“Hello?” Paiden urged, waving a hand in front of Williams face.

“Huh…what?” Was Williams started reply, as he turned to face Paiden.

“Just making sure you’re still alive.”

“Oh I’m alive all right, and it’s damn good to be so.” And with that, he turned to face Eve again and commenced a private conversation—something about going for a walk in the garden later that afternoon. The other four friends were talking together about how to get their “lost” friends out of the daze they were in. In the middle of breakfast the mysterious Lord that had interrupted the ball last night, came striding gallantly through the door. He walked over to the table after getting some food and asked to sit down. He was graciously invited to sit and was instantly bombarded with questions from the four that did not act as if in a trance.

“So where is this Ice Mountain anyways?” Jacob asked.

“It’s way up north, where it’s cold more than half the year, and where the ice never completely melts,” replied Lord Andréus.

“Can you stand it up there in the winter, Lord Andréus?” Naomi inquired.

“To tell you the truth I like the cold. And please, call me André.” Questions came like this for quite a while. Somewhere during the conversation, William and Eve came out of their trance and were startled to find André at the table. After that, the questions started over again, this time coming from Eve and William. André did not seem the least bit annoyed with this, and answered the questions with extreme patience, as if he had not been asked them already. When all of the interrogation was done the friends invited André to go on a ride with them, and he graciously accepted.

They all went down to the stables and saddled their mounts with ease. André had originally given off the impression of a stuck-up Lord who had been spoiled all of his life, never to do any work; now they recoiled thought. He saddled his stallion with the ease of a practiced rider, and his muscles showed that he was hard-worked. His solemn attitude gave the friends the idea that he had been through many hardships in his life, and they now did their best to avoid asking questions about his home and childhood. He seemed to like the silence, but acted as if he also liked being around other people.

After they had all gotten their mounts saddled, they road off into the royal forest, William and Eve lagging behind talking. The sun beat down upon them, but did not affect William and Eve, who were concentrating only on what the other one was saying. Birds were chirping all around them, and it made for a peaceful and relaxing ride. The ground had almost dried from the rain, and their horses trotted through the forest with great ease. By the time Eve and William had remembered that they were with other people, the group had left them behind and left them for lost. They looked around them to see where the group had gone, but found no site of them. They were deep in the forest and had no food or water. The couple thought that it was just a cruel joke that the group was playing on them, and that they would come and find them soon.

William and Eve had no clue where they were, and had no way of finding the way back to the castle. The trees were spread far and wide in every direction and it was the only thing they saw. Not even flowers or shrubbery were in their view, only hundreds of trees; not even pretty trees at that. Eve was not very calm, though William tried his best to make her that way. He was not good at directions and did well hiding his worry. They decided to stay where they were, the group might be able to find them that way. After a while, the two began to loose hope that the friends were coming back to them.

At about noon (they guessed according to the sun overhead) William heard a rustling of some branches behind them, and looked that way. Sure enough, there was the rest of the group galloping up to them with smiles on their faces. They seemed very amused at the look on William and Eve’s faces. André was especially amused; though neither William nor Eve could sense why. They didn’t think that André, not knowing them that much, would care about the cruel trick the group had played. His face lit up when he saw the expression on the two’s faces with cruel enthusiasm, not caring about the joke, only about how the two had suffered and worried. He seemed to gain pleasure from their suffering. Both Eve and William erased that thought from their minds, thinking that they had read his emotions wrong.

“What the hell were you thinking?” William asked. “We could have died out here. Paiden’s the only one of us who’s any good at directions, and I certainly didn’t have any clue as to where we were, and how to get back to the palace.”

“Well you certainly weren’t paying any attention to where you were going anyways,” Jacob blurted out. “If your horses weren’t guiding you two along, you would have been lost a long time before we left you.”

William was taken a little aback by this, but decided to drop the subject. All seven of them road back to the palace, some happier than others. Eve just wanted to get back and soak in a nice hot bath. After riding back to the palace, the group split up and went to their rooms. Eve got what she wanted, a very long soaking. When the bath was too cold for comfort, she got out and called a servant to get her something to eat. Somehow, William had intercepted the servant and found out what Eve wanted. He brought a plate of miniature sandwiches and grapes. He crept up to the door to her rooms silently and knocked.

“The food you requested ma’am,” William informed in a near-perfect impression of the servants voice.

“Coming, just a minute,” she answered walking to the door.

When she opened the door she was looking down at her shoes, deciding if they were the right ones. She didn’t see who it was that really brought her food.

“Just set it on the bed. Now, what do you think of these shoes, are they too bright?” she asked, still looking at her shoes, not realizing who she was talking to.

“Anything looks wonderful on you,” William admitted in his own voice, coming to stand next to her. This made her stand up and look at him. William immediately grabbed her and kissed her.

“And what was that for,” she asked when he broke the kiss.

“Nothing really, if you must know.”

¤¤¤

The next few days were a blur to William and Eve. They acted as if they had been “together” their whole lives; which was, for the most part, true. They had resolved all of there problems with each other, and were at the stage of acting like giddy schoolchildren. Their days were spent in the garden talking about virtually nothing, but enjoying each other’s company. André became one of the group, and went with them, when they went anywhere. They liked having him around, because he seemed to know quite a bit about fighting, and acted as if he were a big brother to them all. Though the group did their best to include him and though he went almost everywhere they went, André remained almost distant. Nobody could quite figure him out, every time they thought they had him figured out, he did something to totally contradict it.

André, being extremely handsome and charming, was swarmed by the unmarried (and sometimes married) ladies. He occasionally spent an afternoon or night with one, away from the rest of his new friends. André never seemed to find the right girl. He seemed to use his outings with women, away from his friends, as an excuse to sometimes get away from the group. Many times the friends wondered if these times were really spent in the company of a lady, or if he spent them by himself, as a time to be by himself. Even though André spent much of his time with the group, the six other friends never quite trusted him.

¤¤¤

“Eve, I’m sorry, but I have to go,” William persisted.

“But why?” Eve asked.

“Because she needs me, Eve” William explained. “I’m the closest thing she has to family right now. I’m almost like a big brother to her.”

“Yeah, a big brother who she almost married.”

“That was a long time ago,” he recalled. “That is done and over with. I love you Eve, nobody else.”

“Then why do you have to leave me?”

“I already told you why, and you know you can’t come with me.”

“Why can’t I?”

“You just can’t, it would be too awkward.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You just have to trust me Eve,” William told her.

“I do trust you,” she declared.

William left later that afternoon. He rode west, to a fief on the border, where his ex-lover, Kerry, was staying. The ride was only half a day away. She had recently been disowned by her family for getting pregnant with a peasants child and refusing to get married. She had sent a letter, which arrived the day before William left the palace, saying that she desperately needed a shoulder to cry on, and that she was thinking of killing herself. William no longer had anything but friendly feelings toward Kerry, but forgave Eve’s jealousy in thinking that he did.

Eve watched him ride off, and could not hold back her tears. The past few days were the best she had ever had, and now those happy days had stopped abruptly. André, who had watched from the shadows, unnoticed, their fight and Williams leaving, and now Eve’s despair, came out to comfort her. He led her by the shoulders to the stables, where he saddled both of their horses, and asked Eve to get on hers. She obeyed reluctantly.

“Where are we going?” she asked through raining tears.

“To get something to drown out your sorrows,” he informed.

Eve accepted that response, and clung to her horse, as André led Eve’s horse, Wendy, out of the palace grounds. Ten minutes later, they arrived at a bar. André tied up both of their horses and led Eve into the bar. They sat down at a small table in the corner of the square building, and asked for some hard liquor. The two sat there all night, Eve had drunken more than enough to drown out her sorrows, now she completely forgot that William existed. As the night loomed on and Eve began to sway in her chair, almost unconscious, André decided it was time that they get back to the palace.

Eve had to sit in front of André on his horse, and he held her up, he was also leading Wendy. When they got to the stables, a groomsman unsaddled and brushed their horses. André carried Eve into the palace, and down the hall towards his rooms. When he got there, he leaned down and gave Eve passionate kiss.

“André dear, what do you think you are doing?” she asked, in all drunkenness, not caring what he was doing.

“Nothing dear maiden, nothing at all,” he answered, and staggered into his rooms still carrying Eve.

One thing led to another inside his room that night.

¤¤¤

The next day Eve woke up, somehow, in her own rooms. She did not recall any of last night, not even what happened in André’s rooms. She had a most severe hangover, and almost fainted when William walked into her rooms early that morning. Her knees were wobbly beneath her, and William ran to hold her up.

“What…what are doing here?” she stammered after she was stable again.

“I was only a little more than halfway to Kerry’s fief when I caught up with a messenger on his way to find me at the palace. Kerry had already killed herself. I rode solemnly back to here, and arrived only a few minutes ago,” William explained.

Eve couldn’t believe it, and her bewilderment got the best of her. She collapsed, unconscious, onto her bed. Eve slept all day, and into the night, awaking still quite dazed—William was nowhere in sight.

Eve got up and walked slowly to Williams’s rooms.

¤¤¤

André hid in the shadows, in the corner of the deserted corridor, behind a pillar. He watched William walk to his door, and crept silently behind him. André pulled out a dagger and stabbed William in the back with it. Three times the blade cut though Williams torn flesh, and he let William fall to the floor. André looked around the hall and caught a glimpse of a person running towards him down the corridor. André fled.

¤¤¤

Eve stood like stone in the nearly abandoned corridor, facing the horrific scene in front of her. Eve had good vision, and knew immediately that it was André creeping out of the shadows and coming up behind William with a knife drawn. She watched him stab her lover in cold-blood and rushed up to William after she had regained control of her legs. André ran off down the hall. Eve fell to the floor beside William, and held his head in her lap. William had scarcely any life left in his body, but looked up at her with helpless eyes, and muttered one last sentence. “I love only you,” he whispered. And his breath was gone; he looked up at her with pleading, lifeless eyes.

Eve sat there looking down at his angelic face. Her screams for help echoed through the halls.

continued