[MAGGIE'S PoV]

After my mortifying time in the fountain with Cas, I was escorted back to my room. The mermaid trio giggled the entire time they dried, redressed me, and fixed my hair.

"You really are Siaboran, drawn to the water like that," Arenya snickered.

"And in His Highness's lap too, lucky girl," Dori sighed. Her cheeks flushed when Solana hissed and shot her a glare.

"It was so embarrassing," I muttered. Nearly an hour had passed, but my skin still hadn't reverted back to its normal shade. "I also just... don't feel that way about Cas, and I think the Queen got the complete wrong idea about me."

Dori gasped. "But he's the prince! And he likes you!"

"Eldoris," Solana put sharp emphasis on her friends name. "We are Lady Jacintha's handmaids. Stop gossiping."

Dori responded in the most ladylike fashion, by scrunching up her nose and sticking out her tongue.

Once I was dry and beautified—again—I thanked the girls and sent them off. I had only a short moment of peace to contemplate what I should do next, when Carlyle poofed into existence in front of me.

"There you are!" I gasped.

"...Miss me that much? I'm flattered dear, but surely you can handle yourself for a few hours..." Carlyle tutted.

"Handle myself? Quite the opposite. I just took Casimir swimming."

"...The palace doesn't have a p—ooohh..." Carlyle broke into a fit of cackling.

I threw myself onto the bed in the most dramatic fashion I could manage. "This is a disaster."

"...Cheer up, it's only the beginning..." He probably meant that as encouragement, but to me it sounded like assurance that I had plenty of time to make an even bigger fool of myself.

"So where have you been all day?" I asked.

Carlyle sat on the edge of the bed, his weightless form not disrupting the blankets in the slightest. "...Oh, all over the castle. I've made a mental list of all the places I think you should see in person. Care for a tour..?"

"Well, Raini said something about tonight's event being a play, so I guess I can do whatever I want until then." I sat up. "What sort of places?"

Carlyle ticked off his fingers as he spoke. "...the king's chambers, a spying portrait that leads to a web if hidden passages, a freaky warded door... fun places..."

"Oh cool, places that'll get me in major trouble if I'm caught. I have nothing better to do, lead the way." I hopped off the bed and stretched my arms above my head. Luckily the dress the mermaid trio had chosen to put me in was a nearly neon shade of pink—that would totally help me evade the notice of palace guards.

I followed Carlyle out into the hall, listening as he babbled all the way to the first point of interest. I tried to stroll casually, like I belonged. The few servants we passed along the way kept their eyes down and didn't even glance my way.

"...I found Queen Amaranth's closet during my searching. Now that's a woman of culture. So many beautiful gowns, so many shoes..!" Carlyle sighed. "...She should give the other ladies of the court some fashion advice..."

I nodded, watching another servant stroll by with a massive bundle of laundry stacked precariously in her arms.

"...The king and queen don't share a room it seems, and the kings chambers look like they've been unoccupied for years..."

I raised my eyebrows. That was definitely something to report back about. If King Jareth was supposedly bedridden, why was his room empty?

"...Ah, that silence reminds me, we should come up with a code..."

"Hm?" I whispered. A noble woman walking by nodded politely to me.

"...A code..." Carlyle repeated. "You can't exactly speak to me in public, so we'll have to come up with subtle gestures you can make to respond to me. Like, if you tap your left foot that means yes, and if you rub your nose that means no, and maybe you could tug your hair for 'Carlyle you're the greatest person to ever live or die.' What do you think..?"

I pulled the end of my braid.

"...You're a doll..." Carlyle smiled. "...I'll show you the painting first, since that's right down this way..."

Carlyle led me to a quiet hall lined with several massive portraits of the royal family. They were all beautifully painted and I wanted to take time to admire the brushwork, but Carlyle urged me on. "...We don't have all day you know..."

"Right but we have like, ten minutes don't we? I neeed to study these things."

"...You can study them after I show you the spy tunnels. Don't spy tunnels interest you..?"

"Not as much as priceless oil paintings," I mumbled, my lower lip jutting.

Carlyle rolled his eyes and floated over to a painting of a pretty, kind looking woman with curly brown hair and big brown eyes. The plaque underneath identified her as Queen Lynn. King Jareth's mother, Casimir's grandmother.

"...The wall is hollow on the other side. It leads to a whole chain of hidden corridors that span the whole palace. In every room with paintings, at least one is linked to this corridor..."

I blinked. "Freaky. Is it normal for royals to have spy passages or whatever in their own palace?"

"...I'm no expert on royals..."

I ran my hand along the gilded frame, then gave it an experimental tug. "How does it open?"

Carlyle shrugged. "...I just floated through it..."

I shot him a look. "Thanks, I'll give that a shot."

"...Maybe it only opens from the inside..?"

"That wouldn't make sense, though." I got down on my knees to look at the underside of the frame. Maybe there was a latch? I tugged a bit harder.

Behind me, someone cleared their throat. I snapped to my feet and whirled around to see Raini's fiancé eyeing me skeptically. "May I ask what you're doing, Lady Jacintha?"

"I-I was looking for the library," I said stupidly.

Carlyle groaned but otherwise kept the commentary to himself.

Favaro raised an eyebrow. "And you assumed the best place to search would be under a portrait?"

"It's a popular new decor fad to cover doors with paintings, haven't you heard?" I wanted to kick myself. Brilliant, Maggie. A+ improvisational skills.

Favaro didn't look amused. Or convinced. "Apologies, but it would seem that particular trend has not reached Réalta yet."

"Oh well that's a shame, I'll have to make a point of mentioning it to the Queen. I'm sure she'd hate to be behind on the latest fashion," I said with a friendly smile.

"Mhm," Favaro hummed, his neutral expression unwavering.

I started shuffling back the way I'd come. "Well, it was nice chatting, I'll continue my search for the library now..."

And because it seems I have the worst possible luck, Raini bounded around the corner, making me jump as she threw her arm over my shoulder and chirped, "Jacintha darling, there you are!"

I laughed nervously. "Here I am."

"I went to collect you from your room, but your handmaids said you'd already left. I'm so glad I was able to find you." Raini smiled cheerfully. "I had so much fun with you this morning I decided I'd like to spend the whole day together. Won't that be great?"

"Totally," I agreed. I shot Carlyle a quick glance and he shrugged.

"...We'll have to save our exploration for after everyone's asleep I suppose..."

Raini led me out of the portrait hall, her creepy fiance trailing not far behind. A long corridor and a left turn later, and we were climbing a spiral staircase to what in the game had been an observation tower. "I have sorcery practice right now. You can watch."

"Sorcery?" I echoed.

Raini nodded and unlocked the simple wooden door at the top of the stairs with a light sigh. "An affinity for magic is the only good thing to come from my mother's blood."

"Oh." I wasn't sure how else to respond, but I suppose it made sense for the princess of a human nation to be unhappy about being half dragon. Surely there were people in the kingdom who made a stink about it. Did Cas feel similarly?

Raini opened the door to a small, round room surrounded on all sides by stained glass windows. Bits of broken rainbow colored everything, from the multitude of low-burned candles, to the stacks of books and boxes of dried plants that covered the large table in the center of the room.

Raini lifted a thick, ornate book off the table. The gems adorning the leather cover glowed red at her touch. She held it out to me. "Jacintha, will you hold this a moment?"

"Sure." I crossed the room and took the book from her grasp, exhaling sharply when the weight hit my arms. It was heavier than I expected. The gems on the cover dimmed, but continued to glow.

I had thought Raini wanted me to hold it so she could set up the table or whatever sorcery lessons entailed, but after a moment of observing me with a bright smile and clasped hands, she took the book back.

"What is that?" I asked.

"A grimoire. A spell book." Raini placed it back on the table, then set to work lighting every candle in the room. "It's not as glamorous as it sounds. More of a rule book, really."

In reality, none of "sorcery training" was as glamorous as I expected it to be. Maybe Raini was having fun grinding powders and silently reading page after page of tiny text, but I felt like I was moments away from drifting off to sleep.

To keep myself awake, I bothered Favaro with any question that popped into my mind. He was surprisingly accommodating, and five questions in I was less scared of him. Maybe he just had "resting creepy face."

"So can anyone with non-human blood do magic?"

Favaro nodded. "Most. You do need a certain percentage— by our experimentation, roughly a quarter nonie blood is enough to accomplish basic spells."

"What are you then?" I asked. His eyes were very brown, giving no indication of what sort of nonhuman parent or grandparent he had.

He arched an eyebrow. "Pardon?"

"Well, you're Lumina's court sorcerer, I'm only assuming that means you can do magic."

"There are other ways," Raini said, looking up from her studies. She blew a short ruby curl out of her face.

I frowned. "How so?"

Raini and Favaro exchanged a look, a silent conversation, then Raini laughed. "Favaro, I really doubt Jacintha dear is a threat in this department."

"...Nah, you're just a threat in the mother-killing department..."

Raini saved me from flinching at Carlyle's remark by dropping the mortar she was holding. "Oh bother," she muttered, bending to pick up the pieces of ceramic.

I shot Carlyle a warning glance. I was the only one who could hear him, but still. I'd prefer to forget the end goal of my mission.

At Raini's urging, Favaro sighed and began his explanation. "Very well. My father—"

"Arvan Solanum," I blurted. I hadn't meant to say it out loud, but I had just now made the connection. I couldn't believe it had taken me so long. Arvan had been Jareth's most loyal companion in Shadows of Light.

"Yes..." Favaro looked me over with an expression that may have beed disdain or may have been boredom, then cleared his throat. "Anyway. While a connection to the magic of the realm exists in every living being, its no secret that the connection is stronger in nonies. My father thought that unfair, and he's right."

I blinked, watching as Favaro morphed before my eyes from stuffy and aloof to animated and smiling. He leaned forward in his chair. "My father developed a way to... even the playing field. That is to say, with the proper tools—and with the proper nonie, since it seems to take an exceptionally strong soul to survive the process. Though it doesn't affect the transfer if the nonie lives or dies, so I suppose it doesn't matter —that connection can be redirected, meaning—"

"It can be stolen," Raini said. She looked at Favaro and shrugged a delicate shoulder. "You were taking too long to get to the point."

He sat back, smoothing a hand over his hair and resuming his usual frown. "As the princess so delicately put it, yes. A nonie's tie to the realm's magic can be severed and possessed by a human—or anyone, really. I'm sure another non-human could do it as well, but we've never experimented with that."

"So that's what you did?" I frowned, trying to understand. "You stole the magic from a magical being?"

"An angel, to be exact," Favaro said calmly. "And to answer your second question, yes he did survive the process. He killed himself shortly after, but that was hardly my doing."

"...Monster..." Carlyle breathed, his hands pressed to his mouth.

My stomach rolled, but I did my best to maintain a calm expression. "May I be excused?"

"Oh heavens," Raini looked up from her textbook and glance at one of the stained glass windows. "I lost track of the time. We're supposed to meet Cas!"

"What about dinner?" I asked, though truthfully I'd lost my appetite after learning about that whole magic-thievery thing.

Raini brushed root powder off her dress and snuffed out the candles, then tugged me from the chair I'd occupied for the past four hours. "Don't fret, you'll be fed. It's part of why we're meeting."

"...I'm sorry, you can enjoy the rest of your afternoon without me..." Carlyle said, looking as sick as a ghost can. "...I can't stand to be around these vile people another moment..."

Raini looped her arm through mine with a giggle and a friendly smile. If only I had Carlyle's ability to vanish on a whim.