

Kuon was trying very hard not to tear out his hair.

"I've never seen them so confused before."

"But they understand how to search for other people, right?"

"Of course!"

"Even when you don't use names?"

"Naturally! They're very gifted, except for this."

Kanae was trying not to laugh. "I guess there's nothing you can do about that. I guess it's time to stop trying?"

"Yeah, they seem frustrated that I keep asking. They keep showing me my reflection in the scrying glass, like it's broken or something. I guess I need to get a new one at the market."

Kuon desperately wanted to slam his head into the table.

"Maybe you need another person's energy," Kanae suggested. Ugh. Being helpful. I'd better get some good books out of this. "Could do a full session with him, maybe, since it's his True Love you're looking for."

Kuon made a note to get even more books for the library.

LINE BREAK

And so, Kuon and Kyoko were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, holding hands while something he couldn't see levitated a scrying glass between them. If he had not been head-over-heels in love with Kyoko already, he would have been supremely freaked out. As it was, he was somehow distracted from literal magic by the feeling of her hands in his.

She was so small compared to him. It was easy to forget, sometimes; she was just so overwhelming, so fascinating, so utterly bizarre that she seemed larger than her petite frame. But here, on his bedroom floor, sitting criss-cross apple-sauce across from him, her hands in his, it was easy to see her as she was. She was a young woman, definitely deadly, but also… soft. Her skin was riddled with calluses and her knuckles practically made of scars. He wanted to kiss every one of them, learn how she got them, and feel them against his skin. He could do one of those, at least, sitting here with her in the dim light.

"No," she muttered at things he couldn't see. "No, the prince's True Love. That's who you're looking for."

Her nails were cut short and stained purple at the edges from the cherries she'd pitted for their breakfast. He wondered what it would feel like to have those nails drag down his back in an embrace.

"Guys, you can start any time. I thought you got it."

Kyoko was getting frustrated. Her hands clenched his more tightly, and he marveled at the strength of her grip.

"Maybe the scrying stone's busted… can you show me my best friend?" Faithfully, an image of Kanae appeared on the glass. She was fanning through a book, her eyes scanning the pages faster than they could move.

That reminded him, he needed to order those books.

"Okay, good job! Now, show me the prince's True Love." The glass shuddered for a moment, then simply showed her reflection. "No, that's not right." She sighed.

Oh, but it was. It was very right. As right as the feeling of her hands in his.

She let go of his hands and plucked the glass out of the air. "Thank you for trying, guys. Back to your posts, please." She sighed and looked down at the glass, still showing her reflection. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. It didn't work."

"Maybe we should try again tomorrow," he suggested, leaning back on his hands so he didn't try to take hers again. "Half an hour might not be enough. I have a really good feeling about this method."

So the next day, Kyoko came back into his room with the scrying glass to find the room lit by candles (fire hazard). Rose petals were scattered across the floor (slipping hazard) and chocolates (potentially poisoned) sat in fancy little bowls around the cushions they'd sat on yesterday. She looked at the prince for an explanation.

"Um." His face was red; was he getting a fever again, or was it just the lighting? "It's because, you know… romance. We're looking for romance."

"Oh, smart." She sat down on her cushion and held her hands out to him. "Good idea." He sat down and took her hands, feeling very pleased with himself, at least until she spoke again. "Let's hope your True Love likes this stuff."

"Don't most people like chocolates and flowers?"

She shrugged as the scrying glass started to float again. "I guess. Alright guys, take it from the top. Show us the prince's True Love."

"What would you suggest instead?" Had he messed up?

"No, you seem to have it down. I trust your opinion here for what your future partner would like." She squinted up at the glass, still only seeing her own reflection.

"But — ah — hypothetically, what would you want to be wooed with?" It was time to give up on being subtle. Subtlety didn't exactly run in his family anyway. "Just to throw some more ideas out there."

She looked at him blankly for a moment. "I… could use a new set of throwing knives?"

The next session was devoid of candles, roses, and chocolates, but did feature some very nice throwing knives. Sir Hoppington was also present on his velvet cushion, the logic being that he was a very powerful creature and therefore could only help them. Kyoko sat down, took one of Sir Hoppington's mucousy feet in her hands, and offered the other one to Kuon. He took a hand and a mucousy foot. Kyoko started another scrying session, doing her absolute best to not be jealous of the throwing knives. They had to have been made by the palace blacksmith. The man was a master. She'd have to introduce him to Princess Rosa someday; he was sure to love her.

When, inevitably, the scrying glass only showed Kyoko her own face, she let go of his hand and Sir Hoppington's foot with a sigh. "It didn't work. Again. Even with Sir Hoppington!"

He ribbited reproachfully.

"No, no, I'm not saying it's your fault! I'm just — I'm sorry," she said, looking up at the prince. "And you got such throwing knives for this, too…."

"Oh, well." He had just gotten to hold her hand for the better part of an hour, so he was happy. "I guess you'll just have to keep them."

"What?" she yelped. "No, I couldn't possibly! It wouldn't be appropriate. These are meant for your True Love!"

"They're meant to be used, though," he argued, and dared to pull out a bit of the pout that had gotten his mom to hold Sir Hoppington despite the mucous. "It would be wasteful to let them get all dusty and rusty, wouldn't it?"

"Well… I mean…." She trailed off, deliberately avoiding his gaze. That face was dangerous! "If you're sure…."

He nodded vigorously.

"I'll just keep them until your True Love comes along, and then I'll give them right back. I promise."

"Okay. You do that," Kuon said, knowing that someday, they would look back at this moment and laugh.

Sir Hoppington, in all his wisdom, ate a bug that had gotten in through the window. He was so glad humans hadn't invented window screens yet.

Every review is a bug for Sir Hoppington XD