"This is absolutely insane," Phillip whispered in my ear, trying to usher his voice softly enough so that my father wouldn't hear his reservations.

My father had yet to explain his scheme to us, but Phillip was expressing near blatant doubt that it would be possible to trick Lilith into telling us where my body was; I was equally as unconvinced as we strolled at painfully brisk pace through the inner castle corridors to yet another secret room buried even deeper within the castle walls. My father was about privacy to the extreme. Lilith's raven was an excellent reason to vouch for such ridiculous, grandiose precautions. I would have buried myself three times as deeply within these walls were it to guarantee I wouldn't see my mother again.

Phillip seemed to sense my discomfort and placed a sturdy hand through what should have been my shoulder and cursed aloud.

"My bloody horse has better luck touching you than I," he muttered. "And I'm supposed to be your prince."

My father and I chuckled together as we finally found ourselves in a study decked in the most careful splendor that I had ever beheld in my life. Sweeping red curtains adorned windows that overlooked a walled-off secret garden and threads of gold wove their way throughout the fabrics that dressed the chairs and carpets placed strategically throughout the room to draw the eye into their depths.

But there was no time to get caught in the sweeping webs of scarlet and sunshine. We had to get my body back first. What a strange thought. Getting your body back was not a phrase I thought I'd become so familiar with, let alone my personal situation.

"Okay, now that we're settled somewhere more secluded, we first have to understand what Lilith wants and who she is as a person."

The thought struck me all at once and the knife of dread pierced me with the full force of an oncoming carriage drawn by mad horses. We knew nothing of what Lilith desired except one thing.

"She wants me," Phillip said aloud, affirming my darkest fears all at once.

My damned mother just had to have an affinity for the person who could save me. Somehow I knew that he would become an even more crucial player in this game of ours than I could ever want. This was the worst idea in the history of ideas, but before my father could give his grim nod of understanding, I knew that it would be the only viable solution that we could muster given all of the other factors in play.

Her darkness was verging on the edge of the kingdom and the time for luxury was over. We would have to plan to deceive Lilith using my own fiancé as bait. Not only was it demeaning to Phillip, but it was a huge slap in the face to everything I had finally come to terms with. Just as I had decided that Phillip wasn't out to use me as breeding chattel or that my father wasn't using me to unite kingdoms, my mother would come around and try to take him away, along with any chance to save the kingdom from her eternal darkness and suffering.

I hated that witch. I couldn't deny it at this point, my rage boiling over within my mind and into the recesses of my very soul to marinate and set a new fire to consume her with. If Phillip didn't manage to get us out of this mess, I would personally hunt her down and use all of the force I knew how to use to try and slice her in half. Maybe she would never even make it to Hell to regenerate this time. Maybe I could destroy any evidence that she had existed at all. After all, defeating her today only to know she could come back tomorrow again and again offered little comfort to me. She had to be extinguished permanently.

"How do you mean that she wants you, Phillip?" my father asked, tearing through the silence with his ignorance to the matter at hand.

Phillip and I exchanged wary glances as the fury within me threatened to burst through the dams of my eyes and salt the earth with my pain in a memory ne'er seen to be so tragic. I could lose the only person I could trust at this point. I loved my father at this rate, but how trustworthy could he be, given that he had once loved my mother? How did I know that he would not lead me to some separate doom, if not join forces with the witch once again to make me fall and to take the kingdom in a new era of darkness?

"Lilith has asked me on many occasions to agree to rule with her. She would have me for a husband, I think," Phillip stammered, his cheeks burning with the thought of something so horrid.

I clasped his hand within mine and gripped it with trembling force--at least I tried to. I would not let him go. But it was clear that if I wanted to be free, he would have to plunge into the mouth of the beast and slay her when she was at her most comfortable. The dragon's breath would catch and she would huff and puff no more. Hopefully.

"Do we really have to handle things this way?" I blurted, my eyes darting toward Phillip's to find some greater plan within their icy depths. But the fog of their brilliants curled about his fleeting smiles no more. They had already accepted what may come; we hadn't even laid out the official plan yet. He was determined to save me—no matter the cost.

I happened to glance in the mirror adjacent to us and found that my eyes cast a dangerous glow. Everything about my wavering image had become a storm of the most gruesome nightmares and anxious pangs of woe. I was the maelstrom that would face my mother, should everything else fail. I knew not the extent of my power—only that I was, after all, her daughter. She should have weighed my threat against her more carefully.

"I'm going to tear her in half."

My gritted teeth ground against each other with petrifying force as my father and Phillip offered some options to try and use Phillip against her. But my mind was quicker—it was of the same cloth that my mother had woven for her won wicked schemes.

"I think that, if we are using you as a way to deceive Lilith, that we should incorporate me in there somehow. She thinks that I don't want you, yes? She thinks that I am anything but on board for marrying you?"

Phillip and my father nodded, both of them exchanging curious glances but offering no rebuttal to my thought process as it tumbled from my mouth, my mind barely processing the vindictive web of treachery I was capable of weaving.

"Then we should make her think that you're done with me. That the reason I was with you was that you had some delusional hope that I would love you if you offered to save me. Tell her of our plan—let her think she has all the cards. Except paint the hearts black and call them spades; she'll never know what hits her if she thinks she knows everything. Use that damned raven to our advantage."

Phillip inclined his head for me to continue while my father started to beam knowingly.

"I say that we give her a little taste of theater, to start. We go back out into the castle and mope and groan about finding me, but I give the impression that I'm not willing to marry you—that I'm only cooperating for my own gain. She thinks I'm just some selfish little girl and that's what she's going to see. She's going to see us petition King Richard for help and him overjoyed at seeing his daughter in the dreaming state at least.

You'll see me complain about having broken the laws of Traumwanderung and our concern that I might be tried, and your continued frustration at getting nowhere with me romantically. And, finally, when you seem to be at your wits end, you can go to her and reveal your plans to her. Make her think that she's known nothing of our vanishing spells or tricks when in fact she has. Play dumb to her trickery and lay your cards upon the table voluntarily. Beg for her forgiveness. And, in the meantime, come up with a plan to destroy me with her. Say that you want to get back at me for not cooperating with your romantic schemes."

"Are you saying?" my father asked slowly.

"Once our plan has gone into play, I want you to convince her that you want me dead and bring her to the place where I'm hidden. We'll find a way to connect my thoughts with yours—I'm sure that's possible in a long-distance sort of way... if not we can work on that part... but overall, I want you to have her try to kill me. If she comes back to do that, then we know where I am and have a chance of beating her."

"And if we fail?" Phillip asked, the awe on his face apparent and mixed with a state of abject fear.

"Then you kill me and find a way to save the kingdom without me. You'll still be alive; you'll gain her trust all the more. I'll go to Hell and return at some point. But if I have to die, so be it."

"Absolutely not!" my father roared.

"What other choice do we have?"

Both remained silent.

"That's what I thought. Besides, I'd love to wake up to her trying to kill me. All the more rage to fuel me with to tear that wicked beast in half and decorate the walls with her hideous, flayed corpse. At least when I'm done with her."

And so the plan was set. We would let her know everything. We would let her 'win'. And at the same time, she would lost it all, just as the house of cards had finally been put together. It would fall. Even if I wasn't there to actually see it come tumbling down.