Chapter 8
The next night, Amy returned Sonic's jacket without a word. She didn't mention the ring. She wanted him to talk to her about it without any of her usual prying.
Of course, Sonic didn't bring it up, but Amy did catch him peeking at her while she was doing her drills, holding the ring on its new chain. She watched discreetly as he slipped it over his head and pressed it close to his chest. She felt satisfied that she had accomplished what she hoped she would - he knew that she had seen the ring, and he knew he could trust her to hold back when she felt it right.
She wasn't always so untamable - she was also a diplomat, and she understood feelings intuitively.
The days passed them by and familiarity settled on them like a favorite quilt. Perhaps they would have both been more alarmed at how easy it became to be together, if only the time didn't fly by so quickly, if their conversation didn't feel so natural, and if the small ways they touched each other didn't light their senses on fire.
Amy felt irritated as their relationship grew bigger than she ever thought it might. Their friendship became so deep so fast, that it bumped up against the confines of the cage that they both had to keep it in for the sake of the other. So many times as the days passed, Amy felt the truth of why she needed him to help her on the tip of her tongue. She despised having to clamp her secret down on particularly hard days when her father berated and criticized her incessantly. She wanted to tell Sonic about what was on her mind and aching her heart, wanted to ask what he thought about things. She began to consider him a resource, a person she could trust to advise her. His counsel was sound, his levity brought her up, and his presence made her feel safe.
She wondered especially what he thought about things like arranged marriages, and how he would react if he knew that she was on two separate doomsday timers - each promising different, equally scary explosions when they finally ticked down to zero. Every moment spent together she was barreling toward not just the Tournament, but a matrimony as of yet unknown to her, and she wished desperately to have Sonic's help bearing the burden of her snowballing fear.
Without Shadow around to keep her calm, Amy spent the days fighting with her father more often than not. She tried her best to avoid the King, and busied herself by wandering the castle and getting to know the staff.
Shadow sent her a letter only once in the next week and a half. It was short - he clearly was very busy - but Amy treasured it nonetheless.
Don't let me catch you saying, or writing, such crass words again.
I can only hope that you are thriving as you say, you honor me with your hard work.
Sir Shadow, Rose Kingdom
Amy knew that for Shadow this was a particularly gushy letter, and it brought her great joy picturing his embarrassment while writing it. She wrote to him several more times, joking to him about men she knew would be attending the ball, telling him about the people she met in the castle, and recalling for him the terrible things she and her father said to each other. She wrote in great detail all of the things she couldn't yet tell Sonic, pretending that the letters were being sent off to him instead and daydreaming about what his reactions might be to the information they held.
For his part, Sonic found it harder to contain the multitude of things that Amy made him feel, let alone begin to understand them. Since he had discovered the ring on the chain, he felt more vulnerable. It was scary to know that she had seen it. He thought she would hold it over his head that first night, dangle it like blackmail to get him to talk. But instead, she had placed the subject of the ring in his palms and left it for him to approach her with when he was ready. Like a masterful chess player, she had moved the pieces into place for him and now it was his turn to make a move.
He wasn't sure if he would ever be ready, but Amy seemed content to let him take his time, which pleasantly surprised him.
As for the fire in his stomach, it crept across his skin with every touch, every close call, every bit of lingering eye contact. Every day with her, every time he heard her enter the pond to bathe, he felt the pull to turn toward her grow stronger. Her very presence was like the call of a siren, beckoning him to dive into something that he knew he could never handle. He refused to give in. Though he was tempted, Sonic reminded himself that if he answered the call, in the end he would surely flounder and die just like every other sorry sailor.
So he held back and tried to tame his wild imagination for her sake, but he swore that she was trying to make it harder for him on purpose.
Once, about three days before the breakout, Amy offered to show Sonic how to ride a horse. She was procrastinating exercising on a day that she was particularly sore and he knew it, but the gleam in her eyes was so inebriating that when she said: "Come on, just one little ride? For me?" he heard himself saying yes.
He couldn't get it out of his head for days afterwards - the different sensations overwhelming his body.
She had mounted up easily enough, and Sonic was left on the ground wondering what he was supposed to do. He opened his mouth to make a snide remark, but instead yelped as he was swooped up easily, his feet lifting off the ground. Amy had bent over and scooped him up like he was nothing, pulling him into her lap with her strong arms. He sat side-saddle in front of her, pressed against her chest. Her arms encircled him, cradling him into her side.
"What? Nothing to say funny man?" Amy had teased.
"Am I really that light?" he had grumbled, trying not to squirm too much in her lap.
"No," Amy had laughed, "I'm just that strong."
As she wrapped her arms around him and gathered her reins in her hands, Sonic did his best to keep his breathing under control. But his heart thumped wildly every time her arms tensed around him and with every lungful of her breezy scent. Her sweat and her perfume, the heat of her chest on his back, the feeling of being in her lap - it all clouded his senses, and he only sank deeper into her with every bounce as they trotted.
Their ride started out mortifying, and Sonic was thankful Amy could not see his face. He knew that he was surely reacting to their every motion because he could feel the heat of his own blush burning on his cheeks.
But quickly enough, their trot had turned into a gallop, and they zipped through the forest for hours, laughing and egging her horse to go faster. They were nowhere near as fast as Sonic could run on her horse, but the cool wind in his quills felt much the same, and it calmed him.
And unlike when he was running, this time he had Amy hollering and laughing into his ear, her breath hot on his neck.
It had been hard for him to sleep after that night… and a few more after that.
At the camp, Sonic made promises to Knuckles that by the end of the month - which was, by a cruel twist of fate, the day after they rescued Silver - he would have double what they usually owed Scourge, and Knuckles eventually agreed to help him with the rescue.
Though Sonic didn't actually know if he could keep his promises, he knew that he would try his damndest to, and that without Knuckles' and Tails' help, the mission would not succeed. Together, the three thieves plotted how to take down the guards without risking any more than Knuckles was willing to. Eventually they agreed that Sonic would be the only one of the three of them to actually set foot in the castle, the other two would simply be on scouting and distraction duty.
On the night before they were meant to bust Silver out of the castle, Sonic and Amy were much more somber than usual as they plotted and eventually agreed that he would meet her at her room the following evening.
Amy wasn't sure what she was going to do to keep Sonic from finding out her hefty, weeks-long untruth, but she told herself that she had the whole of the next day to figure it out. Her mind ran a mile a minute as she spun out possible misdirects - perhaps she could pull a cot into her room and tell him that she stayed in as the Princess' personal handmaiden?
They agreed that Amy would leave the door to her room unlocked for him. She told him there was a balcony connected to her room, and Sonic offered up his kerchief to tie on her banister so he could find her.
He looked so much more vulnerable without the bandana, Amy thought. When he smiled at her, she saw his expression in its totality, unhidden by the brown fabric, and she liked it.
Their exchanges that night were tender and slow, obviously affected by the impending mission. Neither made a single joke the entire time.
They were serious because the rescue mission required solemnity, but also because they had both quietly realized that they would be breaching a huge, dangerous boundary. Sonic thought incessantly during the day about what it would be like being in her room, on her turf, and what would happen if he got caught. He was obsessed with wondering what her life would look like, and didn't know why.
No longer would he be meeting her in the neutral space that had become a breeding ground for their intimacy - he would be a trespasser in her life. He was… anxious about it, to say the least.
But also, he was excited like he had never felt before. It was a totally different thrill from the one he usually felt when thieving, and the feeling had his mind, his heart, and his body in a vice grip.
They parted ways that night with an awkward handshake - they weren't sure who had initiated it, it just happened. On her ride home Amy coughed roughly, her shivering becoming uncontrollable. Guilt over her secret gnawed at her like the cold, and she wished she had Sonic's doublet again.
It's for his own good, Amy reminded herself. She thought the reassuring mantra over and over again as she laid in bed - hoping desperately for sleep to come and whisk away her anxieties, unable to feel anything but the whiplash of her sweat going from cold, to hot, and back again.
It must be the anxiety - the anticipation, Amy thought. She closed her eyes tight and pulled her quilt over her head.
It's for his own good, she repeated again, hoping this one would finally do the trick and slow her skittering heart. Everything will work out.
She couldn't have known how wrong she was.
The day of Silver's breakout, Amy's luck avoiding her father ran out. The King caught her sitting on the steps of the ballroom having coffee with a rather nice flower arranger and got upset about how she was 'debasing herself.' He ordered her into her finery and told her they were going out.
There was a festival in a nearby town, the King said. They would take a few guards with them into the village and show their faces to remind the people exactly who it was they were loyal to.
Though Amy's corset was so tight that tears sprang to her eyes, she was excited to go out into the kingdom and do some good. It had been so long since she had gone into a village, been anywhere outside of the castle and the glade, and she always loved getting to soak in the culture of the cities. She was nervous about the night's promised excitement and felt almost relieved at the chance to get away and take her mind off of the breakout.
Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails spent their morning among all the thieves. At the end of every month, the residents of the camp all participated in several rigorously monitored rituals including washing their clothes and cleaning up the camp in the morning, and heading into town to spend the last of their allotted earnings for the month.
Scourge had a rule that if a thief did not use their rations in totality for the month, any leftover would be returned to him and redistributed for the next month. It was tradition for the thieves to head into a nearby town on the last day of the month to buy drinks, gamble, and waste any last little bit of their earnings they might still have.
It was obvious the thieves were feeling particularly rowdy that day. Word around the camp was that there was a festival going on. They were all itching for festival foods, dancing, and drinking.
Sonic scrubbed himself and his clothes down vigorously among all the other thieves when they arrived at the river, oddly quiet. He kept having visions of himself in Amy's room in only a few hours, and it had him swallowing the impulse to gag at the feeling of the water and keep scrubbing.
When Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails arrived in town, all freshly cleaned and combed along with the other thieves, they were swept away immediately in the festivities of the Autumn Solstice celebration. Tails was asked to dance in the town square by a few young women pretty quickly, and though the young fox looked to Sonic and Knuckles for saving, both men turned from him, laughing and jeering, and left him to fend for himself.
Knuckles went straight into the noisiest-sounding bar - a lively place called Cottontail's known for "fair" gambling. Sonic thought it likely that Knuckles hoped to make their double portion for the month tonight, not confident - and rightfully so - that Sonic actually had it covered.
Sonic was about to follow him inside, when a stall amongst the slew of vendors caught his eye. He would never have given it a second glance usually, except that there was a beautiful silk flower pin displayed prominently in a box of other brooches.
Sonic eyed the pin casually from a distance - a blue forget-me-not with a tear-drop pearl in the center of the silk flower petals.
The little piece of jewelry was an extravagance, but for some reason, Sonic couldn't stop picturing it on Amy. The scene played out so clearly in his mind - they would break Silver out, and then he would present her this small token as a thank you for all the time they had spent together and all she had risked for him. He could see her smile now, and it was such a staggeringly pretty thought that it sealed the deal for him.
He hefted his satchel in his hand - probably a bit too light for such a pretty little thing. But he could barter the price down easily, and it wasn't like he was being irresponsible by spending the money. Anything leftover would just go back to Scourge - and it wouldn't count towards the extra they owed, either. Sonic took a deep breath and approached the artisan selling the pin. If anything, he told himself, this was to commemorate Amy officially becoming a thief after their mission.
And a forget-me-not, well… Sonic hoped - somewhere deep in his chest - that when it was all said and done, Amy would not forget him.
It took some sweet-talking - Sonic told the man that it was the anniversary of his first year of marriage and he had forgotten to pick something up for his wife - but he secured the pin in his pouch and went to join Knuckles in the bar to help the man gamble.
It was golden hour when Amy and her father pulled up to the village on their horses. They were flanked by six knights on steeds, and Amy was beginning to shiver as the sun started to set. She had been so cold the last several days, and Cream had mentioned a few times that Amy's cough sounded like it was getting thicker and more frequent.
She felt the tickle of one in her chest rise, but she sat up straighter in her saddle and pushed it down. She pulled her maroon cloak closer around her and smiled genuinely as she heard music and the laughter of townsfolk grow louder in the square.
It was a lively celebration in full swing. There were vendors with wooden carts lining the streets and in front of every tavern and business. Lanterns were lit and banners strung around a well at the center of the square, and several fiddlers danced and played on a makeshift wooden stage near a bar. The loud, barking laugh of rowdy patrons poured out from the open door, mixing with the music and the whoops of the crowd.
Dozens of people shouted and danced a lively peasant jig, and the air was sweet with the scent of hot butter and cinnamon. Amy smiled warmly when she spotted a pair of lovers near the well, in the center of the whirlwind of dancers. A sheep woman sat on the stone lip of the well, and a young hedgehog man stood in front of her, leaning with both elbows on either side of her hips, his hands resting on her back, securing her in place.
She thought briefly of Blaze and Silver while watching the man lean in and whisper something in the woman's ear. After tonight, Amy hoped they would have a chance at a life like that: worry-free, with all the time in the world to be with each other. She felt excitement bubble in her stomach.
Oddly enough, she also thought of Sonic as she watched the man press a kiss to the woman's cheek, but Amy didn't linger on the thought long.
A knight announced the presence of the royals loudly. Everything except for the noises in adjoining bars stopped immediately, and all the peasants dropped to their knees. After a moment of acknowledgement, Amy's father raised a hand to strike up the music again. A handful of people went back to dancing, but more of them approached her father's horse, kneeling or touching his boots, asking for favors or guidance or offering praises.
Amy put on her best smile as the number of people in the square swelled with the excitement of their arrival. Vendors and young male apprentices approached her horse and lifted up small offerings like fruit and handmade goods. Amy accepted them graciously, giving each villager a smile and verbal thanks in return, but she didn't feel like that was enough. She wanted to dismount. To dance. To ask the people what it was they were celebrating. She wanted to follow the delicious scent of caramel on the wind and dig into a pastry.
Amy looked at her father, occupied by the strenuous task of nodding stiffly at anyone who presented him with something good enough to earn his attention, and decided she would do what she wanted.
Amy pushed off of her horse easily and hit the cobblestone hard, her skirts swooshing heavily about her feet. The men surrounding her gasped. Some reached for her instinctively to help and then quickly pulled away, afraid of what would happen to them if they touched her, and some sprang away from her without hesitation.
Amy heard a knight call, "Princess!" but she was already deep in the crowd, not high enough to hear him clearly over the music and murmuring, and certainly not pompous enough to care. She nodded to dancers with a smile as she made her way through the crowd. People whispered all around her, jumping to see past the crowds at what she would do.
"Your majesty?" an old voice rang out from behind her, cutting through the noise.
Amy turned, and saw an old cat woman sitting in a rocking chair next to a cart, holding out her shaking hand. The cart was full of hot cakes and buns, and the smell was incredible. The business was clearly family run. An adult woman who looked just like her mother came out from behind the cart gasping. She put her hands on the old woman's shoulders and said scoldingly, "Mother!"
The old woman and her daughter looked up at Amy, who approached the sweet duo happily.
"Forgive her, your highness," the woman bowed. "She is old, she doesn't know what she's doing!"
Amy stopped right in front of the old woman, took her hand in both of her own, and smiled at both of them.
"I am so pleased to meet you both, and delighted that your mother called to me," Amy said genuinely. "And I would be even more pleased if you would do me the honor of letting me buy one of your delicious looking pastries!"
The anxious woman looked like she could burst into happy tears while the old woman began cooing over Amy, saying how pretty and how like the queen she was. Amy blushed as the cart owner scrambled to get Amy a cinnamon bun in a brown bag. Amy accepted it graciously and discreetly overpaid for it generously, offering the woman her warmest smile. As Amy handed over her money, she spotted a big pair of eyes looking up at her from behind the cat woman's dress.
It was a young girl who clung to her mother's skirt and looked up at Amy with pure awe. Amy almost laughed, looking over each woman and feeling warmth rise inside her at the charming trio of mothers and daughters.
Amy put the pastry bag back on the counter.
"What is your name?" Amy asked the small cat - she couldn't have been more than 6.
"Millie," came the demure reply. The girl's grip on her mother's skirt loosened a bit.
"Do you like to dance, Millie?" Amy asked. She stepped away from the cart and beckoned the girl to come out from behind her mother.
With a loving push from her mom, Millie did. As the girl approached, Amy crouched in her gown so she could look her in the eye. She thought she heard a few gasps from in the crowd as her skirts touched the ground and were dirtied.
"Yes," Millie nodded. Amy saw Millie was missing a front tooth and stopped herself from chuckling. "But my mom says I can't go without an adult." The girl swished her skirts, like just thinking about dancing made her antsy to move.
"Could I take you?" Amy said, and looked back up at the girl's mother.
The woman's mouth was hanging open, but she nodded a silent yes and then dipped into a curtsy so low that she might as well have sat on the ground.
"Then let's go!" Amy said joyously, and swooped the girl up in her arms. A shout went up in the crowd and the fiddles struck up with renewed fervor, and Millie giggled in pleasure as Amy lifted her up. Amy twirled Millie around as more dancers flooded the streets and people began to clap along with the quick tempo of the melody, the party bursting back to life with a vengeance.
It was a dream. Amy thought she might've heard her father calling her name, but she didn't care. She spun and spun with Millie, laughing and jumping with villagers, taking the arms of other dancers to skip in intricate and interlocking circles. She was breathless, her lungs compressed in her corset, but the lack of air just made her feel pleasantly dizzy. A freeing warmth overtook her as she closed her eyes and just danced.
The crowd surged and grew louder as word spread of the dancing Princess, and from behind the cake vendor's cart where the cat woman sobbed happy tears with her old mother, a young bee boy pushed his way through long legs in the crowd, searching for a certain bar.
Sonic was trying to help Knuckles cheat at cards in Cottontail's when a shout went up near the door. The dozens of thieves inside sat up in tandem, all alert at any sign of potential threat.
Sonic's own hand flew to the knife on his belt, his ears flicking back and forth attentively.
"Hey! - No kids in the bar!" came a harsh cry. There was a commotion near the door, and then Charmy Bee was buzzing in the air in the tavern, just out of reach of the bouncer.
"Thought you'd want to know!" the boy piped breathlessly, his eyes scanning for Scourge as his hands touched the ceiling to keep himself from bumping against it. "The Princess just showed up - and she's dancing with a peasant!"
The bar grew deathly quiet as Sonic's ears pricked and his fur stood on end.
The Princess, he thought, and maybe Amy with her.
He thought about what it might be like to have the chance to ask Amy to dance, and he smiled. He would never do it of course - dance with Amy out in the open like that and risk blowing their cover - but nonetheless he thought about it. Sonic's eyes found Scourge, and he held his breath for the man's reaction.
Scourge bolted upright from where he sat drinking in a corner, swindling a bar regular out of some money.
"What?" he hissed.
"It's true!" Charmy swerved out of the way of the bouncer's reaching hands. "And the King is here too, but he doesn't look happy!"
Scourge made a beeline for the door, shoving past other men who were beginning to get up, and dozens of tipsy patrons spilled onto the street after him hoping to catch a glimpse of the Princess and the King.
Knuckles barely looked up from his game, but Sonic slipped away, interested at least to see the spectacle. He smiled to himself - maybe it was even Tails who the Princess had managed to wrangle into dancing with her, the teen seemed a rather popular choice of dance partner. Scourge would lose his mind at that.
Sonic slipped onto the street and began weaving through people, looking for a good sightline to survey the crowd from. He saw the tops of a few knights up on horses, but if Amy were traveling with them, surely she would be on foot, and he would never get a glimpse of her among a sea of other people.
Sonic apologized to a grocer whose cart lined the square and hopped up on a stack of wooden crates, placing one foot up on a higher crate, grabbing hold of a flagpole, and leaning forward to scan the crowd for a flash of pink from his new vantage point above everyone.
If he were being totally honest, Sonic didn't really care for a glimpse of the Princess at all. But a glimpse of something pink would surely stop his heart for a moment.
When Sonic did see a flash of pink among the dancers, his heart leapt instead of dropped, which surprised him. If Amy were here, he suddenly thought, what would he actually do? Maybe a dance with her wasn't as dumb an idea as he first thought? It made him nervous, thinking of her in a dress, dancing with another. She would be like a stranger to him in this environment, but he was almost desperate to see her in that way, to know more of her - the real her. To get to observe her without her knowing that he was.
People twirled past Amy at dizzying speeds. The heat from her heavy dress, the joy in her heart, and the pounding beat of the fiddles and the dancers kept her going. She saw faces every so often of people smiling, laughing, and some looking a little disapproving, but they all moved by her in a whirl of color. She didn't care what they thought, she just kept dancing and laughing with Millie.
Sonic craned for a better look as the song swelled to its climax. The dancers in the square grew frenzied as the whooping and clapping and shouting reached its crescendo.
Amy felt herself being pushed toward the stage, but she had no sense of where she was in the crowd. For the final notes of the song, a fiddler reached out a hand and pulled her up on stage with the musicians. Amy set Millie down, and someone spun her, their boots pounding out the beat onto the wood. As the final chord struck, Amy laughed and the dancer dipped her, her head falling back toward the crowd in a dramatic final pose.
Thundering applause broke out and didn't stop, and Amy righted herself, thanking the musicians for a wonderful dance. As she turned to address the crowd, still panting from the dance, she realized her crown had fallen off when she was dipped, and lay on the stage like a discarded candy wrapper.
As Amy bent to pick it up, she looked out over the still-cheering people, feeling utterly euphoric. She stood, tiara in her hand, and froze.
The peasants were all on the ground level, a sea of faces and bodies that melded into a veritable rainbow of people. Her father and the guards were easily visible, up much higher from the crowd on their horses, and they were shouting at her. Knights shoved their way through the crowd, but to Amy, they were all suddenly moving in slow motion. One noisy, massive blur of sound and color.
There was one other person who stood above the rest, one foot raised, his hand gripping a flagpole for balance.
There was no doubt in her mind - it was Sonic who stared at her from across the square. His vibrant blue quills and handsome face were so recognizable that for a moment Amy felt overjoyed to see him.
And then the realization of who she was, where she was, what she held in her hands, what he didn't know - it all came crashing back to her. Amy hoped for a moment that he hadn't recognized her, that it wasn't too late, but his hand flew to his neck and took hold of the ring on his chain.
It was then that she knew he had.
Sonic was numb.
He felt like the world's biggest fool - an idiot. There were no words to describe how played he felt.
When she jumped on stage, Sonic had smiled, thinking Amy was simply captivating the audience like he knew she could.
And then he saw her finery, the wealth she wore with shockingly fitting ease.
"Princess!" people cried at her, and she had nodded at them with a smile, breathing heavily, bending down for something on the stage.
When she stood up, he finally saw what it was.
"No," he whispered. And then Amy saw him.
The feeling of locking eyes with her in that moment was as if Chaos himself had opened the heavens and swallowed every other person in the square. Sonic could only hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He couldn't feel anything, and he gripped the flagpole violently tight, thinking that he might stumble over as his whole world tipped on its axis right under his feet.
Amy slowly raised the tiara amidst the thundering of the crowd, her eyes never leaving his, and placed it carefully back on her head, sweeping her bangs out of her eyes.
She had crowned herself in front of him, and it sent white hot rage shooting through Sonic's body.
"No," he hissed again. This time he was seething.
Amy tried desperately to communicate with Sonic as the knights reached her and pulled her off stage. She begged him with her eyes to understand what she had done; felt panic grip her chest and dryness in her mouth.
As she was pulled back down into the crowd, she reached out to him and tried to step toward him, but the knights blocked her. Amy saw Sonic recoil in disgust and anger as she reached out, finally tearing his eyes away from her.
Amy knew then profoundly the feeling of a heart shattering, and she hadn't even known that her glass heart was teetering on the edge of its shelf to begin with. Sonic's expression and the sensation it elicited in her came as such a shock that she stumbled, and when she righted herself, she could no longer see him.
Sonic heard his name being called from below him, and his senses came crashing back to him in a disorienting cacophony that left him reeling.
He stumbled off the crates and into a line of other thieves who had hung back to get a peek at the Princess. Tails looked at him with concern.
"You ok?" Tails asked. Sonic hardly processed what he said.
"That's the Princess?" Sonic croaked. He looked down at Tails, sure of the answer but still hoping it wasn't true.
"Pretty, ain't she?"
A shiver went down Sonic's spine as he glanced to his other side and saw it was Scourge who had spoken.
A few other thieves around Sonic's age nodded as Scourge sidled up to Sonic, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his black leather doublet.
"I tell you what," Scourge said, taking a hand out to rake his fingers through his green quills, "I have half a mind to sneak into that ball myself - see if I can't trick those royal idiots into marrying her off to me."
Sonic felt an elbow in his side and looked down to see Tails.
"What?" he snapped.
"You just… growled," Tails whispered. Sonic's mouth dropped open and he felt a flicker of confusion, but it was quickly replaced with irritation as Sonic heard Scourge joking.
"Imagine that -" Scourge broke into a full laugh next to him, "- King Scourge and a Queen of the Thieves!"
Sonic turned to Knuckles behind him, who had finally made his way out of the bar. Sonic's green eyes were dull and his voice was sharp.
"Meet me at camp and be ready for tonight, I have our payment for tomorrow," he said.
Knuckles nodded at him, and Sonic turned and left, the laughter of the thieves ringing in his ears. He wasn't fully aware of where he was going, he just knew he didn't want to see her again - not like that, all dressed up and flushed. Happy, triumphant even. His face soured as he walked. He thought of all the times he had made jokes, teased her about being a diplomat, all the times she had told him that she 'knew' the princess. She must have thought that was a real riot.
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place in his mind as he walked, too, but he didn't want to think about it yet, didn't want to be fair to her.
It made a bit more sense to him now why she was fighting in the Tournament of Champions. He didn't know the whole reason, but it was certainly much bigger than he ever could have fathomed.
Sonic threw that aside and focused on his anger because it felt easier to hold.
He raked his hands through his quills as he stormed back towards camp. His hands gripped his head, his necklace, his knife, his jacket. He was trying to hold onto himself, to keep himself from blowing up and possibly exposing to anyone who might have been near enough to hear him shouting that he had been meeting with the fucking Princess of the entire Rose Kingdom in secret every night for two weeks.
Sonic stopped abruptly, squeezed his eyes shut, and pounded his fist on the nearest tree trunk with a shout, resting his forehead on it in anguish.
Damn her, he thought as an ache took hold in his chest that felt impossibly painful and heavy. He physically hurt from it. He took a deep breath and ran the rest of the way back to camp to try and escape it.
Sonic paced in their tent until Knuckles and Tails finally arrived back. He ignored Tails every time the teen tried to check in with him, and instead readied himself for the breakout in terse silence.
His eyes gleamed with anger and mischief. If he had to see Amy again tonight, had to go see her and face her after she had made him feel so stupid, he was going to make it worth their while.
The boys sobered up and readied themselves to head out. Scourge sat at the fire for a while after returning, telling everyone that he had made the Princess swoon, that he had taken her hand and kissed it like a gentleman. The things he said only added to Sonic's irritation, and he was looking for any excuse to punch something.
The thing that annoyed Sonic most of all, though, as he readied himself for the eve, was how he couldn't stop thinking about how Amy had dazzled a whole crowd of people like it was nothing.
He kicked himself, loathed himself, because deep down, Sonic knew it actually made all the sense in the world to him that Amy was the Princess.
She was the most stunning woman he knew. Such an obvious diamond - so astute, powerful, and clever - that he couldn't help but feel it was really his fault. He had the feeling that he had chosen not to see what she was, because he had feared it.
And now, despite how betrayed he felt, he was still going back to her. Running through the forest, straight to where she was waiting for him.
Sonic wondered what she was thinking. He hoped out of anger that she was worried, that she felt horrible. He wasn't usually a planner, but as he ran he thought over all the words he wanted to say to her when he saw her - spinning out hundreds of drafts of angry rants in his head.
And all the while as he ran to the castle, Sonic hated himself most of all because before he left the camp, he had opened his satchel, held the forget-me-not pin in his hand, and not thrown it as far as he could into the woods.
Instead, he had replaced it in the bag carefully. Because deep down, he still longed to see it on her tonight, even after everything.
A/N: Hope you are enjoying this drama as much as I am... more coming soon!