Heir to Light | Fablehaven AU

Eve's Interlude

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Sitting still had never come natural to Eve. It was so terribly tedious, and made her want to claw her brain out just to end the boredom alone.

Yesterday had been exciting—when Seth had been ripped away, and they had had a last hug where Eve had slipped her seal inside his pocket—but, today, the whole damsel in a tower schtick became real. Really boring.

It should be exciting! She was currently living through the arrest and trial of the two highest profile visitors Terrabelle had received in recent memory. Though, it wasn't exciting.

But it would be, again. She just had to get rid of the knights glued to her room, and break out the Fablehaven court.

Balancing the chess board on her lap, she moved the ornate King and Queen pieces to the soft couch cushion beside her. Kendra and Seth were out of commission. Not dead—Eve would be sure of that, but they weren't going to be key players in her plan.

She moved a rook into the middle of the board. Patton Burgess. He was important. As a child, she always heard of his constant, death-defying, and dazzling adventures. The ones popularized in her house and Terrabelle were the tales of him slaying witches, bog-monsters, and terrifying ghostly knights. Until she had met Seth, she had never been told that Patton's methods in his glory days had always involved magic. Magic to defeat magic.

Which was weird to think about, as Eve never really got to hear of magic for good. However, the fact that Patton had ever used magic was damning for the Fablehaven court on its own.

Eve wasn't going to lie—she had had her suspicions about the Fablehaven party even before the mask had been ripped away. The more time she had spent with Seth, the more times he suddenly forgot or tripped over a part of a story when it came suspiciously close to sounding like it had involved magic.

Also, the weird characters had begun to pile up. Especially Newel and Doren: two friends that lived in the woods part-time and had enraged a shopkeeper by leaving goat hair all over her new upholstery.

"Oh, yeah, they had been wearing goat fur pants."

Eve had sat down her tea cup and tilted her head at that. "You wear goat fur pants in Fablehaven?"

"Fashion trend. Yeah, I know. Weird. But, they're into that stuff."

Or, even just Seth's general attitude towards magic had been incredibly different from what Eve was used to.

Yes, there were already negative magic-sympathizing stereotypes about people from Fablehaven. She knew that. People made fun of the people of Fablehaven all the time for being soft. She had just not expected it to extend to the ruling family.

Like, Seth had been excited about a dragon but exasperated when Eve had reminded him that the King didn't allow anything magical to exist in Terrabelle.

And, Raxtus acted totally weird around him—even if they both would like to pretend it was all normal. The-eye Seth garnered from Raxtus within a single conversation was astronomical.

Besides, Seth always seemed less than enthused whenever they discussed magic restrictions. In fact, she even had thought she had seen Seth roll his eyes at a normal anti-magic diatribe espoused by a visiting dignitary. It had been in her periphery, so she wasn't too sure.

But, she did know that she had seen Kendra pinch him.

So, it really hadn't come to her as a shock when it was revealed that he was consorting with magical figures.