The afternoon sun beat down upon the clearing in the kingswood, and together Stefan and I sat beneath a tree, watching his cousin Gaspard slash away at the squires brave enough to train with him. One by one, or two by two, he knocked them into the dust with excessive force. Gaspard was quick on his feet and quite strong, and he loved to fight. It was his favorite sport.

"He's probably going to win the tournament," Stefan murmured.

"The reward is quite enormous," I said.

"He's not doing it for the gold; just the glory. If anyone is going to the lay the head of a beast at my father's feet and smile about it, it's him."

Gaspard fought dirty. He didn't give his opponents an inch, and he would keep going at them even after they gave up. It was as if he needed to be violent.

"You saw it, then? The Beast?"

Stefan nodded.

"What did it look like?"

"It was three times the size of a lion," he said. "It had everything—claws, fangs, horns, and fur. But it was unlike any creature I had ever seen before."

I shivered at the thought of it. I took a deep breath. "Last night I had a dream about the Necromancer. He's still out there somewhere, isn't he?"

When Stefan looked at me, there seemed to be fear in his eyes. "He…is," he said uncomfortably. "But he can't touch you here, Mary."

"I had a dream that he found me again."

Stefan placed his hands gently but firmly on my arms and looked me deep in the eyes. "He won't. That's why you're here—so I can protect you until we find him and kill him."

"But everyone is looking for a Beast. They're not looking for the Necromancer."

A shrill cry of pain interrupted our conversation. We switched our gazes to the poor boy Gaspard had just slashed. There was a cut across the back of his leg and blood was now dripping onto the ground. From the looks of it, Gaspard was just about to stomp him into the dirt.

"That's enough!" Stefan said, standing. "Cousin—take him up to the physician's office now or I'll have my father expel you from the tournament!"

Gaspard threw the prince an angry glare. "I don't recognize your authority over me, cousin. Mind your own business."

Stefan's nostrils flared, and he stormed over to the wounded squire and helped him up. I rushed over and supported his other side as we walked him to his horse. The boy was trembling in pain. Gaspard spat on the ground.

"There's something wrong with him," I whispered to Stefan.

"Everything's wrong with him," he said, helping the squire onto his horse. "Tell my father what Gaspard did. He will pay for the treatment of your wound," he told the boy.

"The prince is a bleeding heart boy! You would never last in the tournament anyway," Gaspard remarked.

Stefan turned to him, his eyes blazing with anger. "Just shut it, Gaspard."

"What? You're too good to spar with me now? Don't want to get kicked in the dirt in front of your girlfriend?"

"Is that what you want? You want to fight me now?"

Gaspard shrugged, a smug smile curling over his lips. "You're just mad that you got wounded and are useless. I actually feel sorry for you."

"Wounded?" I asked. "What is he talking about?"

Stefan turned away from Gaspard. "Let's get out of here," he said to me. "Before my cousin does something he will most certainly regret."

We mounted Stefan's horse and he took us up the path through the wood, Gaspard's laughter trailing behind us.

"Something's on your mind," I remarked.

We sat beside a trickling stream in the late afternoon, somewhere no one could find us. Stefan was becoming more and more withdrawn from his friends and family. I knew I was partially to blame, but I also knew he was hiding something. We both were.

The prince gazed at the water as it made it ways over the rocks and earth, gleaming sometimes in the spots of sunlight that found its way in through the treetops. I noticed him gazing into the distance quite often, lately.

"Mary, what happened to your home?" he asked.

I heaved a sigh, internally. "I don't know," I said quietly. "All I know is that my step-mother is dead now."

He thought for a moment. "If she's dead, then nothing is in the way of you reclaiming what's yours."

I ran my fingers through my hair uncomfortably. "I don't want to go back there again."

He looked at me, his hazel eyes not understanding. "But it's you home. You should take it back."

I didn't like where this was going, but I couldn't avoid the topic if he was asking me. "Stefan… the night we met, the night of the ball—something happened. And I made the choice to never return to that house again. Everything with the Necromancer occurred then and that's the only reason I've ended up back here: because of you. If—if you don't want me to stay at the castle anymore, then I have to leave. But I'm not going back to the place I once called home."

He looked at me in shock, a twinge of hurt in his eyes. "I don't want you to leave," he said. "But I need to make sure you're going to be okay. How can you be okay if you don't have a home?"

I didn't want to get angry with him because he was sincere, but I was growing frustrated having to explain myself. "I wasn't okay when I had a home, and I'm not okay now. Is that why you like me?"

Stefan looked away, his cheeks flushing. "I didn't mean to question you," he said apologetically. "I can't even imagine what you've been through. But when I brought you here, I thought it would make things easier for you, and selfishly, I thought it would make things easier for me too."

I didn't understand. "So what's changed?"

"It's my father," said the prince. "Or should I say, the king. He's got this plan to leave the kingdom, passing the crown to me so he can gallivant across the world. But I haven't exactly been making it easy for him, and he's retaliated."

"What happened?"

"He says we must marry, or he'll send you away. I didn't think he would actually do something like that until now. But he's serious."

A hallow silence fell between us, and for a moment I was taken out of the tranquility of the wood with the bubbling stream with the prince, and I was staring into the imperceptibly dark abyss of the uncertainty of my life. I didn't want to marry Stefan.

It didn't make sense, of course. The night we met I didn't even now he was the prince and I wondered—did I fall in love? There was something about him that I couldn't explain, something that made me want him but not want him all at once, and I was so afraid of breaking his heart, because the prince was the kindest person—he was perfect. And I didn't deserve him. Not after what I did to Lorna.

"What should we do?" I asked quietly.

"We could leave," he said.

I gazed at him in astonishment. "Leave? You? But you're the prince."

He shook his head. "I don't want to be. I want to see the ocean. I want to feel the hull of a ship rolling over the waves beneath my feet. I want to see a new land with my own eyes, and never have to feel the weight of a kingdom on my shoulders again. We- we don't have a lot of time in this world, to do the things we want. What are our lives worth if we live it always for others and never for ourselves?"

"You're right," I said. "It isn't fair. You should choose what to do with each day you live. It just seems like a lot to leave behind."

"I don't want to leave you behind," he said. "But there may come a time when you need to return home. Can you at least consider reconsidering, for me?"

I looked at him, a funny feeling growing in my heart. "You make it sound like you're going to vanish."

His eyes were unreadable, but certainly there were many words hanging there. "Nobody just vanishes," he said. "But sometimes they die."

The sun was setting as I left the castle, the summer heat dissipating into the darkening sky. Stefan's personal guard, Lance, rode a long beside me on his horse as I led the way to the home I swore never to return to. A memory like a tomb. I asked Stefan not to come with me.

We didn't say much as we wound our way down through the kingdom. Villagers were mostly tucked away in their houses eating dinner, or closing up their shops. The streets were as dry as dust.

I rode the horse at a steady pace along the small lane off of the main street where my old home awaited in the darkness. I could see from outside of the gates that no lights were lit inside.

Maybe the house is empty, I thought to myself hopefully. In his coat Lance had a warranty deed from the king—really Stefan, using his father's signature, for the house to be passed into my possession. I couldn't kick my step-sisters out without looking them in the eye, and legally I had to account for my things in person. Not that I had owned much, anyway.

In any case, I had settled upon the idea of allowing my step-sisters to stay living in the house as long as they properly paid rent and maintained it respectfully.

They'll have to find work, I thought to myself with surprising delight. Now they'll know what it's like to scrub a fireplace.

We walked through the garden and up to the front door. I opened it without a sound, and we entered.

Lance followed me as I quietly stepped through the entrance hall and into the dining room. Empty, everything in its place. No one's been eating in the dining room, I noted.

The kitchen was also empty, save for the dying embers in the fireplace. Old Mia had left some time ago.

The living room, however, was changed: above the fireplace upon the mantle hung a large portrait of Lorna and her daughters, DiDi and Anna. The picture must have been newly painted right before she died. Lorna's cold eyes looked down upon me as I stared back up at them.

"Lance," I said. "Could you help me take this down?"

I lit one last fire in that house and set the portrait into it, watching it burn slowly. That's how my step-sisters found me.

"You!" Anna shrieked. "What are you doing here?!"

DiDi trailed in behind her, her mouth set in fury.

Lance stepped in front of me, reaching into is coat for the king's warrant. "This home now belongs to Mary," he said. "She is the sole owner of this property and everything in it."

The sisters exchanged glances. I stepped up beside Lance. "I want you to know that I forgive you for the way you treated me. And I forgive your mother. I'm sorry she's gone, but I have to take back my home now."

Anna snatched the warrant from Lance's grasp and read it, her eyes zig-zagging down the document.

"I thought the Necromancer took care of you," said Didi. "And then you show up in the arms of the prince and now you're taking our home out from under our feet when you will soon have an entire kingdom in your possession?! You are an evil bitch!" She spat on the floor at my feet.

"Watch yourself!" Lance said authoritatively, stepping between us. "Mary is under the prince's protection. You can be arrested if you don't mind your behavior."

Anna's nostrils flared in the firelight. "Well now that you are here, you can admit to what you did. Say it. You killed our mother!" her voice broke.

Lance looked to me, his eyebrows raised in shock and confusion. I steadied myself.

"I don't know what happened to Lorna," I said evenly. "I wasn't here when she died."

DiDi scoffed. "You didn't need to be here, because her tea was poisoned. Someone threw out the evidence—but we know that's what happened. She told us it was you! You're the one who should be arrested!"

I was startled by how much they knew. My hands began to tremble.

"Do you want them to leave?" Lance asked.

I breathed carefully through my nose. "I will allow you both to stay, but you will have to pay rent and manage the upkeep of the house and the garden. Old Mia will be retiring."

I left them in the living room with Lance as I climbed the stairs of the house. I passed the second floor and continued up the stairs to the tower attic; my room.

It was another place that had frozen in time. My bed was made, untouched. My few things were in place—nothing worth stealing, in my step-sisters' eyes. I walked over to the window and looked out: there it was, Stefan's castle looming brightly in the sky. The same view, but not the same feeling when I looked at it. For a fleeting moment I remembered what it used to feel like, to stare up at the king's castle as it gleamed in the night.

I turned away from the view and left my old bedroom, closing the door behind me. Downstairs the sisters were having a heated discussion in the living room. Lance was waiting for me by the front door.

"I told them you would arrange for their rent to be paid shortly," he said. "They're discussing ways to take this to court."

I shrugged. "Let them."

We walked through the garden back out to the gates, mounted the horses, and set back upon the road towards the castle. My job was done.

As the sisters ranted and raved and cried and broke things in the living room, a knock on the front door interrupted their fury. They simmered down and glanced at each other in confusion.

"Who could that be?" Anna asked. "At this hour?"

DiDi threw her arms up in the air. "I don't know who it is, I wasn't expecting anyone! I wasn't expecting any of this!"

"Get the door!"

"You get it!"

Anna snatched a porcelain plate off of the mantle and threw it at her sister's feet before storming out of the living room and into the hall. DiDi followed on her heels, ready to pull her back by her hair.

"Get off me!" Anna shrieked as she opened the door.

A stranger stood upon the steps.

"Who are you?" Anna asked brusquely, pushing DiDi out of the door frame.

The old man with heavily hooded eyes was agape as the sisters struggled and wrestled before him, until they finally stopped and stared at him expectantly.

"My—my name is Riss, if it pleases you," he said. "I was w-w-wondering if you could help me find someone. A girl named M-M-Mary is supposed to live here, c-correct? Someone is looking for her."