A lot of things had changed after the Witch-Fiend's foiled attack on the coronation. Security had been tightened; castle ramparts, fortified. Rooftop and other outdoor celebrations were, understandably, less frequent—and when they did occur, they were heavily guarded. No one was willing to take further chances considering just how close the capital had come to losing its beloved head of state. Even if the latter had come out the other side not only unscathed, but stronger.

The Prince's quarters, however, were not as lucky. The piles of haphazard objects strewn about the most important bedroom in the castle had seen little change once the dust had settled, save for a marked increase in sharp things and dirt. The pair of servants whose turn it was to tidy up tonight surveyed the damage, then got to work.

"I miss the princess days," said the first maid as she tied her hair back with a ribbon. "Before all this outdoor rough-and-tumble stuff."

"Mm?" said the second maid, wiping her glasses on her apron before putting them back on.

"Now don't get me wrong, the Prince is lovely and all, but I wish he'd put those new muscles of his to use picking up after himself. Especially considering how messy his new hobbies are." Ribbon grunted as she picked up a metal shield almost as long as she was tall, and balanced it on her shoulder. She walked around the central bed, loading up the makeshift tray with discarded weapons that the Prince had set down, no doubt just for a moment, before forgetting about them completely.

"Mm." Glasses followed her colleague, collecting the remaining piles into slightly neater piles before returning to the supply cart for a broom.

The door flew open, startling both women.

"Tell me about the lad," the Prince said as he briskly walked into the room, metal plates clattering over slim leather armor. "The one I'm supposed to give a commendation to." He took off his sword—scabbard and all—and handed it over as he walked to his desk. Glasses accepted the weapon, almost as long as she was tall, and stumbled over to the far wall to place it along with the others.

"Not a lad," Frederic said as he walked in. He stayed by the door, metaphorically keeping one eye on the Prince and the other on the hallway.

"Tell me about them." The Prince pushed the chair to the side with one foot and stood in front of the desk, sifting through the papers strewn about. With his free hand he pulled off the sweat-soaked headband he had been wearing, giving his dark messy hair a good shake.

Frederic took a deep breath. "Well," the knight began to say, looking up at the ceiling, "they're... new. But clearly with some experience, obviously. They were at the right place and the right time but were able to capitalize on it. Perceptive, too; the culprit was very familiar with the ins and outs of this castle and its guard rotations."

"When you put it like that, it makes me sorry I didn't get to deal with the criminal myself. Ah!" The Prince singled out a piece of paper from the mess, pulling it out. "There. I can meet them tomorrow morning after the merchants guild meeting. Give them a pat on the back for 'saving my life', as it were. What do they look like?"

Frederic blinked in surprise. "They look..." He cleared his throat. "Normal. Your Majesty."

The Prince's shoulders slumped as he looked over at Frederic, dumbfounded. He gave him a humorless smile. "Thank you Frederic, you've been a great help."

"Of course, Your Majesty," the knight replied with the faintest hint of a smirk. "Will that be all?"

The Prince returned his attention to the paper in his hand, finding a quill to fill in one of the last remaining empty spots. He waved the rest of them off halfway through the process. "Yes, you're all excused. It's late enough already."

The two maids hesitated, but with some subtle prompting by Frederic, both quickly finished what they had been doing and headed for the door.

"Ah," the Prince said, snapping his fingers. "You, Glasses. Come help me with this." He began to tug at one of the straps of his armor. "The rest of you can go."

The maid paused for the briefest moment, then nodded. By the time she had walked over to where the Prince was standing, they were alone in the room.

The Prince pinned the piece of paper with the forearm of his writing hand to free up one arm as the young lady helped unbuckle the outer layer of armor, plate by plate. One side done, he shifted the quill to his other hand, working uninterrupted as the metal piled up on the one empty corner of the desk.

The Prince stretched his shoulders and tugged at the collar of his shirt as the maid put the last piece of armor alongside the rest. He looked over. "This isn't keeping me safe."

She froze in place for a second. Puzzled, she began to inspect the metal plate in her hands, turning it over to get a better look.

"I wasn't talking about the armor," the Prince said as he closed the distance between them in a single step. He lifted her chin with his left hand—eliciting a gasp of surprise—and slipped his right arm around the small of her back, pulling her in.

He was no longer juggling multiple tasks at once; his full attention was on her now, and it was inescapable. There was no looking away; not from his face, his subtle smile, the burning intensity of his eyes. Her mind raced. Her pulse quickened. Blood rushed to her face.

He took off her glasses, leaned in close, and kissed her.

And then it was over. The Prince was back at his desk, signing a letter he'd begun to write three days ago, reaching for a candle to prepare the seal. "This is your third time in my chamber in as many weeks. So tell me, what was your plan?" He shot her a glance. "I'm legitimately curi... ous... Loulou, you're crying?"

She was still standing in the same pose, eyes wide. Lou's face was going through the full gamut of emotions, her cheeks burning, her chest rising and falling with each frantic breath as if she'd just been running a marathon. Tears were streaming down her face.

The Prince wordlessly pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her, a passing cloud of worry on his face.

"What," she began to say, wiping her face with rough broad strokes, "why..." She looked around, countless questions colliding in her head. She picked one at random. "How? How'd you know?"

The Prince smiled, exhaling in a light chuckle. "Loulou, I know what I look like with glasses," he said, brandishing the ones he'd taken from her face a moment ago. "I know what I look like with makeup. I've gone to Chez Gaston and gotten that exact same hairstyle! He does amazing work, I'm glad you went there—I'm sure no one else here knew who you were."

"But you knew," Lou said, her hands balling up into fists. "You knew the whole time."

"I knew the moment you walked in here three weeks ago. And I figured you were up to something, so I was waiting for you to make your move. But even I have my limits." He returned to his desk once more, folding the letter and bringing the candle closer. "Still, Loulou, this is going pretty far for a prank. Did Frederic put you up to this?"

She shook her head. "I got hired."

He turned the candle back upright in surprise. "You got hired? You got hired? Here? For this kind of work?"

Lou smoothed out the creases her uniform had recently accumulated. "I had a really good recommendation letter."

The Prince sighed. "You put Frederic up to this." He furrowed his brow as he focused on his work again, tilting the burning candle toward the folded letter. "How many weeks of back breaking work did it take you to get assigned here?"

Lou returned the frown, straightening her posture. "Eight months, give or take."

Hot wax splattered all over the letter as the candle went rolling. "EIGHT MONTHS?!"

"Give or take!"

The candle rolled over to Lou's side of the desk, where she caught it as it fell. She brought it back to its upright position, carefully to keep the flame going as she handed it back.

The Prince put his hand around hers, lifting the candle up between them. With a quick breath, he put it out. "Loulou," he said, concern showing on his face, "you've been here almost the whole time? Since that day?"

She nodded matter-of-factly.

"Help me understand," the Prince said, shaking his head. "What was this leading up to? What was your end goal here, your next step?"

Lou's face scrunched up. "End goal, next step... You're the one who loves planning a hundred moves ahead. I don't waste time thinking when I can act. This is it."

"There's no next step?"

Lou shook her head. "No next step."

The Prince let go of her hand. He walked back to his desk, dropped the candle on it, then sat down roughly in the chair nearby. He rubbed his face then ran his hand through his hair, dumbfounded. "Am I understanding you correctly? You put yourself through eight months of hard work—well compensated hard work, naturally, but still—just so you could... clean my room?"

"Well no, not when you put it like that!"

"Then what? What was all this for?"

"I just had to see," Lou began to say, her voice cracking suddenly. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. "I just had to know," she finally continued. "I had to know you were safe."

The Prince's jaw dropped for a second. "Loulou... I wrote you a letter. I gave Frederic detailed instructions. I made sure you were well taken care of. Why go through all—"

"Letters can be forged!" Lou interrupted, shouting despite herself. "People can be tricked, or turned! S'pose that letter was fake. S'pose Frederic was under another sort of witch spell. I couldn't be sure!"

"Of course," the Prince said as he stood up and walked over. "I forgot who I was dealing with." He reached out, holding hands that had begun shaking without her realizing it.

"I had to see you myself."

"And you did," the Prince said, speaking more softly now. "Three weeks ago. You saw that I was safe, right? Why didn't you say anything? Were you just going to keep this charade up forever?"

"What was there to say?" Lou answered, lowering the tone of her voice to match. "I saw you were doing fine without me. And even when I tried to help, you all pretty much had everything under control. So I guess I figured... this was good enough." She looked around the room again. "If I can't keep you safe, I can at least keep you comfortable."

The Prince abruptly let go of her hands. "Alright," he said. In one fluid motion he bent down and grabbed Lou by the waist, lifting her into the air and slinging her over his shoulder.

"Wha—hey wait!" Lou yelped. "What are you—"

"Alright!" he repeated, walking over to the center of the room. "Alright!" he half-yelled, half-grunted as he swung his body around and threw Lou into the air and onto the bed, the duvet puffing out as it cushioned her landing. The Prince kicked off his boots and leapt on the layers of fur and down-stuffed fabric, leaning down on one knee, putting his hand down next to Lou's head.

When the dust cleared, they were face to face, his entire body looming above hers. "Alright," he said one final time. "Is that what you want?"

Lou looked up at him wide-eyed, still dizzy from the sudden acrobatics. She waited for the room to stop spinning, but it was taking longer, much longer than she'd ever been used to. What's more, her heart rate wasn't dropping; the blood that had rushed to her face wasn't leaving.

"Is that really what you want?" the Prince asked. "Then let's see it. No words, just actions. Let's take this to its natural con... clus..." He stopped suddenly, feeling something tugging on his shirt. He looked down.

One of Lou's hands had already undone a few buttons, moving on to the next one.

"What," he said, stunned, as he grabbed her wrist with his free hand. "Loulou what is this reaction?" He stared at her, wide-eyed, his cheeks gaining just the slightest hint of color. "I'm... I'm trying to prove a point here! Don't just call my bluff!"

Lou stared back, her face once again shifting rapidly between a dozen different emotions, her heart beating so loudly it threatened to drown out what the Prince was saying. It felt like her whole head might catch fire at any moment. But throughout it all her eyes remained steady; determined. She let the Prince hold her hand in the space between them, as they both looked into each other's eyes.

"Loulou," the Prince finally said, "I was just trying to show you that..." He sighed, looking a bit flustered himself. "Listen. There's a limit to how far you should go for someone, you know? Even me. There's a line you shouldn't cross." Although his mouth was smiling, his eyes showed only concern. "Don't cross that line unless you're doing it for yourself. Unless it's something you really, truly want."

The maelstrom of emotions on Lou's face raged on, but the determination in her eyes held fast. She reached up with her other hand, curling her fingers around his. Holding on.

The Prince shook his head. "You can be so stubborn sometimes... Alright then, what about this." He closed his eyes for a second, then put on a face that was much more professional; more regal. "Hypothetically. What if I asked you to stop, and let go of my hand. What if I were to ask you to get up and leave, right now. Would you?"

Lou's breathing became faster; ragged, even. Her hands began to tremble. But she held strong. She opened her mouth, silently at first, then spoke. "You wouldn't," she finally said, looking like she was staring down death itself. "That's not what you want."

The Prince scoffed. "Is that so? What makes you say that? What makes you so sure this isn't another one of my plans, a hundred moves ahead?"

Lou glanced to the side—toward the desk, where they had both stood moments before, where this whole altercation had begun—then looked him in the eyes again when she spoke. "You kissed me."

He blinked. "I did?" He turned to look at the desk himself for a moment before turning back to her. "I mean, I did, yes. But that didn't mean anything, I was just playing around! I did it to get a reaction. I wanted to catch you off-guard."

"You kissed me."

"I..." The Prince sighed. "Listen, Loulou, you can't read too much into every little thing I do. I don't even remember why I did it. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time." He looked back at the desk again, as if playing out the scene again in his mind. "I..." His eyes returned to her; a little slower, this time. "I didn't really think about it, I just... did it."

They both looked at each other for a long moment. Her heart beating a little slower; his, a little faster.

"Huh," the Prince finally said. "There's something to think about, I suppose." He broke out into a rare, genuine smile. "Something," he added, leaning closer, "to—"

There was a knock, then another, then the door opened and Frederic walked in, all within the span of a single second. "Your Majesty, the merchants guild will have to reschedule the meeting tomorrow," he said as he consulted the letter in his hand, "there's been another altercation between the two families and they can't..."

The knight stopped. Looked up from the letter. Made eye contact with the Prince, and then his guest.

The Prince opened his mouth. "Ah," he began to say, before being interrupted by Frederic letting out the loudest, most drawn-out sigh of pure irritation that either of the two had ever heard. The knight rolled his eyes, shook his head, and slammed the door on his way out.

There was an awkward silence.

Then, both Lou and the Prince both erupted into laughter as they finally separated, lying down on their backs next to each other on the spacious bed.

"Oh, he's going to be cross with me for a while, I think," the Prince said.

"With both of us. I'll bake him a cake or something next time I'm on kitchen duty."

"Loulou," the Prince said, propping himself up on his elbow, "you don't seriously think you're going to keep wor—how did you get most of my buttons open?!" He gaped at his mostly open shirt, his first time getting a good look at it. "I stopped you as soon as I could!"

Lou smiled smugly, putting her arms behind her head.

"Is that what you've been doing all this time during your off hours?"

She sat up instantly, a look of horror on her face. "NO! I would never!"

The Prince blinked, a bit taken aback. "I mean, you're well within your... wait, never?" He leaned closer. "Loulou, have you not...?"

She shook her head. "No."

He raised his eyebrows. "In almost a year?"

She shook her head. "No! What if we switch back? I'm not gonna take advantage of your body the first chance I get, I'm not a monster!"

"Yes, but you're not dead, either! Oh, Loulou... we need to talk."

---