Thus Raquelle was left behind, infuriated, nettled and bruised, shining with a passion of deranged fury. She had tricked herself into believing she loved Liam, where she only coveted him -- she wanted everything that had belonged to Dorothea. Dorothea's life was rightfully hers. But even as a cat, her older sister still would not yield it. She waited until they were all out of earshot. "Desperate times," she hissed to her frightened servants, "call for desperate measures." With a dramatic swish of her tattered gown she stomped away, back to her ruined tent. --- The door of the farmhouse opened, and an overalled torso stood before Will. The big man behind the door was taller than the doorway was high, so that only his red beard confirmed there was a head above the strong shoulders. After a moment he stooped down and blinked at Will with small brown eyes under shaggy red eyebrows. "Hm." He looked between Will and Liam. He blinked again. Finally, he stepped aside and opened the door wider to allow them entry. The inside looked a bit bigger than the outside made it appear; there were huge chairs and a huge table and a big fireplace roaring cozily behind a bearskin rug. The aroma of fried bread and butter permeated the walls. A little hunting dog galloped toward them and sniffed Will's knees, wagging furiously. --- August held Sam tightly, his expression stony. He had just opened his mouth to reply to her questions when a grating voice screeched from his pocket. He let out breath, sneered like he'd just bit into a lemon, and shifted Sam's weight so he could draw the mirror out of his pocket. He held it up so Sam could see the queen's furious face. He glared passively into the glass, and he waited for the queen to be quiet before he spoke. "If you're as powerful as you say you are," he growled, "you wouldn't need to start a war to take what you want. You wouldn't send your deranged daughter to burn the camp and blind the prince. This is chaos. You're a fraud. I won't lie any more -- I've only been biding my time til I'm close enough to stab you in your bony back, but I can't wait for that any longer. Pack your bags, [i]my queen[/i] -- I'm turning this army around, and if you're not gone by the time we get back we'll drag you out. The king be damned." With that he threw the mirror against a stone and left it smashed in the road. He shifted Sam again, rigid and quick in step as he followed the rest into the farmhouse. "I expect we'll have to fight when we get back to the castle, if not before," he told her under his breath. "Get some rest. I'll need you tomorrow."