[Back at the Palace]

"How\'s the search going?"

"We\'re trying our best, Your Majesty," replied Sir Gradral as he bowed solemnly.

The Emperor threw on the table the parchment from which he had been reading from. It had been two days since the princess\'s disappearance and there was still no trace of her. It had started to worry him to the point he couldn\'t concentrate on his work.

"Alright." He dismissed Sir Gradral with a wave of his hand. "Tell somebody to call for Odette; there\'s something I need to talk to her about."

Sir Gradral bowed once again. "Eternal blessings upon the Empire of Wisteria."

Once the Emperor was finally alone, he leaned back in his large wingback chair and held onto his forehead. Oh, how he wished the princess would show up herself so he wouldn\'t have to go through so much trouble because of her.

Her disappearance was observed the night of the Ceremony. The Emperor believed that everything had gone wrong all because he had been absent to supervise the event. At the time, he had some urgent business to attend to related to the neighboring kingdoms and had to have his say in it.

And everything had all gone so wrong. After all, it was the night of the awakening, the night stated in the 500 year back prophecy.

The Emperor was about to pick his parchment again when there was a sudden knock at the door.

"Your Imperial Majesty, it is I, Odette."

The Emperor grunted and told her to Enter after he had spreaded a lot of documents around him and picked a few up to appear that he had been rather too busy at the moment.

Odette entered, dressed in a lovely green evening gown, conservative enough to go down to her sleeves. "You called for me, Your Majesty?"

"Ah, yes," the Emperor said, lowering the parchment as if he had just been reading it. "Have you heard anything from your father recently?"

"My father?" Odette echoed, stoked. "No, Your Majesty. He has yet to contact me."

"Okay, okay," the Emperor muttered under his breath. The letter he had asked him to relay to King Irvin through his son, Marcello had yet to receive a reply. The Emperor sighed with frustration while Odette stood in front of his large mahogany desk with golden knobs. The Emperor looked back up at her, avoiding his gaze to go over her several curves and the shape of her neck.

"Has Lady Sumner settled in?" he asked, looking her straight in her intelligent, brown eyes.

"Quite nicely Your Majesty," she replied, inwardly surprised at the change of subject. "Though she has been rather distraught about Her Highness\'s disappearance."

The Emperor muttered bitterly, "Aren\'t we all?"

Odette lowered her gaze but didn\'t say anything.

"How are the rest of you faring with the news?" the Emperor asked, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers.

Odette was never one to prolong small talk so she just replied with what had to be said. "We are all extremely worried," she recited monotonously.

"And?"

"We are all praying for her return."

"Good." The Emperor was satisfied, though he still couldn\'t get over the fact that Count Atraxil had yet to reply to him although so much time had passed since their \'little chat\'.

He sighed eventually after pondering upon his next move and waved Odette away. After the door had shut, he thought about other ways to get the princess back to him.

Now, he thought, how best to capture a princess?

✿

Another day at the market which I had just developed a deep wariness of.

"So," Reynard said as he walked by me. "Which bulletin should we head to first?"

"How many bulletin boards are there in the whole of Eyress?" I asked as I lowered the hat over my head. With the remains of the 5 silvers from yesterday, Reynard had bought me a large straw hat so I could keep my head covered or at least, \'shadowed\' at all times. And it had proved quite useful till now because people all over the market were whispering about \'The Case of the Missing Princess\' and none of them had come to suspect me yet.

I had proposed the plan that we could swiftly go and tear each and every one of my portraits from the city bulletin boards to keep people from recognizing me.

"There are a total 12 boards all-in-all scattered across Eyress," Reynard said as he waved hi to someone across the street. "And our first stop should be the one across Gartran Health Centre."

Right. I nodded.

We were about to cross the street to the other side when we heard someone call.

"Reynard! Oh, Reynard!"

Reynard and I turned around at the same time, watching as an orange haired girl ran towards our standing point. "Oh, Reynard!" she said breathlessly as she approached us. "How wonderful that we get to meet on the street."

I pulled my hat low over my face. She was a rather plain looking girl, with off-white puffed out sleeves and a leather belt. Her fiery hair was the main cynosure of her looks as it spread in every direction.

"Hestia," Reynard uttered, a little surprised. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Isn\'t it?" she asked as she smiled. She had a lot of freckles, I noticed. A trait found much adorable in my world. But she wasn\'t, in any sense of word, an adorable girl. She was rather basic. Not in a negative sense, of course, though I was annoyed that she had interrupted us.

"Ashli, meet my friend and Rosa\'s past fellow schoolmate, Hestia Trayvil," Reynard said quickly. I did Hestia a quick once-over. She seemed nice enough as she smiled with crooked teeth. I put my hand forth:

"Hi, I\'m Ashli Rivers. Nice meeting you."

She shook my hand and her long fingernails dug into the back of my hand.

"Nice meeting you too," she said through gritted teeth. I wondered what was wrong. "So what are y\'all doing?"

"We were just off somewhere," Reynard said eventually, trying hard not to appear rude. "What about you? Shouldn\'t you be off painting or something?" His tone was teasing.

Hestia pouted. "Artists need a break sometimes too, y\'know. Unlike you, we do a lot of work to make a living for ourselves."

I noticed through the sides of my eye that Reynard had just flashed an alarmed stare at Hestia due to which she shut up really quick. Why was Reynard so hesitant to tell me about what he did? Though it didn\'t matter to me in the least. As long as I was alive, we were good.

"So... are you two together or what?" Hestia asked humorously as she pointed from my face to Reynard\'s. Though I did notice there was a pang of pain in her expression. Funny that.

Reynard glanced at me. "Yeah," he stretched it really long. "I guess you could say that. Though I would prefer it if no one else finds out. It\'s still a secret."

Hestia didn\'t say anything for a second and then burst out laughing.

"Of course, of course, I won\'t tell," she said as she waved at Reynard. "Nice meeting you, Ashli. I know y\'all are staying to talk but I can tell that you\'re in a hurry to leave, so I won\'t keep you waiting. Hope we meet again."

With that, she turned on her heel and walked back from where she had run over to us until she was just an orange dot in the crowd.

"Come on," Reynard said. "Gartran\'s just around the corner."

We walked across the road and around the corner in question and were instantly met with a horde of people.

"Is it usually this busy at the health center?" I asked as I held onto my hat.

Reynard bit his lower lip. "Not really. I\'m sure they\'re all here to read the notice."

And they were. I caught snippets of loud conversations that wafted through the crowd that were all similar to: "...the princess...", "...missing…" or "...prophecy…."

"What now?" I asked, my eyes browsing through the various faces, none of which I recognized.

"Should we hit up the next bulletin board?"

So we went to the board on Boutart Street and in front of Dietrich park though all of them were overcrowded as well. We didn\'t bother to merge with the horde for we were afraid someone would\'ve noticed me.

So ripping off my portraits wasn\'t an easy task and it wouldn\'t be much fruitful after the buzz died down because till then, everybody would have my face etched into their memories. There wasn\'t anything we could do other than hide out for the rest of my life.

Reynard fell down on the sidewalk, exasperated.

"We\'re done for," he muttered.

"We mustn\'t lose hope," I muttered as I gently patted his shoulder. It was essential I provide him with reassurance once in a while, because he was the only savior I had and he was my only glimmer of hope now amongst these blessing-hungry wretches. If he decides to get up and abandon me, I\'d have nowhere else to go.

I lifted my hat and scratched the itchy bit that had been rubbing against the coarse straw all this time. The hat had a lovely red bow tied around it which went well with the red lip I wore today. It was Faustine\'s lip rouge that she had graciously allowed me to wear out. I had done so so I could hide my identity further, for the princess never wore bold makeup.

The feeling of defeat was over our heads. Reynard was staring absent-mindedly at a queue of ants along the cobblestone and didn\'t respond at all to my constant reassurances. I was beginning to think he had given up when he turned his head to stare at me very seriously and then what he said made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on their edges.

My mouth dropped open when his words had finally registered in.

"We should let you die."