It seemed a little naive to Gertrude to so easily rule the sister out. After all, envy could take you places you never thought you could go. But perhaps the Moonlit Queen did not understand envy. The facts were that the sister was most likely to know how to subvert the queen's realm, had every motive to steal her stuff, and knew ahead of time that the knights would be present to distract her. Divorced of [i]feelings[/i], she was quite frankly the perfect candidate.

So why wasn't anyone backing her up? Instead, Fionn and Gerard downright admitted that they met with the bint when Gertrude had been certain to gloss over the exact circumstances of her knowledge. What did [i]honesty[/i] help?

Gertrude's cheeks puffed out in a petulant pout, and she rose to her feet, looking down at the Moonlit Queen.

What else was there to say? Gertrude's fingers ran across the shaft of her broom, and magically ripped a thin piece of paper from it. She folded it a couple of times, burned some words into it, and handed it to the Moonlit Queen to accept at her leisure. It informed her, in no uncertain terms, that Gertrude was apprentice to a Witch. If that didn't pique her interest, Gertrude didn't know what might. The others could haggle over the shard.