The Misplaced Prince[COMPLETE]

Her Man

"You wanted him...You tried to do...something...to get him." Kasey whispered.

Minutes...hours had passed into the oblivion. Time during which...no one had noticed she was missing. In usual circumstances, it was something she would be used to--would expect even, but her life had long stopped being usual. Now she had him.

Joshua. Who hadn't noticed she was missing, had been missing for what seemed like eternity.

She would have thought, if not for the personal connection they had undeniably developed, Joshua would have noticed her absence because of who she was. His guardian. His protector. The woman who had sworn to keep him safe from afar.

To love him from afar.

As time passed, the idea that her disappearance had been so overlooked--by him--caused an ache of sadness to settle within her that she refused to allow her nemesis to see.

Her nemesis who had dragged her away from her room long ago, leading her down a strangely deserted path as most of the castle prepared for the oncoming riots, into the Royal Tower. She had hissed with sudden awareness, as if her senses picked an elusive trail of magic that no one else could feel, and they had spilled--one struggling, the other effortlessly drawing strength from a body that shouldn't have possessed such power--into the Prince's bedchamber. His thankfully deserted bedchamber, which now lay to ruin.

Kasey fought the woman off, but her unwillingness to kill her childhood enemy was her undoing. Now she sat curled wearily in the corner, bruised and bleeding, and watched hatefully as the woman presided over the treasures spilling from a chest beside the Prince's bed, glittering agelessly among the flickering candles.

The crossbow or the various weapons did not draw her attention as she sifted through them, her body tensing with anticipation.

Kasey eyed the weapons from afar, fingers digging into her palms.

She would have to do it. The inevitability of the situation had dawned onto her. To protect the people of the castle--to protect herself--she would have to destroy the vessel. The fae would prove to be collateral damage, and the thought would torment Kasey for years...possibly her whole life. But there seemed to be no way around it.

She gulped painfully.

Kill an innocent woman, a girl she had known her whole life. She had to die, just like several innocent lives were lost to war, unknown, unremembered. It would be Kasey's cross to bear, the knowledge of what she had done, but everyone would be the safer for it. Hell, the fae had given her a whispered permission to do it herself, before the Queen had overtaken her.

Kasey looked at the crumpled paper in her hands, the list she had quickly dashed off before the last vestiges of her memories deserted her, and she brought her mind back to her question. "You orchestrated the day...not as a gift...but to maneuver him into a position...to take him, somehow..." she frowned, unable to remember, her knowledge limited to what she had put to paper.

Hold on to Joshua. Don't let any woman take him away.

She had come out of the day...wanting to lay claim to Joshua. Her insides clenched with certainty that it was because of this creature in front of her.

Nymra's body presided over an old book, face twisted with gruesome interest. Kasey eyed her.

She had no idea--she wasn't certain anyone did, really--how old the Queen of faeries was. The idea that she would try to capture Joshua--capture in a way that Kasey had felt she could prevent not by the power of her fists but by her...womanhood...made her stomach turn.