The princess was gone.

Princess Tiffany — their daughter — was gone. She was gone and no one seemed to know where she was. The guards outside Tiffany’s room reported, aside from Tiffany’s argument with Eugene, nothing out of the ordinary. But when they hadn’t heard a peep from her at ten in the morning, they had decided to investigate.

Again, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. No signs of a struggle or break-in. Everything was where it was meant to be. Even the princess’ dog was soundly asleep at the foot end of her bed. The only thing the guards had found was a small scroll on her vanity. Too afraid to read the contents of the scroll for themselves, they decided to hand it over to the queen.

If she paled in shock, no one would have noticed through the thick layer of powder on her face.

“‘To whomever it may concern,” the queen read. Her voice trembled nervously.

We have liberated the princess from her gilded cage at the top of the monarchy; from an unloving fiancé, from parents who would use her as a pawn and a means to an end, and from a political climate that will not take her needs seriously.

Do not send guards to find her, or we shall regret what we will have to do.”

The throne room was deathly silent. Or, well, almost. The queen paced back and forth through the gigantic room, the clacking of her heels muted by the thick velvet carpet that laid across the marble floor. Nobody so much as dared to breathe. The guards’ suits of armor clattered as the people inside them shook and the royal advisors fidgeted nervously with their white gloves, twisted their moustaches or polished their monocles — which by now shone dazzlingly bright in the sunlight — some more.

The king, on the other hand, sat on his throne. Unmoving. All colour was drained from his face, and his beard seemed to have gained some new gray hairs in this hour alone. He stroked his beard, drowning in his thoughts.

A tear rolled down the queen’s cheek. In a fit of rage she crumpled up the scroll and threw it on the ground. “We’ll send a search party,” she said resolutely.

Suddenly, the king sat up. He hadn’t moved until the news of his daughter’s disappearance had reached him. “Cora, you can’t!” the king cried. “There’s no telling what they’ll do to her.”

The queen turned on her heel and sneered at the king. “Then what were you planning to do? Let this happen? She’s our daughter, Richard!”

The king stood up, hands raised in self-defense. “Perhaps we can negotiate.”

“Oh yes, because this is absolutely the moment to sit down for tea and discuss the future of our baby with a bunch of bandits. Do you believe a single word of this ‘liberation’ hogwash?!”

The king remained silent.

“Well?!”

“Cora…”

The queen folded her arms over each other. “Richard?”

“They may have a point.”

The queen inhaled sharply and counted to ten. “Richard, be very careful with your choice of words.”

And this was exactly what the king did. He thought hard on how to say what he wanted to say without invoking the wrath of his wife. “Cora, my love,” he tried.

If anything, the queen only looked angrier. A vein pulsed on her forehead. It’d been a while since he’d last seen that.

“Please, try to remember. When was the last time we let Tiffany make a decision about her future? When was the last time we asked her what she wanted?”

To everyone’s surprise, the queen was speechless. Where her eyebrows had just formed a glare that would make the bravest in the land shriek and run like a little child, they now formed a deep frown. Deep in thought, she ran by every single minute in the last fourteen years she had spent with Tiffany. Without even saying a single thing, she looked at her husband — the father of her daughter — and shook her head.

“See, I can’t recall it either,” the king said as his hand rubbed through his graying hair.

“But what can we do?” The queen’s voice croaked with desperation. “We can’t send guards, but we also can’t wait until those villains bring her home themselves, if we’re even that lucky.”

The king hesitated, but finally laid a hand on the queen’s shoulder. “I understand, Cora. I’m worried about Tiffany as well, but we can’t make rushed decisions. She might not come outside much, but our people love her. I don’t look forward to telling them something happened to the princess because of our sloppy decision making.”

The queen looked up. “What did you just say?”

“That I don’t look forward to telling our subjects that something happened to Tiffany?”

“No, no, before that!”

“That our people love her?”

“Richard, you’ve married a genius,” the queen stated as she turned to the first advisor, who dropped his monocle, which shattered on the marble floor. “Hilbrand, have our subjects gather in the courtyard. We have an announcement to make.”