Her Majesty The Prince

"We need to talk," she told him.

Lou leaned on the armored knight's halberd like it was a handrail, her eyes focused on the Prince; the rest of her body focused on catching her breath. Her lungs struggled against the constricting fabric of the princess's coronation dress, faithfully recreated for the stage. She had overcome the obstacles in her way and made it up to the royal theater's exterior balcony, where the Prince had retreated after the show. She had caught him. Now what?

Already the stagehands and the chorus had taken their bows; she only had precious moments before the actors who had played the minor characters would walk onto the stage, to the acclaim of the crowd. The instant she heard that telltale third wave of cheering, she'd have to make a mad dash down the stairs in order to be back in time to take that final bow alongside the other major actors. She wasn't going to miss it. Not even for him.

Breathe in. Breathe out. The silence that hung in the air after she had said those few words only lasted seconds, but the tension was palpable. Lou and the Prince, gazes locked. The robed figure, pouring out powder in a circle around the tent she'd set up. The armored knight, barring entry from the balcony. Sleeves, staring at Lou, their eyes getting wider and wider.

"Hold on," Sleeves said to the Prince, "what did you just call her?"

"Loulou, you should be down there on the stage," the Prince said, paying his companion no mind. "You didn't have to come here—"

"You didn't have to come here!" she yelled back, nearly vaulting over the halberd blocking her path. She put a hand on the armored knight's breastplate, as if to push the towering figure aside. "Move," she said between breaths.

The knight reacted instantly, grabbing her offending hand by the wrist. Lou didn't turn to look. She twisted to the side, leveraging her body weight against the figure's thumb to wrest herself free. A moment later she had ducked under the polearm and was standing in front of the Prince; legs trembling, lungs fighting for oxygen, eyes still locked onto his.

The armored figure looked down, stunned, then reached out after her. "Now hold—"

"Okay time out, time out!" Sleeves said as they approached Lou and the Prince with a card held high, as if playing the part of a tournament referee. "Hold on, I need to process this." They turned to Lou. "Glasses. Glasses, are you telling me that the whole time, the whole time, from day one, you were..." Their eyes focused through her, on a point somewhere off in the distance, their face going through a rapid series of realizations.

"Why are you here? I thought you said it was dangerous to be close to you!" Lou said before taking another deep breath, keeping her eyes on the Prince. She didn't want to have that conversation with Sleeves right now; besides, there was so little time. She kept her ears open for the next surge of cheers and applause, but the audience—far away as it was, several floors below—sounded strangely muffled.

"Loulou," the Prince said in a measured tone, "it's an immensely popular stage play about me. Of course I'd try to catch the last show. No one will find that out of the ordinary."

Sleeves stared at the Prince. "You told us the captain was dead. I didn't misunderstand, did I? There was a funeral! We all mourned! And the whole time, she was sleeping in the bunk next to mine in the undercroft?! When she wasn't sleeping in—" Their expression went strangely blank for one second before they pinched the bridge of their nose with their free hand. "No. I'm not thinking about that. I'm not..." Sleeves's eyes shot open. "You didn't just fire a maid. You exiled the wolf."

"Not exiled, protected." The Prince's expression grew colder, but his eyes remained on Lou. "If anyone still holding the keys to the ritual knew my old body was alive, they'd stop at nothing to get their hands on it. Their eyes are on the castle. On me, and anyone close."

"It's my body now," Lou said possessively; protectively. She crossed her arms and held herself tight. "You said I could do anything I wanted with it." She took another deep breath. "So I did."

"Loulou, I didn't say it would get them anywhere," the Prince replied. "But they'll do everything they can to keep their share of the crown. At least, the remaining eight will. I had to keep you out of their sight."

Lou was still shaking, except now it was no longer from the physical exertion. She was teetering on the edge between anger and sadness; rage and tears. Every time she opened her mouth it was down to a coin toss which way her words would go.

She had caught her breath at last, but something was off; her movements felt oddly sluggish. The robed figure behind the Prince hadn't moved from her spot, still pouring out powder from a pouch—the grains fluttering in the air, each one spinning in place, getting no closer to the ground. Everything around them had slowed to a crawl.

A chill went up her spine. Lou had felt this before.

But... this time was different. An imitation; a different means with which to achieve the same results. There was no impending doom, only quietude. She had been afforded movement and thought and speech in this temporary retreat, unlike before. Instead of lasting a split-second, the moment stretched out far longer than she imagined possible. It was then that she noticed the card that Sleeves had been holding up—The Hourglass—was burning up, like the end of a letter held above a candle. Nearly a quarter of it had already turned to ashes.

Their eyes met briefly. The look on Sleeves's face was the rarest of them all, one that Lou had only seen once: in the servant's quarters, the morning she had said her goodbyes.

Lou locked gazes with the Prince once more. She knew the words she wanted to say, but getting them out felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. "You didn't answer my question," she said in a shaky voice. "If being close to you is dangerous, then why are you here?"

The Prince's eyebrows went up ever so slightly, the way they always did when he was about to explain to her something he felt she should already know. Even if the Prince had never said as much out loud, Lou had learned a long time ago what that look meant. "I kept my distance, Loulou. I arrived after the lights dimmed, left with the darkness. No one recognized me. I'm surprised you did, to be honest. You chasing me up here is far more risk—"

"STOP CHANGING THE SUBJECT!" Lou shouted, causing him to recoil in surprise. Her fist had stopped just short of hitting his chest.

For a moment, it seemed like time had stopped here as well.

Lou slowly drew her hand back, exceedingly aware of the wide-eyed look on both Sleeves and the Prince's faces. But that was fine; good, in fact. She hadn't chased him all the way up here to be nice. She hadn't caught him just to let him go without a fight. She hadn't visualized this conversation in her mind for months and months simply to let him wriggle his way out of answering her damn question. Not tonight.

"Why are you here?" she repeated, her heart threatening to beat its way out of her body.

The Prince looked at her for a moment, still on the back foot, before collecting himself. That subtle look of defeat from earlier had returned to his face. "Alright, Loulou. Alright," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

He had never been the kind of person to back down, not even in the princess days when each and every concurrent battle needed to be carefully weighed against one another. The Prince's victories were boisterous, triumphant; many had been the times Lou had lifted him up to parade him around the room once they had returned to his chambers. When things didn't go his way, however...

The Prince paused, looking to the side for just a moment as a frown briefly flickered across his brow. He returned his attention to her. "I had to make sure you were safe. That's all."

Lou's eyebrows twitched as she narrowed her eyes.

"You had... to make sure..." she began to say, shaking her head in disbelief. Part of her would have chuckled at the irony, but the rest of her didn't feel like laughing right now. "Make sure? That I was...?"

Lou gritted her teeth. She had gladly let the Prince relieve her of so many facets of her former self, but she wasn't letting go of this one.

"Why is it okay when you do it?!" she asked, her voice cracking.

The look on the Prince's face was hard to pin down as he retreated behind a mask of diplomacy. Lou was getting her first glimpse of what it was like to sit opposite him at the negotiation table. But again, that was fine; good, in fact. He was finally taking her seriously.

"Loulou," he finally said. "I said I'd be the one responsible for the consequences, don't you remember? I didn't want to just assume you were fine, like last time. It's been months since I saw you. I had to make su—"

"It's been TWO YEARS! Don't you remember?!"

She knew how tenuous the Prince's relationship with time was; over and over again, in their years together, she'd been the one to remind him of important meetings and deadlines. But he had never been off by this much.

The Prince's expression remained impossible to interpret. He shot Sleeves a sidelong glance; they nodded back.

Sleeves put a hand on Lou's shoulder, gently squeezing it in a rare display of emotion. They lowered the card they were holding—the half that remained of it—and handed it to her. "Here. Make sure you hold it upright," they said, taking a step back. "I'll... go help with the portal." And with that, they turned around and walked off toward the robed figure, leaving the privacy of the conversation.

Sleeves stayed there, in mid-step, close but out of earshot; in motion, but eerily still. Their foot approaching the ground, but never connecting. Their coattails swaying in the breeze, but frozen in place like a painting.

The Prince looked back to Lou with uncharacteristic hesitation. She'd only ever seen him act this sheepish back in the princess days, in private, when it was only the two of them. He'd never shown this side of himself after the coronation. "It hadn't felt that long," he said, as matter-of-factly as he could.

"It has to me!" she replied, clutching the burning card in her hand. "I counted the days. Did you know that? I counted the days for a long time. There are still mornings I wake up thinking I'm in the castle again, thinking I'm in..." She exhaled shakily. "But I was never going to forget, was I? It wasn't in the cards."

Lou pulled at the skirt of her coronation dress with her free hand, never breaking eye contact. "It's funny, isn't it?" she asked, practically tasting the bitterness of each word. "When I'm backstage, I give history lessons about us. And when I step out in front of the audience, I relive the last time... the last time it felt like I meant anything to you."

The Prince straightened his back, the downtrodden look on his face gone. "Loulou—"

"You're always there!" she yelled, desperately trying to keep at bay the feelings that were rushing to the surface. "No matter how far away I walk, the moment I look back, you're right there!" She couldn't be angry if she was sad, and she wanted to be angry. She'd cried so much in the past two years alone! Surely she had to be running dry by now! She could do this. She could hold back whatever tears she had left just a little while longer. "Every time I reach back, you slip through my fingers. But not tonight. Tonight I was finally fast enough to catch you."

The Prince shook his head. "Oh, Loulou... You need to let go, for your own good."

"I... I need to let go?!" His words had almost knocked the wind right out of her. "I can't stop feeling the way I feel, just like that! Not if you're the one who keeps—"

"Loulou, it's not real!" The Prince allowed emotion to return to his face once again. "Don't you understand by now? Those feelings aren't real!"

"What?" She blinked once, twice, three times in rapid succession. "No... You think I don't—"

"Those feelings aren't for me, Loulou! They're for the role I play, the power I hold. The body, the twinkle in the eyes, the smile, that's not me! That's the version of me you have in your head." The Prince put his hand on her shoulder. "That's my old heart tricking you."

Lou shook her head in utter disbelief. "No. No, you can't be serious."

His face was as serious as she'd ever seen it. "I know what it's like! I lived with it for years." He moved his hand down, his fingertips brushing up against the base of her neck, his palm lightly pressed against the beating of her heart. "It's lying to you, Loulou. It's building a house of cards out of assumptions and desires, ready to crash down around you. It's only going to hurt you in the end. I'm not going to let that happen." He pulled back his hand. "Everything I've done has been to free you from it." He tapped his chest through the overlapping plates of armor. "From me." He gestured around him. "From all of this."

"How dare you," Lou said, her entire body shaking. "How dare you!"

The Prince sighed, the way he always did when he felt she was being stubborn. But stubborn or not, she was right.

"You think I don't know you?!" she yelled, livid. "You think I didn't get to know the real you? We spent years together! We won and lost battles together! You hand-picked me because you saw something in me. I stuck around because I saw something in you too! I've seen sides of you that you've never shown anyone else. No one... no one knows me better than you do! Don't you realize I know you just as well?!"

He stood there silently for a moment, impassive in the face of her anger.

"No you don't," he replied flatly, almost pityingly. "You don't know me any better than—"

"HOW DARE YOU!" Lou screamed, her voice high-pitched and raspy. "How... how dare you try to take that away from me." She wheezed as she gasped some air back into her lungs, her legs trembling, but her eyes still firmly on his. "How dare you show your face here tonight. It's so painful to be this close again, knowing... knowing you're just going to leave."

There was barely any emotion on the Prince's face. But there was enough.

Throughout all their time together, Lou had learned the meaning of even the smallest changes to his demeanor. But there were feelings that he held back from everyone, even her. While she wore her heart on her sleeve, the Prince always kept plenty of masks to hide behind. Now cracks were beginning to form, allowing her to see straight through to his core. She could finally see the truth she had suspected for so long: he was in pain.

Lou tensed her hands, clinging tightly to the card as the minuscule flames consuming it drew closer and closer to her fingers. "If you're going to leave, leave! If you're going to stay, stay! But you don't get to pick and choose. You don't get to break the rules whenever you feel like it."

The Prince frowned, but there was no malice in it. "Alright, Loulou. I can leave. Is that what you want?"

She whipped her free hand up, pointing her finger right at his face. "Stop making this about me! I tried! I tried to do what you said. I tried really hard." The countless emotions welling up inside of her smashed against each other. The Prince's suffering, now plain as day to Lou, was as blinding as the turmoil she felt inside, but she held fast. As her vision blurred and a burning fire threatened to consume her from the inside, she refused to look away. "You came to me first."

"Loulou, it's not the sa—"

"I played by the rules! I left the castle, I met new friends, I made a new life for myself, for... I did everything you asked!" She was angry. She was crying. She was angry that she was crying. "Why isn't it enough?"

His head turned slightly, almost reflexively, but his gaze remained on her. "I've just been doing what I can to keep you safe."

"This isn't keeping me safe!" Lou said through the tears. She wiped one eye, then the other with the sleeve of her costume, not breaking eye contact. "There's ways to be hurt that armor can't stop. Don't you understand?"

The Prince exhaled sharply, struggling to keep his emotions under control.

"You can't save anyone else from that pain if you don't let yourself see it. If you don't let yourself feel it. Because it's there! Can't you tell?" She was shaking again. "Can't you even tell?"

His eyes grew cold. "You don't know how I feel."

"YOU DON'T KNOW EITHER!" She gritted her teeth; took one shaky breath. "But I can see it on your face, 'cause I know it. I know it real well. I know what I look like when I'm in pain. I know what it looks like when my heart is aching. 'Cause if I have your heart, then you have mine."

He reached up reflexively, putting his hand over his mouth as if in deep thought—but Lou could tell it was just a desperate bid to hide his face. "Loulou... that's not..."

"Have you started listening to it yet?" she asked him through exhausted, burning eyes. "What is it telling you? Because you need to hear what it has to say. If you're so convinced your heart's a liar, then you have to know how honest mine is."

"I don't need emotions clouding my judgement!" he snapped. "I've got a nation to run! Important things to do, on an unprecedented scale! I explained this to you."

"But you're here!" she said with a sweep of her arm. "Instead of doing those important things. Why?"

"You know why."

"Spell it out for me," she demanded.

"Because we worked together for years. Because I said I'd look after you." The Prince reached out, putting his hand around hers; gently lifting the card from her grasp before the flames consuming it could touch her fingers. "Where are you going with this?"

"Where are Addy and Jenny right now?"

He blinked. "Who?"

"The royal decoys. You worked together for years. You said you'd look after them."

The Prince sighed. "Loulou, that's different."

"Where's the previous captain of the royal guard? Do you remember their name?"

He pursed his lips. Silence.

"You worked together for years. When they retired, you said you'd look after them."

The Prince narrowed his eyes. "They don't have my old body."

"Addy and Jenny do!" Lou had gone for the throat and made contact; she wasn't going to let go. "As far as anyone else can tell, we're identical. By your logic, any of us three could be in danger. If this was really about your old body, you would've planned for it. But you don't even know where they are, do you?"

The Prince finally looked away. He turned toward the balustrade, looking out to the city. But even here on the balcony, at this hour of the night, with lights few and fickle... Lou could see the color rising to his face, plain as day.

"You could have checked in on any of them, but you didn't. You're here now. To see me."

The Prince glanced at the card that he'd taken from Lou, that she'd gotten from Sleeves. He looked as the flames touched his skin; stared as all that remained of The Hourglass was a circle of fire around his fingertips. But he held fast. He didn't flinch.

"Alright Loulou," he said, looking back at her, his defenses stripped away in a way she'd never seen before—not even during their most intimate moments. "That's enough."

"No it's not, because you're still not listening! My old heart's beating inside you, can't you feel it? Can't you understand what it's trying to tell you? You're here tonight because of it! Listen to it already!" Lou reached up and put her hand on her own chest, where the Prince's palm had been earlier; over the heart that beat within her. "Because I'm listening to yours!" She struggled to get the words out, her voice breaking from the flood of emotions threatening to wash away the last of her composure. "It's a gift from you, and I treasure it." She choked the last few syllables out through the tears. "Like I treasure all the others."

The last burnt embers of the card in the Prince's hand turned to ashes and blew away. The wind returned, carrying with it a torrent of sound that Lou had forgotten was even missing. The last few moments had felt like hours, but had hardly taken a second. Sleeves completed their walk over to the tent. The crowd's distant clapping returned, still a moment away from the third wave of cheering that would signal Lou's last chance to get back in time.

"—on here," the armored knight said with a voice encased in metal, crossing the distance to Lou and clamping down on her shoulder with a steel-covered fist. "Balcony's off-limits."

"Ow!" Lou yelped, trying to pry off the offending hand to no avail. She turned to look up, staring tear-slicked daggers into the metal helmet's vision slits.

"HANDS OFF!" both Lou and the Prince yelled at the knight in unison. The armored figure immediately let go, taking a step back in surprise.

The Prince hooked his thumb over his shoulder. "Get in the tent," he said to the knight, in a growl so low that Lou could feel it resonate in her bones. She didn't know how long it had been since she herself had used that tone with anyone.

"Door's almost ready," the witch said as she continued pouring the last of the powder around the tent, circling behind it. "Y'can go in now," she added, out of sight.

Sleeves held the front flap of the tent open as the armored figure stepped in sheepishly. "We really need to go. Number five should be in the upper hall soon, if he isn't there already."

"Loulou, are you hurt?" the Prince asked, his immediate concern having quickly overtaken anything else he'd been feeling a moment ago.

Lou clutched at her throbbing shoulder. She was no stranger to physical pain in this body, not anymore. This too would pass, just like it had so many times before. "It's nothing, it's just..." Then something dawned on her. She looked up at him. "How come you believe my body, but not my heart?"

The Prince stared back for a moment, visibly processing what she'd just said. "What?"

"If you're going to keep me safe, you can't just stick to the way I used to do it. You have to keep all of me safe. You have..." She took one step closer to him. "You have to keep us safe."

He frowned. "You're still going on about that."

"Because it's true! Because you still don't believe it!" She took another step forward, the space between them dwindling down to almost nothing. "Who's the stubborn one now?"

The Prince gritted his teeth. "I don't have time for this." He turned around, hiding his face from her view. "Has the witching hour begun?" he asked loudly.

"Clock's tickin'," the robed figure said from behind the tent. "Half moon, half pr'tection. Yer guy ain't gonna shrug off nothin' this time."

"Good," the Prince said, walking away from Lou. "Let's get going then."

"You're doing it again!" Lou yelled out after him. "You can't run away from everything!"

"I'm facing the important problems!" the Prince yelled back, stepping into the tent behind Sleeves and the knight. He turned around, looking at Lou through a carefully constructed mask of righteous indignation. He was hiding his fragility well. But not well enough. "There's a monster in my castle."

"Ahem."

"Your castle," the Prince muttered.

"I'm not going to let you keep doing this to yourself!" Lou shouted as she walked toward the tent. He was running away again. He was always running away. Never from matters of the mind, nor matters of the body. But always, always from matters of the heart.

His expression as Lou approached was not one she had expected, but it was one she knew well. She'd seen it many times; felt it, once. It was the look of a predator backed into a corner. The face of a cornered wolf.

Lou stood her ground just outside the powder circle and looked him right in the eyes. "I won't let you run away anymore."

WHACK!

The tent fell from sight. He was gone.

Lou stared across the circle of now-glowing sigils, over at the witch who had been standing on the other side. The two of them were the only ones left.

The witch lifted her upturned broom from the stone floor, hiked up her robe, and hopped into the magic circle. The symbols tattooed all over her feet pulsed in rhythm with those painted onto the stone as she walked to the center. She tried to look up at the moon, then reached up and flipped back the hood obscuring her vision. After a moment, she glanced at Lou.

Her face was immediately familiar. The dull golden symbols had multiplied since that morning almost three years ago. They now reached all the way up one side of her head, her hair of the same color flowing all the way down to the opposite shoulder. She looked at Lou with the same expression of annoyance sprinkled with contempt she'd had the last time the two had seen each other in that safehouse above the bakery. Tonight, though, it seemed a little softer.

Then from several stories below the crowd erupted into cheers, clapping for the third set of actors walking onto the stage to take their bows.

The witch looked to the source of the noise, then back to Lou, furrowing her brow ever-so-slightly. "Congratulations," she finally said.

With three swift strokes of her broom, the witch swept the circle away, falling through the stone as the last of the glowing symbols faded away. The balcony was empty once again, with practically no trace left of there having been anyone other than the lead actress of tonight's play.

Lou wiped her eyes one last time, turned around, and started running.

She no longer had any sense of time. How long before her fellow lead actors would take the stage? This was the last time they'd get to do this together for this show. She didn't want to miss it. There were so many people she didn't want to disappoint. As she rushed down the spiral stairs, perilously leaping several at a time and pushing off the walls to help her maintain her momentum, doubt and frustration began to bubble up.

What had been the point of it? What had she gained from chasing him all this way, only for their reunion to end like that? Did she feel good about getting out so many of the feelings that had been boiling over during these past years? Hadn't she told herself so many times that it wouldn't accomplish anything?

But she'd seen him, the real him. She'd seen him without masks, worn down to the breaking point. Her words had hit a nerve. She knew he cared. But at what cost? His face as he vanished into the witch's portal... would that be her last memory of him?

She dashed out of the base of the tower and into the hallways leading back to the stage, her eyes burning, her lungs in flames. Was she too late? Would there be anyone to return to now, if she even managed to make it back at all? Her legs began to feel numb from the sustained effort and the stress combined. Maybe she'd fall. Maybe she'd faint, only to be found later by the crowds as they exited the auditorium.

The edges of her vision began to darken as Lou stumbled around the last corner, her arm reaching out to lean on a wall she knew wasn't there. As her body began to tip over, her feet suddenly lifted up into the air and she hung on for dear life to the shape that obscured her vision.

"Gotcha!" a gravelly voice said as two powerful arms held her aloft like a princess. "Whoa there Lou, easy. I gotcha."

"Roy?" Lou said, trying desperately to catch her breath. "Did... did I miss...?"

Her fellow actor chuckled as he didn't run so much as leapt down the hall. "Stalled 'em for ya. Don't you worry, you're right on time."

She buried her face in his chest, trying to hold back the tears. "Thank you," she said softly as the crowd launched into its fourth and final round of loud cheering and clapping.

He laughed. "Thank me later, it's about to get bumpy! Hold on now."

Roy ducked into the first door to the auditorium, skipping backstage entirely. He made a show of running in front of the stage—spinning the both of them around to the delight of the first few rows—then ran up and leapt onto the low wall around the orchestra, using it as a steppingstone to jump up onto the stage.

The crowd absolutely loved it.

Roy ran up to the middle of the stage, easing Lou down onto the ground with one hand while waving to the audience with the other. Lou wobbled to her feet, her legs still not sure whether they were numb or just fantastically sore. She reached out again for stability, her hand finding purchase in the slender grip of another actor. She looked at the hand, then up.

Libellule, still in her Witch-Fiend costume and makeup, gently lifted up the end of her blindfold to give Lou a friendly wink.

Lou's body had been so battered and bruised by the reckless ordeal she'd put it through, her senses so thoroughly taxed and overwhelmed, that her world had dwindled down to just herself and a few people: the people who had helped her through the most difficult times of her life. The colleagues holding her hands, the rest of the troupe backstage, and the special section of the audience in front of her. Nothing else existed. Nothing else mattered, except smiling and taking a bow. So she took a deep breath.

And time stood still once more.

But there was no malice nor magic in the air; just a mundane motivational ritual that Lou had practiced so many times it had become second nature. The stage was sacred, leaving only room for performer and performance. When she stepped out in front of the audience, her worries and aches and fears stayed behind.

At least, in theory. This was a rushed ritual under extreme circumstances. But that was okay. She didn't need it to last hours; she'd already played her part. All she needed was a moment.

Lou exhaled slowly, letting time flow again along with her breath.

As the crowd cheered and the lead actors took their bows, Lou focused on the people in her little world and smiled. Whatever past steps she'd taken to get here, whichever future paths awaited her... she could hold those thoughts at bay a little while longer. She was up on stage, showered with cheers and applause, in the grandest theater of the biggest city she'd ever known.

For now, in this fleeting moment, she would cherish this victory.

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