No one really knew how they got to the right room after last night's end, if that's where they really ended up. Irenie managed the feat but she could hardly remember it. With the sunlight glaring through her drapes, Irenie pushed her palm down on the throbbing spot where her temples felt like they were going to break. Her cat, Turnip, skittered over the bed and then the stone floors with a yowl when the princess had the misfortune to roll on top of him.

The yowl did nothing for her headache.

She groaned and the sound was echoed by other voices who expressed their unhappiness by moaning from other places inside her bed chamber. Well, it seemed like she was one of the few who had ended up in the right place, everyone else had come to her room, it seemed. There were very few times when Irenie would use her magic for selfish purposes, but this morning she could make an exception.

She went to the bathroom first where she spotted Ophelia curled up in a nest of blankets inside the bathtub. The princess smiled at her friend and petted her hair back which had been matted to the side of her face some time during the night.

"Oh, Irenie, pray tell, where am I? I feel so cold." Ophelia covered her eyes with one arm sprawled over her face in a dramatic pose worthy of the Greek statues lining a pantheon.

Irenie could recall after having shown the goblins to their individual rooms, she had just tossed Curdie and Ophelia into hers.

Irenie placed her finger on the side of Ophelia's head and slowly got rid of her migraine by using her grandmother's magic. Ophelia didn't know about Irenie's powers, but the princess didn't believe her friend would be asking too many questions about how her pain had suddenly gone away. "I'm afraid we had a great big engagement party last night," Irenie said. "You got married to a goblin prince, Olly."

"What!" Suddenly, her arm fell to expose the red around her brown irises. Ophelia flung herself up from the covers.

A groan rumbled from the antechamber that sounded very much like Curdie.

"She's just mocking you, Ophelia," Curdie rasped from the other room, sounding worse than everyone else.

Irenie laughed when Ophelia slumped back into the tub and whined, probably trying to remember what exactly she had done the previous night. The princess stood up and walked into the ante-chamber where she found Curdie lying face down into the marble. Despite the fact that he definitely seemed to be alive, when she rolled him over, he looked like a corpse that had had too much or too little sun.

"So, I think we've learned our lesson, haven't we," Irenie said softly with that gentle, if a bit condescending tone.

"Yes, yes, I'll never bring my father to the castle again," Curdie gargled past the rough patches in his throat and attempted to grab Irenie's shoulder with his eyes closed. "Just- magic this head splinter away, I think I'm about ready to die."

Irenie frowned. "And?"

"And what?" The knight groused as he gave up on trying to reach for Irenie and threw his limp arm over his chest. "It's Ophelia's own fault she flung herself into the arms of that goblin, we're just lucky nothing worse came of it like a marriage or-"

The doors to Irenie's private chambers were thrown open and exposing a very unsightly face that was all too familiar to Irenie.

"...An unwanted guest." Curdie finished. He could not catch a break.

"Cousin!" A young man, about two years Irenie's senior walked into the room, shouting at her. He was blond haired with prominent ears and blue eyes, and was the bane of Irenie's existence. "What's all this about these deplorable goblins staying in the castle?"

"Jeffery," Irenie hissed as she slowly stood up, dusting herself off. "When did you get here?"

Irenie had given explicit instructions not to allow Jeffery inside. She would have asked how he had been let in but with the gaping hole still sitting in her great hall there was no wonder why the servants hadn't stopped him.

"Sometime in the night when those monsters were flinging themselves across the royal entrance. But never mind that travesty, I'm famished," Jeffery announced while Irenie rolled her eyes in annoyance and attempted to mend Curdie's hangover. "I hope you have a proper breakfast prepared that those slimy goblins haven't touched."

"Of course, cousin," Irenie said, gritting her teeth. "I'll walk with you to the dining hall, the servants might have a breakfast prepared but we all had a fairly rough night-"

Jeffery raised a hand to fluff in her face as she and he left Curdie and Ophelia to collect their bearings. Irenie didn't want to go with him and leave her friends but it seemed like a better idea than letting him run off and badger the servants.

"Preposterous! They will have it done or I will have to insist each and every one of them receives a good thrashing."

That stung Irenie and she had only seconds to hold herself back before she gave her cousin his own lashing. She walked down the hall silently until they reached another set of doors. "This isn't your castle, Jeffery, we do things differently."

He chuckled and opened the door to the dining hall for himself and Irenie only barely got through before he nearly shut it on her. "It will be shortly, if you can't find a suitable husband by midsummer's end," Jeffery lowered his voice indicating he might have been trying to intimidate her. "That's hardly two month's time."