On the other side of the castle, preoccupied with his curious fate, Froglip laid himself out on the floor of the room he had been staying in since the goblins' arrival. The goblins had been staying in the sun-people mountain - what they liked to call a 'castle' which was a ludicrously shaped, smaller mountain- for a week.

He had his arms propped behind his head because the stone of the palace was hardly as comfortable as the stone of his own bed back in the goblin kingdom, but it wasn't nearly as awful as the thing the sun servants had dared to call a 'bed'. No wonder sun people were so frail and soft, they practically dressed, slept and sat in clouds.

He rolled onto his side, pondering again, his front teeth subconsciously biting into the nails of his fingers.

What was he going to do? Princess Irenie hadn't so much as ordered him into a wrestling match to prove his worthiness!

Surely she knew he wasn't the same goblin the day they met. Or perhaps if he just had the opportunity to put one of those other suitors in line he could manage to impress her enough to challenge him herself.

In goblin tradition because Froglip had already failed once to win Princess Irenie's affections, he was now supposed to allow her to decide if or when they would fight to assess worthiness.

It absolutely tormented him that he had blown his shot the first time he had tried to woo the princess. He had been sloppy, imbecilic! prince Froglip could have defeated the minor boy easily but no, he had to play with the sun whelp first. Of course that's why the princess had deemed him unworthy. A real prince would have never let the sun boy gain the upper hand. He would have thrown the minor off the waterfall the instant he had laid his hands on him.

It pained him that to this day he was so much stronger, so much faster and better but that Princess Irenie would never know if she never allowed him to fight her.

And this was his last night in the castle.

A knock startled Froglip from the spiralling thoughts as he curled up on the floor. He removed his nails from his mouth which he had just realized he was biting and quickly jumped to his feet.

He hesitated to move the door, however. Apparently these doors weren't meant to be detached from the walls they blocked, and Froglip didn't need yet another reason for the princess to be angry with him.

"Prince Froglip? Are you in there?"

The princess!

Froglip leapt in the air and jumped to the door, but just before he was able to swing it open, the wood creaked back noisily and the princess appeared in the gap, clasping her hands with something hidden inside them.

"Follow me!" She said with a stiff nod before spinning on her toe and walking quickly down the hall.

Froglip's shoulders rose up quickly and he fell into a wooden march to catch up with the princess. Although, something slinky and black slipped in-between his paces as he fought to make up the distance between himself and the princess.

"Rattleth'tax!" Froglip gasped and the goblin cat chirped back at him.

That boded well, at least. Clearly the prince's gift had at least been well received since she allowed it to travel with her.

With a few more long strides, the goblin was now just slightly behind the princess who continued to march down the long stairwell. From his vantage point, her face was indescribable but the prince only had a few seconds before mid way down a spiral staircase, Irenie whirled around and stopped.

"Sit down," the princess demanded. She gave an extra flick of her eyes at the prince before adding 'please' but he had been so overcome by the authority of the command that he had already taken a seat on the cold steps.

His mind drifted for a second when the princess leaned into him, her nose wrinkled.

They were now close in height although due to the fact he was sitting on the stone stairs, Princess Irenie was slightly taller.

"Prince Froglip."

There was a very long pause where Froglip slowly sunk his head into a hunch.

"Ye'th...?" he answered hesitantly, uncertain of what the princess intended to do.

Her pale eyes scanned him from the point of his chin to the tips of his ears and spiky, pink hair. All Froglip could do was stay frozen and stare nervously at the ceiling. However, without warning, she released a sigh that sounded defeated. He stared at her in frozen disbelief as the once tenacious princess seemingly collapsed on herself and sat down on the stair next to him, as far away as physically possible.

Froglip, and goblins in general for that matter, weren't known for their perceptive skills of sun-people's emotions, however, based on what he knew of the princess' calm demeanour, he thought her behaviour was totally out of the usual.

"Ith th'omething bothering you, printh'eth?" Froglip asked, however, with his eyes still staring into the wall of the spiral staircase.

Out of the corner of his eye, the princess looked Froglip's way, but didn't make so much of a sound.

She didn't really have time before Rattlestax came bounding down the darkened steps, chasing what looking to be a grey blur.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to that," the princess laughed nervously after having jumped. "Rat is a lovely mouser, but it almost makes me sorry for the mouse."

Froglip didn't exactly support the most successful of the goblin mousers being called 'rat' like the vermin, but he shrugged it off easily enough.

"Goblin cats don't feel th'orry for their prey," Froglip said uncompromisingly so that Irenie looked at him again.

"But if the mou'the eth'capes it th'urely wanted to live more than Rattleth'tax wanted to eat it. We goblins believe you get what you de'therve in life," Froglip said as he and Princess Irenie watched the goblin cat chase the mouse down the stairwell and out of sight.

Irenie puzzled about that, she had never thought of it that way, but goblin logic had a sort of straightforward, no-nonsense feel about it. Nothing like the terribly contrived and complex ways of people.

She sighed and rubbed her hand over her cheek as they both continued to stare into the black. It struck Irenie that this was the very first time they had actually spoken together since the goblin's arrival. She didn't really know all that much about Prince Froglip unlike most of the royals she had been forced to meet throughout her life.

"What is it like being prince of the goblins?" Irenie asked him.