The forest felt and sounded alive with the activity of animals occurring around and calling to each other, coupled with the beautiful melody of the various bird songs. Emma soaked it all in as she lay on a threadbare blanket, staring up at the forest canopy. Every time the trees shifted in the breeze, the beautiful blue sky peeked through, and it made her smile. She breathed in the clean forest air and closed her eyes.

In her mind, she ran through where everyone was right now, and that darkened her mood. She wasn't used to being idle, and it rankled that their mission didn't include her –they never did. She resented it when her mother coddled her and insisted she was a princess and needed 'protection.'

She audibly scoffed at that thought. After all, what is a princess with no kingdom? Regina, the Evil Queen, as the group called her, had an iron grip on the kingdom of Misthaven. Her parents had long ago lost their throne, and Emma often argued that she hadn't really been a princess a day in her life. Her mother, Snow, had been deposed by her stepmother before Emma had even been born.

Every citizen of Misthaven who wanted to live and not have their heart ripped out and crushed referred to the wicked woman as "Her Royal Highness, Queen Supreme Regina." She had added Supreme to her own title after she conquered more countries; she ruled more than Misthaven now. Rumor was that if she conquered a few more, she planned to change her title again, this time to Empress Regina.

To the group Emma was a part of, Regina was a Royal pain in the ass. She hadn't stopped hunting for Snow, her stepdaughter, all these years later. When Emma had heard why Regina hated her mother, she had been confused. She couldn't determine why anyone would trust a child with such sensitive information. How stupid could Regina be in the first place? On top of that, with the type of mother she had, what would induce her to trust anyone? She couldn't figure out how an adult could hold a child responsible for such a slip.

Yes, Snow had promised not to tell anyone that Regina was really in love with the farm boy, and her not keeping that promise resulted in Cora, Regina's mother, ripping out his still-beating heart in front of her daughter. But again, who trusts a child with that information?

Snow still held out hope that Regina would forgive her. But Emma believed darkness could invade a person's very being and corrupt them fundamentally. Still, she knew and loved people who had started off as evil and changed their ways. As her mother always said, never give up hope. Quietly, never breathing a word of it to Snow, Emma didn't think Regina would ever change. Her magic and her power seemed to drive her now. She didn't believe that there was any love left in that wicked woman.

Regina's latest atrocity, two weeks ago, had shocked even their group for its depravity. Word was the Dark One had been working with Regina on a spell, and apparently, it required the dust from the heart of the one she loved most. She murdered her own beloved father, Henry, and made a spell to return someone from another realm.

Frowning, Emma got up and pulled up the blanket, shaking it and removing all the dirt and leaves from it. She then folded it up and tucked it under her arm. She made up her mind to be productive while her parents, and their trusted allies, were off gathering information on the latest development with Regina's marriage. The announcement of her forthcoming wedding had come so suddenly and too close on the heels of that horrible spell. They all wondered why the woman who seemed against ever marrying again had suddenly changed her tune.

Emma strode over to the home where she lived with her parents. The outside was very nondescript. That was the point. The four walls were made with stone and wood shake siding and had ivy growing all around it, and on days when she was feeling fanciful, it almost looked to her like the forest around it was trying to swallow the cottage. Also, the roof was thatched and covered in moss, with a chimney peeking out. It really did look like a charming little place to her. She pulled the front door handle, and the wood-planking door squeaked open.

She stepped through the front door, and there was where her magic had taken over. The blue fairy had begun teaching it to her from a very young age. The woman had insisted that Emma get control and show some restraint. Looking back, she wondered how her mother and father dealt with her as a young child. While most parents would take away something they didn't want their child to have, and they too would, Emma could use her magic and call the item back. It was how, at the age of two, she choked on an acorn, and Lancelot had to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

She turned right and made her way past the living room, and went down the hall across from the meeting room. Her door was at the end of the hall. She went in and returned the blanket to its spot in the wooden chest at the foot of her massive bed. On the outside, it looked like a cute little cottage; on the inside, it was a huge home where she and her parents had their own wing, and all their allies lived in the other wing.

Grabbing up a copper bowl from the chest that she returned the blanket to, she walked out of her room and made her way to the kitchen. "Good morning, Granny," she said when she saw the woman hunched over, pulling bread out of the oven.

"And what are you doing, Emma?" Granny asked, eyeing the bowl with a scowl.

"Why ask when you already know you won't like the answer?" Replied Emma as she dipped the bowl in the cask for clean drinking water and filled it up a third of the way.

"Magic can be-"

Emma interrupted since she knew the ending by heart. "Traced and always comes with a price. I know! I just want to check the perimeter and ensure no one is nosing around. I would hate for someone to run into everyone on their way back from the mission."

Granny made a tisk-ing sound and planned the bread on the counter with a thud. She wasn't fooled. "You're pouting."

Emma sighed in exasperation. "I have magic! Why wouldn't they let me go with them? Why won't they realize I can be of help? I'm not a liability!"

"They are protecting you."

"I'm eighteen!" She yelled, stomping her foot. Mom was ousted from her kingdom and became a renegade at my age."

"And she was forced into that," Granny replied, grabbing a bunch of carrots and beginning to chop them. "You aren't being forced into anything, dear."

"Yes, I am. I'm being forced to be idle and sit here twiddling my thumbs while my parents risk themselves. Regina doesn't even know I exist! I could sneak-"

"No! You most certainly will not!" While Emma was distracted over the outburst, Granny snatched the copper bowl out of her hands and dumped the water. "And this will stay in my possession until your parents return, missy!"

"I could get it back easily from you."

"I know, dear, but you won't. You respect me too much to use your magic against me –even like that."

Emm huffed out the admission, "Yeah."

"Go relax. It's a nice day."

"It's a beautiful day, but it's not a nice day. My parents are out there spying against the evil witch Regina who wants them both very dead."

"And you're scared," Granny replied kindly.

"Terrified! If I were there, I wouldn't feel so helpless."

"If you were there, your parents' attention would be divided, which could get them killed. You are a liability —to them. Because they love you so much."

Emma turned, and as she did, she said, "I'll go practice with my sword in the armory. That will at least make me feel like I'm accomplishing something."

When Emma was in the armory with the door shut tightly, she smirked and drew her sword out of seemingly nowhere. After her parents had forbidden her from going around armed all the time, she learned how to use magic to create a sort of dimensional pocket where she could keep it stored at all times. They wanted her to be a lady, and she wanted to be a warrior. She never told anyone about it.

She practiced for just over an hour; her stamina for swordplay was good, but she didn't want to tire herself out too much. She had other things she wanted to do today, and next was dagger work. She slipped the dagger out of a similar magical pocket and practiced throwing the dagger at the door. Usually, throwing a dagger armed your opponent after the first throw, but Emma recalled the dagger, and it lay on the palm of her hand, now ready to be thrown again.

When she was done with her sword work and dagger throwing, she sharpened both to a razor's edge. Then she left the armory, now looking for what to do next. Emma was aware the time her parents were gone was going to drag on. It was three days with a cart ride to the border, and the group that went wouldn't be moving even half that speed. Everyone needed to proceed with precision and care not to get caught out by Regina or her spies.

Part of her upset was over who else left with her parents. Normally she would have gone to any of them for training or just to talk, but they were gone too. Lancelot, Robin Hood, Ruby, Graham, Jiminy Hopper, Grumpy, August, and the blue fairy. She really wanted a distraction from the apprehension of her parents and so many she cared for being gone.

It was why she lied to Granny, not that she believed she fooled her. She didn't want to look into the bowl and check for people wandering around the forest. She wanted to see if, unlike the hundred other times, Regina would be somewhere that she could spy on her. The palace was warded entirely from her looking in. But she wanted to show she could get the same information that the group of ten was going for all herself. She wanted to force her parents to see she could be a soldier in the fight to take back the kingdom.

It frustrated her that with all her training in swords, daggers, archery, hand-to-hand fighting, and magic, she was still left home. She understood what Granny was trying to say, but the truth was her parents loved each other, and Ruby and Graham loved each other very much. The reason they weren't a liability to each other was that they trusted that they were capable of protecting themselves. Emma wondered what she would have to do to get them to trust her too.