Liam let out a breath as he felt the paw on his cheek in response. He touched it lightly with his fingertips. "I wish I could see you," he whispered, now convinced that Dorothea was here. He had lost his sight, and he was holding to this belief with an iron fist. "I wish I could hold you. Properly, I mean. I've...I've missed you, and I was so scared, Dorothea." He tried to smile, but it was shaky. "What happened? Who did this do you?"

The Marshal had started speaking, and Liam went quiet at the sound of his voice. Will was listening, too, staring at the Marshal with an intent expression, though the rest of his emotions were unreadable. Raquelle working on her own to blind Liam didn't come as a surprised. She was desperate for his attention, desperate for any way to make him fall in love with her. It was cruel and selfish and Will closed his eyes briefly. When the Marshal spoke of the fire the dwarves had caused Will's eyes opened again and he looked at the Marshal hard. Everyone in the five kingdoms of Adosia knew the tales of the Witch of the Wood, though some believed her to be a ghost story. But what the Marshal was saying was that she wasn't only real but that he... "A servant of the Witch?" Will demanded, unable to hide the shock in his voice. He looked the Marshal up and down, not wanting to believe the grim honestly in the Marshal's tone. He then claimed to be working as a double agent which made Will raise his eyebrows.

The cat started to spit and hiss, but to all of the men beyond Liam that was all they heard. Liam, however, started hearing words within the hissing. A voice he dared to recognize. It made him sit up straighter and listen harder.

Will listened to the rest of the Marshal's account, that the Witch sought the take over three of the five kingdoms (the other two surely to follow), and that she was responsible to the kidnapping of Princess Dorothea and the framing of Verinia. The cat started hissing again, but Will didn't miss when the Marshal announced to the room that the Witch was actually Queen Narissa.

That made the steward blanch in surprise. "The Queen?" he exclaimed, staring at the Marshal with an incredulous expression. "That is one hell of an accusation, Derrick!" He had almost called him Marshal, but if he had honestly been a servant of the Witch...the Queen...even as a double agent...Will didn't know what to think. "I hope you have some sort of proof that Queen Narissa is this Witch, and that you were serving as a double agent." He didn't want to have to fight and arrest Derrick. Even alone he could make a formidable opponent, but he braced himself for a fight if it came to that. He remembered something that Derrick had said moments earlier and stared at him again. "You said that Princess Dorothea had been hidden in plain sight. Well then, where is she?"

"You kidnapped her?" Liam's voice suddenly rang out, and he was staring ahead of him, completely straight in his armchair. His voice was wavering in shock and growing anger. He had heard Dorothea's words more clearly the second time she had spoke and they had just sunk in. "You.... You were the one that kidnapped her?" He was half shouting now and his head swiveled around towards the direction he's heard the Marshal's voice coming from. "It was you?!"

~~~~~

"NO," Narissa said firmly, and with a slight harshness in her tone, when Raquelle asked if she could burn the farmer's house down with all of them inside. "No, let them have this moment of relief. The Marshal has betrayed me. And you. We need to make him suffer, don't we? And burning to death is too good for him." A smile, beautiful in it's terror, flickered across her lips. "We can still get everything we want, and make Derrick suffer for what he's done to us at the same time. I have a new plan. And I need you to be perfect to make it work. Now send your servants home. Then follow Darius back to my hollow. Can you do this for me?"