"So, I'm just going to ask one more time," I said cautiously, since Elizabeth didn't seem to be in the best of moods. "Where are we going?"

She huffed and pulled her patched jacket tighter around her as a cold gust of wind whipped her dark brown hair. "Somewhere a fluffy prince like you has never been."

I decided not to mention that included a lot of places.

In fact, I had barely been in this town at all, despite the many times I'd stared out my window at night, wondering what it would be like. Call me shallow or whatever, but it had never occurred to me that people worth meeting lived here. The idea of royalty had been drilled into my head since I was born, and I had watched the same happen to my sister. And now I was here, walking with not only a peasant, but a leader of a gang intent on overthrowing my parents.

We turned a corner and walked through a marketplace, the air scented with produce and spices. A nearby merchant shoved a silver necklace in Elizabeth's face. "Pretty jewelry for a prettier lady?"

Elizabeth scoffed and rolled her bright green eyes without pausing. "I don't think so."

I stared at the merchant for a second, trying to place where I had seen him before. He was short, with a small trimmed beard and black eyes. He didn't look all that different from everyone else, but when he grinned at me, I got the weirdest feeling I knew him from somewhere.

"Come on, Liam." Something grabbed my sleeve and Elizabeth started hauling me down the street, letting go as a couple came between us.

Eventually, we broke away from the crowd and stopped in front of a small store. The windows were covered in dark pink curtains, and a sign above the wooden door read "Fortunes, Futures and Tricks". Even through the door, I could smell the faint scent of vanilla and incense.

"This is it?" I asked. "You know, the way you acted, I was expecting more of a monster's lair or something. Maybe a couple dragons."

"If you want to go get some dragons, by all means. I'd rather do this alone."

"Then why are you just standing here?"

She glared at me and stuffed her hands in her pockets before taking them out again. "Shut it, Liam."

I raised my hands. "Fine. In we go then, I guess."

Elizabeth muttered something under her breath, but I couldn't make out all the words. The things I did catch however, I decided to ignore.

Finally, she wrapped her fingers around the doorknob and pushed, the door swinging open with a satisfying swish.

At least, it was satisfying until a wave of heat, perfume and incense practically killed me. The smell of tropical fruits and desserts was almost enough to make me want to sniff rotten eggs, just to get the stinging out. Elizabeth, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem whatsoever; she walked right in, nearly shutting the door in my face before I caught the edge.

Of course, Elizabeth didn't turn around. But I hadn't really expected her to. Whoever we were going to see had rattled her quite a bit.

The building was a lot bigger on the inside, and it gave me a sense of vertigo when I stepped through the doorway, still coughing and waving the air in front of my face. There were several round tables set around the space and a bar on the left side, where a tall man stood cleaning glasses. The walls were covered in photos of people I didn't know, most with elaborate makeup or clothes. Many of the tables had crystal balls or decks of playing cards on them. There were curtains cutting off a back section of the room, which seemed about fifty feet away.

I felt someone watching me, and looked back to the bartender. He glanced up at me for a second, his gray eyes settling on my face and widening. Even in casual clothes, the royal family was easily recognizable for our black hair and bright blue eyes.

"Elizabeth," I whisper-yelled to her. She turned to me with an exasperated look on her face, caught in the process of tying her jacket around her waist. "I think that guy recognized me."

In fact, I felt many pairs of eyes on me, and the quiet din of the room had lowered to almost silence as soon as I'd stepped inside. Several people who had been sitting at the tables turned their heads to stare at me.

Elizabeth turned and blinked, setting her mouth somewhere between a smirk and a grimace. "Not anymore, he doesn't."

As soon as she said that, the volume went up again and the customers went back to their business, chatting as if nothing happened. I opened my mouth to ask, but realized I had no idea what was going on, and closed it again with a sigh. I missed the palace.

"That would be our informant," she told me, deciding to take pity on my confused expression. "He doesn't like a lot of attention."

"So it's a 'he'. Finally, some information."

Elizabeth's green eyes scanned the room, taking in every detail like I'd seen her do when preparing to attack and defend, or even watching Seline as she trained. Thankfully, she didn't seem to hear me.

"There," she said finally. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. Instead, she headed over to a remote corner in the back, where a single man sat at a table alone, practicing slight-of-hand tricks with a deck of cards. He looked up as we approached, and I realized with a start that his eyes were a bright purple, like the amethysts on my mother's favorite necklace.

"Ella," the man said with a smile, spreading his dark brown hands, gold bracelets rattling on his arms. "So wonderful to see you again. And it's always an honor to meet the prince."

"Janus," Elizabeth replied stiffly.

"Janus?" I repeated. "Like, the myth?"

The man inclined his head. "Exactly. Janus is often portrayed with two faces. The god of choices, doorways, beginnings and endings." While he talked, his fingers moved quickly and fluidly, skillfully sliding the cards from on hand to the next, shuffling them and flipping them through his palms with ease. "But when you have two faces, your enemies can only focus on one. And that, my friend," Janus grinned, showing blinding teeth that contrasted with his close-cropped hair. He twirled his hand and the deck disappeared. "Is how magic is formed."

I frowned. "But magic's not real. It's just people using illusions and distractions."

Janus sighed and I blinked, trying to believe what I was seeing. Instead of the dark-skinned man before, a blonde sat in front of me now, a gold necklace on resting on his chest. But when he met my eyes, his were the same violet as before. "Magic isn't real until you believe in it."

Elizabeth snorted, the first sound she had made since her greeting. "Yes, and I'm the long lost queen."

Janus shrugged, and started playing with the pendant of his necklace. "Is that really so hard to believe?"

He looked at me, and I was suddenly aware of something in my back pocket. I slowly reached in and withdrew the same deck of cards Janus had been messing with. He grinned at me, the kind of smile that meant he had seen all sorts of people and knew how to charm every single one.

"That's enough tricks," Elizabeth said shortly. "I need a favor."

Janus sat back, gazing at her thoughtfully. His fingers tapped on the table, like they couldn't sit still. I threw the cards back on the wooden surface, partly out of sympathy and partly because I didn't want to touch them.

"Why do you need a favor from me, darling?" he asked, plucking the top card from where they had spread across the table in a perfect fan. "Surely with that strong will of yours, you can get anything you wanted?"

Elizabeth stiffened. I didn't know what was wrong with her--in the few days I'd known her, I had never seen her as uncomfortable as she was now.

Janus sighed, and flipped the card so the face was towards us: the king of hearts. "You know, Ella, information is tricky. I might be risking my safety by telling you the things you want to know. But your pretense for being here is much more dangerous, and you are already in debt. So tell me--" he leaned forward and fixed his intense stare on Elizabeth, who met his eyes with her defiant green ones. "Why should I risk my life for you?"

There was a charged silence, the kind of silences in the throne room when Father convicted a prisoner, forcing me and my sister to watch as they beg for their life. The silence of being tied down and out of options.

"Because you know it's the right thing to do," I blurted out. Janus turned his violet-toned eyes onto me. They were alight with curiosity. I forced myself to hold his gaze. "That's why."

Janus grinned at me, flipping the card in his hand using his first two fingers. Instead of being patterned, the other side was printed with the jack of spades. I blinked at it, and forced myself not to jump as I returned my gaze to the man in front of me, who had changed once again. This time, I recognized the black-eyed merchant from the market.

"The interesting thing about people, Prince Liam, is that the right thing to do is often different depending on whom you ask," Janus told me, leaning towards me with his forearms on the table, his eyes glinting and flashing back to purple as he studied me. "Who's to say what the real right thing to do is? Is there one deity telling us how to rule our lives, to teach us right from wrong?" He gazed at Elizabeth with a smile that told me she wasn't going to like what he said next. "Look at dear Ella. Taught from birth to hate the royal family and everything they stood for. Do you think it feels right to her as she walks down the streets with the prince, while he stares in wonder at the town his entire lineage has disregarded and looked down upon? Does it feel right to you as you aid the group whose only goal is to slaughter your family?" He sat back, his eyes half closed. "No, I don't think it does. So tell me again, Liam--what exactly is the right thing to do?"

His words felt like a slap in the face. "Thats...that's different."

For the first time, Janus frowned. He laid the card in his hand so the king faced up. "Do you know why I chose cards as my medium for magic, Liam?"

I shook my head.

"Cards have a history, a story of their own. A hierarchy, an order to them that you won't get in the real world. Take the king." Janus tapped the picture's head with his dark finger, back to his first disguise. "In most cases, he's considered the top card. The one that holds the power. I could be the king, should I side against you. The power, the trust the royal family would bestow upon me would be unimaginable."

"But you could be our ace," I countered. He raised his eyebrows.

"Aces are unstable, Prince Liam. Unreliable. They can be high, low...both. You can never trust them fully." Janus flicked his fingers and the face of the card shimmered and changed. "The jack. The knight." He met my eyes, his shimmering with power, and despite his laid-back front, I saw how dangerous he really was. "The jack lays down his life for his king and queen, his country. He's the man on the front line, the perfect soldier."

Janus looked at Elizabeth, his violet eyes hard. "And I will not be your soldier."

He snapped his fingers and the card burst into flames.

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So, if you read He Paid Me, you know I already wrote a character named Liam. I really like that name for some reason, and I wrote this a couple months ago and I'm too lazy to change the name because I like it, so yeah. Sorry this isn't very good.