Hoofs pounded the ground as the horse thundered to the palace stables. Eve could still hear hoofs behind her and yelled for her horse, Wendy, to go faster. They finally reached the almost abandoned stables only slightly ahead of William and his horse. Almost breathlessly, Eve clambered off her exhausted mare and took to the ground. Her legs were wobbly beneath her, and she only managed to refrain from falling by taking a tight hold to a railing that divided two stalls. William and his strong gelding, Nimrod, rode into the stables a minute later, William in not much better condition than Eve when dismounting from his horse.

“Eve,” William panted when safely on the ground, “in all of our years of knowing each other, you never fail to impress me.”

“And I hope it stays that way. You will always need someone to beat you at something, and reduce your big head to its normal size,” she teased with a grin on her face.

“Oh, and this comes from Miss “I can beat Will at everything,” you’re just as bad as me at having an ego,” William mocked.

“No, see, I tell the truth when saying I beat you at everything, you are the liar,” retorted Eve.

“Oh, ouch, that hurt, your sharp tongue gives a worse beating than anything else,” said William. And with that, and a punch in the arm from Eve, they trotted off to the dining hall for lunch; leaving their horses to some stable hands.

The two friends sat down to lunch with a ravenous appetite from all of their riding. The food served to them was quite adequate, and by the end of the meal, they were both full and content. Eve and William glided down an almost abandoned corridor in the palace to Williams’s private study. They sat down at a small table, across from each other, and looked meticulously at the chessboard spread out on the table.

Eve gracefully moved one of her white pawns up two spaces and awaited Williams move. William moved one of his black pieces forward, his mind racing with various strategic moves that he could use. The game went on slowly like this for almost an hour, when Eve lost her train of thought and made an absolutely ridiculous move. William had her in check before she could think. William had her in checkmate within his next few turns.

He acted very gallant in his victory, for a little while. The two split up and went to their separate rooms to bath and get dressed before supper started. It took Eve quite a time to get ready for dinner. She always liked to soak in her bath until the water was no longer warm, though it was unladylike for her skin to be like a prune when she got out. She knew her bath was at an end, when, like clockwork, she heard the chime to start dinner, and she noticed an abrupt change in the temperature of her water.

She put on one of her favorite dresses, which was amethyst colored; it did wonderful things with her wild brown hair. She forced her stubborn curls into a bun, and clipped up little bits that weren’t controlled to her liking. Eve wore her jewelry sparsely as not to be the focal point of her ensemble. She looked wonderful, as she always did, with very little face makeup and jewelry.

Going out into the halls, she noticed that there were still young pages and squires hurrying, not to be late to dinner. William and their other friends, including, Jacob, Ellie, Paiden, and Naomi, were waiting in the hall as they always did; William in his clean white shirt and brown breeches. After they had greeted Eve, the friends continued down to dinner. William’s brown hair danced on his forehead as he walked. They reached the ancient oaken doors of the dinning hall right before the evening prayer was given, and waited until it was over before getting their food. The six friends sat down at their usual secluded table in the corner of the hall. They ate peacefully until, in the middle of their meal, William could no longer hold in the urge to gloat about his beating Eve at chess.

“So what did you two do while we were in town?” Paiden asked in his low baritone voice. Jacob, Ellie, Naomi, and him had been in town shopping for Eve’s birthday gifts. William had already bought his earlier.

“Oh, nothing much, I destroyed Eve at chess though,” bragged William, with a proud grin on his face.

“Yes, but you also lost to me at racing this morning,” retorted Eve.

“It was a close race,” exclaimed Will.

“It was a close chess game.”

“Oh, whatever,” mumbled William, his pride temporarily tarnished, and not able to think of anything else to say.

“That’s what I thought,” Eve said, shaking her finger at him.

They finished their meal quite undisturbed after that, and they got up from their meal with full bellies and a jolly attitude. The six friends strolled over to a sunroom in the castle that overlooked the royal gardens. The dying sun melted around the room and it gave a sense of comfort and security. For a while the friends sat in easy chairs around a table watching the sun fade away and surrender itself to the horizon. As night approached William took out a deck of cards from one of his many mysterious dinner-jacket pockets.

The friends went into jolly game, with money as the prize. Paiden was quite broke before the night had finished, but the others let him stay in the game, just to say that they could beat at least somebody. They stayed up long after the night had set in, but they did not seem to tire for a long while. The ominous night set in around them, and the garden outside the window was nearly invisible to them, for it had been engulfed in the darkness.

In the middle of their evening, after much winking and silent, supposedly unnoticed, gestures between two of the group, Jacob got up from their game with the excuse that he needed to use the restroom. A couple minutes after Jacob had left Ellie got up and said that she was going to get more money to play with from her rooms. As Ellie left the table and walked out of sight down the same corridor as Jacob had, the others burst into laughter.

“Hum, I wonder when they’ll be back this time,” joked Paiden.

“I don’t know, but this is becoming a regular thing now. First one of them leaves them the other,” stated Eve.

“And they don’t even suspect that we know what they’re doing,” William said with a chuckle.

“I do wonder, if we should tell them that we know?” Asked Naomi.

“Oh, but it is such fun watching them think of knew excuses to leave the group,” exclaimed Eve.

“Oh, we are cruel, aren’t we?” asked Paiden.

“Yes…we are,” said Eve with an almost proud tone of voice, chuckling.

The group burst into hysterical laughter, and it was only quieted when Paiden, who always had trouble controlling himself, fell out of his chair and knocked the table over with him. All of the friends, after much chuckling and laughing at Paiden (who was laughing along with them), got down and picked up the table, the chair, the cards, the money and Paiden himself. William talked them into starting a new game, and they eventually resumed play.

A little while after they had started the card game they all saw, just barely, Jacob, stopping in the dark hallway, where he thought that no one could see him, and he brushed his black hair back and straitened his green tunic. They all chuckled lightly to themselves and gave silent gestures to each other, as they looked back on their game, as if they hadn’t seen Jacob in the hall. Jacob strode over to them acting as if he hadn’t been gone very long and took a seat at the table.

“Started a new game without me, huh?” Jacob asked accusingly, “And where did Ellie go?” He added with fake innocence.

“Well, if we knew you’d be gone so long, we wouldn’t have started so soon,” said Naomi glancing at the others.

“Oh…yes…well…I…I got lost in the corridors,” explained Jacob, using the only excuse he could think of, “You know how big the royal palace is. I must have taken a few wrong turns.”

“Right,” said Paiden, chuckling to himself. They all nodded in agreement that Jacob knew very well that the bathroom was straight down the hall, only a little ways from the room they were presently in.

The game continued, and Ellie returned only a few minutes after Jacob.

Somehow she had forgotten the money she was supposedly getting from her rooms. Around midnight the game ended and the friends went their separate ways to their rooms. William walked Eve back to her rooms, as he always did, because it was on the way to his suite. Eve left William after saying goodnight, and entered her sparsely but nicely decorated room. There she picked up a good book, curled up in her covers on her bed, and read herself to sleep.

¤¤¤

The next day started out being much the same as days were for the group of friends. They met to eat their morning meal around seven o’clock in the morning, which Eve thought should be a crime against the crown. Eve, unlike her friends, was not a morning person, and was cautiously avoided during the morning hours. Eve was not graceful in the least in the morning, and was never quite coordinated. She was known by her friends to often spill some of her morning meal on herself, and not even notice it. The friends used to make jokes about Eve in the mornings, until they learned that they would get a smart rap on the back of their heads, if they did.

After breakfast, they all went into to the capital city, which was adjacent to the royal palace. Eve was still in her morning mood, and didn’t notice exactly what day this was, until they all stopped at a restaurant to eat. The server brought out a huge cake, with nineteen candles on it, and Eve’s eyes went wide with the realization that it was her birthday. The friends all pulled out their gifts to her, and placed them on the table.

“Well…blow out your candles,” urged Paiden. Eve made a wish to herself and blew out all nineteen candles in one breath.

“Oh, guys, thank you so much,” said Eve, still perplexed at what was going on. She carefully grabbed one of her gifts, at the suggestion of doing so by Naomi. She picked up Ellie’s gift first and opened it to reveal a very intricate design carved into a bracelet of fine metal. Paiden’s gift was a compass, which she had wanted since she was a child. Next came Jacob’s gift, a well-made dagger, which he had found Eve staring at through a shop window earlier that week. Naomi got Eve a wonderful pair of silver earrings that Eve thought would look wonderful with her blue dress. Last was William’s gift, which Eve opened very carefully because it was wrapped in fine silk, it was a golden necklace that had a locket attached to it with an engraved picture of a dove on it. Doves were Eve’s favorite animals. She opened the locket, but it didn’t have anything in it.

I thought you could maybe put a picture of your sister or something in it,” explained William.

“It’s wonderful, all of these gifts are wonderful, thank you guys, this is one of my favorite birthdays,” said Eve, almost in tears, at all of the thought that her friends had obviously put into her gifts.

The group walked back to the castle just before dinnertime, after a long afternoon of eating cake and shopping in the city. Eve had bought herself a new riding outfit, which she wanted to try using after dinner. The friends ate as they usually did, and were full early since they had all had more than their fill of cake that afternoon. After supper, Eve asked them all if they wanted to go riding with her. Ellie and Jacob both made the excuse that they were too tired to go, they said that they were exhausted after all of that walking in the city earlier that day, and that they were going to read a book and take to bed early. The other friends all laughed as the two left down the hall, knowing that they were making yet another excuse. Paiden had work to do on some maps he was working on for the king; and Naomi had to report to her mother and the seamstress for a dress fitting for the upcoming ball.

William and Eve went out to the stables, after Eve had changed into her new riding gown. Eve mounted her honey brown mare, Wendy, and William mounted his deep brown colored gelding, Nimrod. They rode off toward the royal forest as the sun started to set. Eve loved night rides, and wasn’t afraid of the darkness that was going to set in. William was a tad bit more cautious about riding in the forest when he couldn’t see in front his horse more than a foot. Both of the horses knew what they were doing, and glided gracefully in-between the trees with no trouble at all.

After riding for some time in complete darkness, except for the eerie presence of the crescent moon floating through the tree branches, Eve and William both felt a drop of rain of their skin.

“Uh-oh,” whispered Eve just barely loud enough for William to hear,

“Wendy, does not like the rain.”

“Back to the stables,” William commanded to Nimrod, and the horse obeyed without reluctance.

They reached the stables about fifteen minutes later, the horses galloping at full speed. It had already started to pour down raining and lighting flashed in the sky, giving ominous light to the surrounding areas. The other horses in the stables were frightened and the stable hands were having a hard time getting them to calm down. William and Eve unsaddled and groomed their own horses. The rain and lightning had gotten worse by the time they were done, and thunder rolled above them.

“We had better run for it,” suggested William, “Back inside the palace,” and with that, they raced of at top speed toward where William would drop Eve off, at her rooms. By the time they got to her room, they were both laughing hysterically, for they were creating one big puddle down the abandoned corridor. They stopped at Eve’s door, exhausted, and Eve was about to say goodnight, and unlock the door to enter her rooms, when William turned her head up to face him.

“Happy birthday Eve,” he whispered. And with that, he put his lips on hers and kissed her, long, hard, and passionately, all at once. When William released her from his grasps he stared at her for a second, his face red with embarrassment, turned down the corridor, and walked quickly away into the shadows. Eve was quite shaken when she unlocked her door and entered. She was perplexed by the events of the past few moments. Eve sat down in the most comfortable easy chair in her room, and fell asleep, almost instantly.

continued