Tristan had found her.

"What on earth!" she screeched, rolling over and escaping his not very threatening capture. "Why did you follow me?" she implored, still lying in the grass.

"Well, at first I planned on letting you go, to get lost deep in the woods, and all that, but the most curious thing happened, Bijou. I kept circling the forest, and no matter how hard I tried to walk in another direction, I was pulled toward you. It's illogical, I know, but I was literally unable to leave your side."

"That's ridiculous," Sophie argued. "No hypnotic force surges within me."

"Fine, don't believe me. I tried to go to it alone, but the laws of nature apparently don't apply to you. To us! Luckily, I realized you would probably miss me. Considering the charming way I acted last night and all," he said, crossing his arms, commanding all the attention in the world. He was devastatingly handsome, after all.

Her face grew as hot as the moonstone as she looked him over. His intensity matched her own, it made her want him more.

No. Tristan's behavior was inexcusable. Which made the fact that he was here all the more annoying. Still, he had food and maybe some vin.

Her stomach roared.

Sophie sat, her knees tucked under her chin, feeling more awake then she should have considering her lack of sleep.

"So you're over yourself?" Sophie asked. "Over the idea that every single girl is just, like, dying to bed you, wed you, steal the tresor from under you? Over the fact that perhaps the entire country of Gemmes does not, in fact, revolve around you and your tresor?"

She liked teasing him. It made her feel alive.

Tristan sighed exaggeratedly. "Yes, all of that." Tristan's face grew serious, "Also. I literally am incapable of leaving your side."

Sophie retreated slightly as though she found him less attractive when he spoke tenderly.

"I know this sounds absurd, but I need you, Sophie."

Sophie pretended she didn't hear him. Instead she began rifling through the bag he'd set on the grass. She knew there were still caramels buried in there somewhere.

"So, honestly, how did you find me? Was there some forest nymph who led the way to this hollow?" she asked, popping a square in her mouth, attempting to change the course of the conversation.

"No fairies. I just did. My feet knew which way to turn," He took a caramel from her hand, and ate it. "Isn't that remarkable? That I ended up here, next to you? It's fate."

Tristan took her hands in his, bringing them to his lips for a soft kiss. She cocked her eyebrows in surprise. Being physical with him was one thing, tearing off one another's clothes and making out uninhibitedly and all that. That she could do.

But this?

Sweetly stroking her hand with his thumb while he looked longingly in her eyes? That was quite another. This was Henri stuff.

"Right. So. Do you have any food? I'm famished." She smiled brightly at him, pulling her hands away with the excuse of re-braiding her hair.

"Of course I do!" Being set with a task helped things. Tristan began pulling out the makings for a picnic from his satchel and Sophie had time to consider her next move.

She was certainly all right with having an inappropriate affair with him. But love and all that other nonsense? Out of the question. She didn't want to be committed. The word itself caused her to recoil.

"Tristan. Look. I can do adventure and intrigue. I can do making out indiscreetly in public places. I can even do that other thing in less public places. Like this grassy cove perhaps." She pressed her lips together, contemplating how to word this next part without coming off like a royal salope. "I cannot, however, do this." She raised her hand and made a circle in the space between them, indicating the thing thumping in Tristan's heart that was clearly not thumping in hers.

Tristan didn't falter, not even a smidge.

"How about this?" Tristan asked. "We continue to not do this," he copied her circle with his hand. "We do the adventure and the intrigue. We find the tresor. Then, we see what happens after that." Tristan smiled hopefully, pouring vin in two steel mugs.

"I know what you are doing here, Tristan." Sophie answered, rolling her eyes. "You're hoping, in the end, that I will fall hopelessly head over heels for you."

"Exactly."

"You are incorrigible, you know that?" she asked. He beamed. "Well, I can at least toast to your vision." Sophie clinked her metal glass against his and smiled.

He pulled her in for a kiss, vin sloshing on the grass as he did.

Even though she knew they were kissing for completely different reasons, she didn't care.

She kissed him back.

King Marcus En Route, Gemmes That woman never stopped surprising him.

After he told her the worst, darkest secret of his life she still accepted him. It hurt him to hear her say "I forgive you." He didn't want forgiveness. He wanted revenge. He wanted hate. He wanted boiling anger.

He wanted the old Cozette back.

Instead he was met with compassion. Love. Courage. Strength. A woman who saw him as he was. Flawed in his humanity.

He left her in her chamber, knowing she wouldn't join him on his hunt ... but that also, she expected from him one thing and one thing alone. That he return with their child.

He would oblige.

It pained him to know he would find this girl only to watch her die. Only to take the stone from her flesh, but there was no other way.

He would do this for his wife. He told Cozette that perhaps it would be better to never see the girl's face, if she laid on death's bed, but Cozette begged. She needed to see the girl, flesh and blood.

She would continue to pace the Palace halls, to plan the upcoming ball. She would continue on with an incessant thumping in her heart, a hopeful longing he knew she felt because he felt it too. Even if he'd made so many terrible choices, maybe this would be the path to redemption.

The future of Gemmes was on the line. Cozette held him as he sobbed and he knew that Gemmes wasn't the only thing on the line. What sort of ruler was he if he couldn't care for his family? What sort of man was he if he'd never wondered this before?

He thought on this as he rode on his stallion, through the woods, toward the North. They were headed toward the place his informant last saw this cocky Gem Tracker.

Perhaps he could fix this mess. If he found the boy and then found the girl. If he found the devins-guerisseur and if he found another spell. Maybe then. Then it would all be fixed.

They travelled for a full day. Marcus's resolve grew the more he rode, the deeper in the woods he went.

"Halt, Legion soldiers ahead my King!" Drake called, letting Marcus know they were meeting with one of the groups he had sent the day before.

He had hoped to work on two things at once.

That plan went out the window the moment he was stopped in his tracks.

It wasn't Legion soldiers, up ahead, as Drake had called.

It wasn't anything of this world.

It was the before and the after and Marcus knew that, somehow, without knowing. It was the truth.

"Who goes there?" Marcus shouted. If keeping a secret buried for seventeen years had taught him anything, it had taught him this ... some things need to be brought to the open.

The figures on the beasts came out of the iridescent smog that wafted between the trees of the king's forest. They were divine creatures, glorified humans. They weren't beautiful, neither were they monsters, although they were so much to take in Marcus was forced to look away. They were everything and nothing.

"Your Majesty, stay back!" yelled Drake, and for a moment Marcus held still. Seeing the closest thing to a friend ride ahead of him, made him regret bringing him here at all. Marcus wanted this battle for himself. He was looking for his own demons to slay.

He couldn't let Drake do this part for him. He realized with disgust how little he'd ever done.

He picked up his pace and bolted past Drake and the twenty other men in his party. He knew Drake was on his heels, and that was all right. But he needed to be first.

"Who goes there?" he bellowed once more, as he came upon the group of riders. He stopped in the clearing where they were gathered, mounted majestically. Mounted in ways that made him feel small. His own horse was a strong and gallant animal, still, it had four feet planted firmly on the solidity of the earth. The creatures before him were not tethered to the same soil.

He knew when he saw them they were from the Hedge, a place as full of lore as the Tresor de L'espoir itself. Fairy tale dreams explaining the afterlife, and the in-between. To see them was to believe.

"We mean you no harm," a man called to him. "We come through the mountains claimed by you, and we travel to mountains claimed by other men. We come from the Hedge, and we only seek to find."

Marcus shook his head, maddened by their ambiguity, but also recognized the respect they chose to show him. The heads of all twelve riders bowed, silvery strands of air wisped around them. Equal numbers of men and women sat on the beasts, and Marcus looked behind him at his Legion of men, narrowing in.

They did not compare.

"Why have you revealed yourself to us? What business are you on?" Marcus asked, taking in the fact that they were seemingly unarmed. He calculated quickly the artillery his men carried. A sword carried by each soldier, a bow or an axe tucked away, times twenty. Overtaking these creatures was possible if need be.

"We are on business that matters not to you, or your country of Gemmes. We come from the Hedge, and answer to the Hedge alone, as Riders for the lair beyond." The man's voice boomed with reverberation, crossing through the trees, echoing off them all.

"You must answer to me, I am king!" Marcus's face coiled at the man's refusal to oblige.

The man grasped the hand of the woman next to him, and instead of speaking, he nodded his head. The beast he rode on moved to the side closer of the woman, parting a way down the middle of the eerie assembly.

Another woman, seemingly small in her humanity, next to the creatures from another realm, stood in the place where they had moved.

She had hair pulled back tightly, with homespun clothing hanging off her tiny frame. The thin cloth of the dress she wore rippled behind her in the wind created by the Hedge Riders.

A man was beside her, but he mattered not. Marcus looked at the woman and knew.

He clenched his jaw in an effort to hold back everything; things he didn't know he needed to retain. A cry rose from his chest anyways. Pushing away matters of the heart doesn't work when there's a fierce wall built within, a wall crumpling all at once.

"Aghhhh," he cried in agony, his face flushed red, his brow creased heavily down the center. The ghost of his past had come back to haunt him. The woman he had stood beside so many years ago, carving out his child's heart, irrevocably carving his own as well, stood before him once more. The past had come to haunt him.

She trembled, her narrow lips spread tight across her delicate face. Barely more than a child when he saw her last, and young she looked still.

"You!" he called, lunging toward her, vengefully. He saw in this woman the past he was denied and the future withheld.

He needed to know where she took his daughter.

The princess.

The heir of Gemmes.

The girl near death, the only way to bring his wife back to life.

The woman held, in her hands, everything. Yet she remained silent, and still.

"Where is she? Is she with you?" Marcus took quick strides across the dead leaves rustling in the forests floor. Full of intention, full of fear.

The healer drew back in effort to regain her strength. As Marcus inched closer, close enough to see her face, she realized strength wasn't what she needed to salvage. She was already strong. She was looking for vengeance.

"She's not here, and she's nowhere you should be," Tamsin said clearly. The man next to her looked pained at the situation, like too much was happening that he didn't understand. The beasts surrounding them kicked the earth and pressed in on Marcus.

"Where did you leave her? She is my child, I deserve to know!" Marcus bellowed again. Drake came behind him, not understanding the king's connection to this woman.

"What child, My Lord?" Drake asked quietly. Marcus had told him they were in search of a girl who had the garnet they needed, and that they needed to gain custody of this Gem Tracker the rest he kept to himself, and Cozette.

"The girl we are looking for is my child." Everyone heard Marcus's words as they trailed to the Legion men behind him, in whispers.

The king had a child, now everyone knew.

He regretted his choice immediately. Why did he tell Cozette, or anyone, if he may not be able to make good on any of it?

"You have no claim over her, you have no claim on her life!" Tamsin spoke harsh words to the man she should kneel before.

Marcus didn't stop her, though Drake pulled his sword from its sheath, ready, as always to defend the honor of His Royal Highness. Marcus halted Drake's movement with his hand, knowing he needed to hear more from this woman if he wanted to find the girl.

"Tell me where she is! Where did you take her? You must remember!" Marcus demanded again, desperate to fix things with Cozette. Seeing this healer brought him back to the bedchamber where Cozette nearly died the night of the babe's birth. He saw, with such force, the love he had for her. The love he let slip away over the years as it became engulfed in his shame and her grief.

He needed answers, a trace of hope at a life filled with more than shortcomings and half breaths. He wanted more. He needed to fix this if he wanted a chance at that. A chance at life with Cozette. Her forgiveness would work in his favor if he brought back the child.

"I will tell you nothing!" The woman cried, a fierceness covering her face, not giving in to the king. She had to know where she had taken the girl, at least that much. Maybe more, especially if the Hedge was working with her.

"I could have you killed, right here for treason. Making dark magic in my woods!"

He had no time, no desire to partake in a round of hide and seek. The king was not used to playing petty games. He took what he wanted.

"No." She didn't quiver. She didn't shake. She looked him in the eyes and repeated her word, "No."

Marcus pointed to the beast to his right, a silvery creature with the wraithlike man sitting atop it. They were regal in ways Marcus couldn't compete. He cared not for power gained from magic; he wanted power gained by force.

"Kill this beast." He demanded his men, now rallied behind him. If she didn't want to speak, he would force her too, one death at a time until all that remained were the two of them. He had forced her before, in his wife's chamber, the night his daughter was born. He wasn't above doing so once more.

Drake used his sword, and did the king's bidding.

Henri Vallee de Gemmes More wagons circled, and as Henri peered through the trees, trying to muster the courage, she came from behind him.

"What the Hedge?" he yelled, as a pair of hands covered his eyes.

"You have returned!" Emel said, spinning Henri to face her.

"So I have."