Deep in the kitchen and secluded by the food storage shelves, Myrielle traded glances between the glistening spit-fired turkey leg and Fredrick.

"Do you like it?" he asked, with the expectant look of a guy who'd bought his girlfriend that Tiffany necklace she'd been eyeing.

She closed her eyes and deeply inhaled the aroma. "No one's ever gifted me meat before..."

"I couldn't help but think of you when I saw it," he said, his tone quickly escalating to 'ultimate boyfriend devotion.'

As far as sixteenth century courtship between two people who had zero money went...this was quickly climbing the charts.

She began to reach for the turkey leg but stopped herself. What if she returned to the dining hall and they noticed? The king would be the first to sniff out the truth. "They'll be expecting me back at the table now..." The words that were coming out of her mouth conflicted with the way she was licking her lips. "I need to finish that proper royal dinner before it gets cold..."

He rolled his eyes. "That bird food? You know that isn't you...come on then, just have a little taste."

Fredrick had transitioned from devoted-sounding boyfriend to 'guy on a street corner peddling crack cocaine.'

Judging by her hypnotized expression, his contraband turkey-dealing ways were working. "It is quite silly," she said. "That they expect grown women to eat like birds..."

He nodded in encouragement. "Extremely silly."

"Especially considering the fact that we have adult-sized bodies," she went on. "Which of course would mean we have adult-sized bellies too!"

"Of course"! He cheered. "You have needs!"

"So why should they stop us from feeling full?" She tentatively took hold of the turkey leg. "Perhaps it's time to start a revolution!"

Fredrick raised his fist in the air. "Go forth!"

With one bite, Myrielle would change the world. Or so she thought. In reality the twenty-first century would prove to be obsessed with 'cantaloupe diets,' and the pressure to have sexy post-baby bodies.

The future was bleak, but on this fine day, in the year fifteen-hundred-and-something, Myrielle held that turkey leg for all those hungry women out there, the ones who suffered the fate of being painfully squeezed into corsets.

"Just a few bites and we'll return to the others," she said dreamily, which in two seconds flat transitioned into full-on devouring.

As she chomped away like déjà-vu from the first strange day that Fredrick and Myrielle had met, he had just one question that he needed to get out of the way. "There's something I must know for certain," he said quietly.

She glanced up at Fredrick mid-chew, a juicy piece of turkey skin hanging out of her mouth. "Yes?"

"I suspect that I'm an accomplice to Bella's current predicament," he said. He'd initially convinced himself it didn't matter if a girl like Bella suffered a dose of sabotage, but he was starting to feel a little guilty. "Is her face the result of the ingredients I gave you? Please be honest."

She rolled her eyes. "Well of course it is."

He was completely thrown off by her candor. "But she just...looks so horrible now. Was that really the right thing to do?"

Myrielle nodded. "She does look horrible. And yes it was. But you have to believe me when I say that she was horrible to all of us." She sighed. "And you also have to believe I have an antidote. Because I do. Okay?"

His eyes lit up. "An antidote?"

"Yes," she said rolling her eyes. She'd considered discarding the antidote she had made and secretly hidden in the floorboards, but now that she could see Fredrick's conscience on display, she decided it was best not to go full-throttle evil. "The antidote is safely stored away, and I'll use it when the time is right." She smiled. "I promise. Now can I please finish eating this turkey leg?"

He smirked. "I thought you were only going to have a few bites."

She shoved him. "Don't you dare get in the way of a woman and her bird carcass."

As Fredrick watched her continue to eat happily, he found himself fascinated by this not-perfectly-good and not-entirely-evil creature of exotic mystery. In all the books he'd read, the female love interests were always inherently good, and the villains were inherently bad. He decided it was time for stories to portray more realistic complex characters, and made a mental note to share his helpful feedback with Gianni.

Myrielle was deep into the turkey leg now, lost in carnivorous ecstasy and completely unaware of the meat juices dribbling down her chin.

He gestured to her face. "You have a bit of a...residue from the meat."

"Oh!" she covered her mouth and seemed embarrassed.

"Let me fetch you a napkin," he said, his servitude instincts taking hold.

He was about to go and get one but she stopped him. "Wait! I actually don't need one."

She put down the turkey leg, smiled slyly, and pulled a piece of fabric out of the bosom are of her dress. "Problem solved," she said, as she wiped her mouth clean with the scrap of fabric.

Fredrick was defenseless now, blatantly staring at her chest despite how lopsided it looked.

She followed his fixated eyes. "Well now you know the truth about my visual deception." She shrugged. "I suppose it ruins the fantasy."

A strange mumble was all he could manage.

She removed the fabric from the other side of the gown. "There; at least now it looks symmetrical." She sighed and returned her gaze to his fixated eyes. Since Fredrick was too busy boob-watching to notice anything else, Myrielle decided to have a feast for the eyes of her own. From her close inspection, she could tell that Fredrick was concealing a pair of broad shoulders underneath his servant's jacket. He also had the slightest dimples even when he wasn't smiling. How adorable was that? Now she was focused on his ears (as strange as that was). She couldn't get over the wisps of sandy hair falling halfway down each ear; she was so incredibly tempted to squeeze him for being so cute! Her gaze now travelled down to his prominent chin, and then, to her surprise...his tantalizing lips. Had his lips always been that alluring? They were fuller than the usual look of a basic thin-lipped man, and yet he didn't appear to have taken any pig-fat injections. As she became increasingly mesmerized, she realized she didn't want to squeeze him due to cuteness anymore, she wanted to kiss him due to mega-hotness.

As for Fredrick, he finally gave himself an inner mental slap and pulled his gaze away from Myrielle's chest. He focused on her face instead, and noticed her staring back at him. Or at his mouth to be exact. He watched her lick her lips as if she'd fallen into some sort of trance. Something from deep inside him told him this was the moment, the official time to be a dashing leading man. He rubbed his palms on the sides of his pants, as the nerves began to get the better of him. This should've been easy, and it wasn't like he hadn't done it before, so what was the problem? Maybe it was all those years of giving the prince special hair treatments and giving the king his nightly baths. Every influence of the last ten years had almost made him forget what the true touch of a woman could be like. Almost.

He took a deep breath, stepped forward...and stumbled back when Myrielle grabbed the back of his neck and drowned his desperate lips in a kiss. He was stunned but it was just like riding a bike, as he confidently wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her in.

It was a raw...passionate...meat-juice-infused make-out.

When their lips parted they were both a little breathless.

Fredrick smiled and stroked her honey-tar volumized hair, hoping that somehow against the odds, they could stay in this magical food-storage cocoon forever.

Myrielle stroked his adorable ears that she was tempted to nibble away on for dessert. Nothing made sense and they were lost in a parallel universe that existed far away from the dining hall reality. The back of her brain played out the million ways this encounter would surely go wrong. But her face had no time for the back of her brain's stupid worries. So her defiant face leaned in and kissed him again...

[WRITER COMMENTARY: Uhhh.....what could go wrong, right? Hahahahahah....Hope you're excited (or scared) for whatever happens next, thanks for reading! :-)--->And yes, I was thinking of the Little Mermaid song 'Kiss the Girl' sung by Sebastian the lobster when I was gearing up Fredrick to go in for the kiss ;-) ]