Chapter Two

Madeline grew to be a fairly stereotypical princess- on the outside. Wearing dresses and long, silky hair, and just being generally beautiful, *is* typical princess behavior, but there was much about here that reflected her farm-girl upbringing. For instance, her tendency to climb onto fences to see the world, as she wasn’t allowed to go *outside* of the fence, or perhaps the fact that the lower half of her hair was a brighter blue than you could find in any hair dye or that the rocks covered everything she wore, turning it into armor- even if it still *looked* like a dress and pants.

She grew up as a beautiful girl, true- but no one ever saw her beauty. As soon as her foster family moved to Corona, a small cottage was erected for her. She had a small, fenced-in yard, deep in the acres of their farm, but the gate was locked and she was under no circumstances allowed to leave. It was there that she met people, for a half-hour every other day. Thus, she was a lonely child, but she didn’t mind much, because she didn’t know anything else.

She was also raised with another boy: Varian. Her foster parents made sure she understood that she wasn’t actually their family, so they always treated each other as friends. He was her favorite person to meet with, though, because she thought that Quirin was boring and Angel sadly died when she was four.

One day, when she was twelve, when Quirin and Varian were both sick- not terribly so, but enough that they couldn't see her. She was in her yard alone, sitting on the fence and picking an apple as she did sometimes, when a girl came up to her fence.

“Who are you? I haven’t seen you before,” she said. Madeline screamed and fell backward off the fence, into a pile of leaves, which had been nicely stacked- before she fell into them. “Oh my goodness, I didn’t mean to scare you!” she said.

Madeline stuck her head out of the pile- and then immediately regretted it. She realized that her veil had fallen off. She whipped around, but it had blown to the other side of the yard.

You see, as I mentioned above, the blue part of her hair was brighter than any hair dye that existed, which would immediately peg her as someone strange- and if word got out that she had half-blue hair, people who knew a good deal about magic would realize her powers, thereby making her a target.

“Your hair!” the girl gasped. “It’s bright blue! How did you get it to be that way?”

Madeline put a finger to her lips. “Shh, it's supposed to be a secret. And you’re not supposed to know I’m here. Can you just forget you ever saw me?”

The girl gasped. “Oh my goodness, are you a robber? Please, please don’t kill me! I won’t tell anyone, I promise, just let me go!”

Madeline shook her head violently. “No, I’m not a robber!”

The girl looked at her curiously, cocking her head. “But isn’t that what a robber would say?”

“Look, you’re going to have to trust me, okay? I’m not a robber!” The girl still looked superstitious. “Okay, fine. You know Varian?” She nodded. “Okay, two days from now, at this time, come here but don’t say you’re here. Hide, sort of. You’ll see me talking to him, so you’ll know that I’m not a robber.”

“You want me to spy on you?”

“Basically.”

“Okay, just checking!” She turned to leave.

“Wait!” The girl paused. “What’s your name?”

“Annika. Danporth, I’m fifteen. Who are you, anyway?”

Madeline stopped. “I can’t tell you yet, but if I can trust you to not tell anyone that I’m here, then maybe I can tell you then.”

She sighed. “Okay, I can live with that. I’ll see you tomorrow- but you won’t see me!”

## Trivia

* This was the first chapter to not include a mood song.