Dorothea was satisfied with Sam's answers, and more than satisfied with her decision to hand her off to Liam. She was more gentle with the prince this time, less exuberant and more concerned. It seemed she would have to wait until Verinia for a solid chance at making him understand what had become of her -- but he deserved better. He deserved to know, before they got to Verinia! She had to prevent this war, and she had to get Liam back to the castle as soon as possible so they could expose the queen.

She stood in his lap with her paws on his chest, watching him talk with Will, her ears perked while she thought. She couldn't talk to him, and she couldn't put Sam into the awkward position of arguing for her (especially if the Marshal would confirm that Sam was crazy for doing so), but there were other ways of communicating besides talking.

Dorothea glanced around the camp -- she'd been there when the queen had told the Marshal to keep her away from Liam -- but the Marshal was on lookout duty, and wasn't paying attention. Dorothea crawled out of Liam's lap and grabbed his spoon in her teeth. She dragged it over to a clear spot on the ground and placed it carefully -- then she bounded over, grabbed Will's spoon, and put it down at a right angle to the first.

Raquelle noticed that the cat was doing something peculiar -- whatever it was, it couldn't be good. She laughed and suddenly scooped a surprised Dorothea up into her hands. "My, what a precocious little kitty!" Raquelle cooed. Dorothea's ears pressed against her skull and she hissed a deep fangy threat. Raquelle only laughed. "Should probably keep a hold of this one or she'll have collected all our spoons!"

The Marshal remained rigidly stoic, focused on the darkness and on the reflections of moonlight on the thick trees and shrubs. He spared a glance to any sign of movement. When Sam came up beside him, he ignored her in favor of his post, knowing well that very dangerous beasts -- or worse -- could appear in the time it took to blink.

At Sam's proposal of escape, however, he laughed suddenly out of surprise. "It's just one night!" He grinned, still watching the forest as he spoke. "The princess can't be that bad. She might curl your hair and put you in a dress and whine until dawn about how awful her life is, but you'll be safe and it's a place to sleep." His grin turned to a smirk, and he finally spared her an amused glance. "But if you did escape, you wouldn't be horrible, to answer your question. You would be enormously ungrateful -- most women in this country would kill to have an invitation like this -- but not horrible." He thought a moment, humming to himself. "Where would you intend to sneak off to? You're not getting past my guards into the forest, if that's what you're thinking."