Her Royal Highness

Chapter 38

North, Sandy, Bunny, Hiccup, and Astrid all sat around a round, wooden table with dozens of maps littered across it. Unwashed, all sporting various small wounds, and staring blankly at either the mess of papers or the empty place where the King of Auradon should be. Above their heads swung a small candle chandelier with half of the Candleholders missing, making for a dim, sad light. The room was lined with dark, wooden panels. Astrid's hand slipped from underneath her chin as she shook her head.

Floorboards creaked outside. Then, the doors blew open with a gust of freezing air. Everyone looked up and stared as Jack landed inside the doorframe. "We have a visitor," Jack announced to the room as he walked inside. Hiccup and Bunny stood up while everyone straightened up. A figure in vivid purple stepped up to examine everyone. Mal crossed her arms and took in the room.

"Wow." She said after a long pause. "I feel like I'm back on the Isle of the Lost."

Hiccup and Astrid exchanged looks as they looked from Mal's still-sparking green eyes and dirty hands to her long, messy, purple hair.

North picked his sword up from where it lay propped against the table, with the blade digging into the floor. "Who is this?" He asked as he pulled a dirty rag out of his pocket and began to clean the blade.

"Her royal highness, Queen Mal of Auradon, the Isle, and the Moors," Jack announced as he floated lazily above everyone's heads. The Sandman, a round man with childish cheeks who wore a robe of golden sand, perked up and flashed a crown above his head, along with a question mark.

Mal waved her fingers at her companions as she stepped up to the maps and glanced briefly at them. "You can call me Mal." She drawled.

"I'm sorry," Astrid sputtered. "This is the Queen of the Isle, the Ancient Moorlands, and Auradon?"

"Yes," Jack nodded slowly as he landed. "And she's extremely powerful." He cast a sideways smirk to the purple-haired fairy. "Don't let the hair fool you."

Without glancing at him, Mal flicked her fingers from left to right and up and down in front of her head, and her hair braided itself down her back into a neat French braid that ended past her shoulder blades. No one spoke for several seconds as Mal examined the maps.

Bunny straightened up and unsheathed his boomerang. "So, what're ye doing here?" He asked with a low growl.

Mal looked up at him, clearly annoyed, and ignored the question. Instead, Jack cleared his throat. "She's come to rescue her husband."

North sighed. "I apologize, but we don't know where he is. He vas captured off the dock in Syracuse, but has since been-"

"I know where he is." Mal held up a hand to stop him. "He's about seven hundred miles from me, northwest. So, if we want to plot that here," She began to trace areas on the map with her fingers as she spoke, "he's about in the city you call Duloc." The miles were a rough estimate, but Mal was comparing the distance with places she knew of on her home continent. She assumed, based on examining the spell tying them together, that they would be the same distance apart if she were in the Moorlands and he was in Auradon City.

"Kingdom," Jack corrected with a curious look at Mal.

"Kingdom." Mal nodded as she examined the map.

"How do you know this?" North gestured at the map with a raised eyebrow.

Mal smiled. "National secret. Sorry. Anyway, he's here. Don't know if he's okay or dead or anything, but he's there. And now that I know where he is, I'll go fetch him." She turned and began to walk away from the room.

"Woah, Woah, Woah." Hiccup jumped up. "Just one second. I still have questions. How are you going to get him? That area is surrounded by Eris's troops and tons of monsters and baddies... We have no back up there at the moment. If you give us some time, we might be able to arrange something, but you'll be caught and killed for sure if you just head up. Also, we sent that letter like, early yesterday. No one has been down to help transport new soldiers from your land to our land, so how did you get here?"