TRIAL AND ERROR | short stories + snippets

Best Friend Fantasy Adventure: Pirates and Princesses, pt 3

"Wow. Have you?" Diwa says in her best One Direction fan meeting Harry Styles from 2013 impression. "You must have been on many wonderful adventures then. I would be most flattered to see some of your treasures."

Ew.

Cassius pulls away, grinning. "Well... allow me to show you."

He guides her across the dance floor and to the disguised door in the back wall. He unlocks it with a key on his belt but Diwa interrupts before he can open it more than a gap.

"I must wait for my guard."

If Cece has managed inside, that'll be enough warning for them to get the fuck out of sight.

Cassius smirks again. "I assure you, princess, that you are in no danger."

"Perhaps it is not danger I need protecting from."

At this point, bathing in frogspawn is starting to sound more pleasant than continuing to flirt with this man.

"I'm sure your collection has many temptations. I am a married woman, after all."

Cassius's atrocious smile stretches and she wants to throw herself off the tallest tower in this castle.

Looking back, Diwa scans the crowd for Cece. Their eyes meet and he beelines to her. It's like Cece manages to turn themself invisible at will. Nobody even glances at them as they move through the crowd.

"How did you–?" Cece starts when he reaches her but Diwa cuts them off.

"Come along now. You are not here to partake in the festivities yourself. I expect you to keep to your duties."

Cece can't retaliate with Cassius watching but Diwa knows them well enough to feel the retaliation seethe off him.

"I understand your plight, princess," Cassius says when he opens the door and gestures for her to enter. "You can never quite trust the common people to be capable of much of anything."

If looks could kill, the prince would have four knives stabbed through the back of his head right now.

The room is massive, filled with display cases and pedestals. "Many of these artefacts contain dark magic of some kind," Cassius says. "They cannot be safely left in the hands of peasants. Some of them have even been collected from different worlds"

Diwa scans the room. There's just too much to look at for her to find the music box among everything else.

Dorcas gave them a decoy to replace the real one with. It's in the shape of a seashell and delicate enough to be lost behind larger statues and headdresses.

Why does Dorcas want the music box? It can't be the most valuable item here. Does it have some of the 'dark magic' that Cassius mentioned? Is Dorcas going to use it for something evil?

Well, such moral quandaries aren't her problem right now if she ever wants to get home.

Their best chance is for Diwa to keep Cassius distracted while Cece swipes the box. She looks at the prince. "Which ones did you find?"

He doesn't need any more convincing. Weaving between the pedestals, he takes her to a displayed necklace. "This was my first ever contribution. It belonged to a wicked empress in Idokha who had attempted to weaken our kingdom for years. I took it off her when I finally defeated her."

Diwa does her best to ooh and aah over it, all the while conscious of Cece's movement through the room, slow and silent. It helps that Cassius is a classist wanker who clearly doesn't see people below his station.

"And this one," the prince says, "I found from an ancient tomb in another world, a world that barely has magic."

It's an ornate vase made of gold, possibly an urn. Does this bloke actually have some dead person's remains in his collection?

Cece has found the music box in a display case. They touch the glass to check for alarm systems but nothing goes off.

Cassius's back is turned to him but Diwa meets his eyes over the prince's shoulder. As quietly as they can, Cece starts to pick the lock in the corner of the glass.

Cassius goes to turn around. Diwa grabs his arm. "Tell me more about the world you found this from."

She tries her best to imitate a Disney rabbit or deer as she bats her eyelashes.

Thankfully, the man doesn't need much convincing to show off and he goes into painful detail recounting every step of his quote-on-quote 'quest'.

Behind him, Cece replaces the music box with the decoy. Then shut and relock the case.

"We should get back to the ball," Diwa says. "My husband might arrive soon and I wouldn't want him worrying over my whereabouts."