Her eyes were focused straight ahead. She believed she could make it through the hoop as surely as birds could fly. Fie was unstoppable. She was undeniably the sole thing on everyone’s minds. Back when she lived as a princess, she always lurked on the edge of public perception, which Fie, as someone who thrived on social recognition, found unbearable. This emotional scar from her childhood ran surprisingly deep. Now that she had this chance, she wasn’t about to let it slip away.
Queen fretted over what he would do if Fie hurt herself. She was a girl! What if she permanently burned her face? ...Well, it wasn’t like he only cared about her for her face. Besides, he would think Fie’s face adorable no matter what happened to it. His thoughts ran in muddled circles. He wondered if he should try to hug Fie to stop her, but for a teenage boy like Queen, hugging Fie was already quite a challenge in its own right. Giving her a hug required a lot of mental preparation on his part. Even after they began dating, Fie was the one who initiated all their touches and intimate moments. For an inexperienced late bloomer like Queen, conundrums like this were simply out of his depth.
Just then, Fie yelled, “Here I go!” and dashed off the starting block. There she went, Fie, smallest of all the squires, pelting with determination towards the fiery hoop.
Yet, the same exact moment as she leaped into the air, a voice startled the boys, yelling, “What do you think you’re doing?!”
In one glorious movement, Fie twisted through the center of the hoop without brushing any of the flames. The chancellor’s eyes widened at the sight.
“Uh-oh, it’s the chancellor...” one of the squires murmured.
Another added, “That’s not good...”
The chancellor had a reputation among the squires for being strict. It wasn’t as sour of an impression of him as the maids had; sure, he had told off a couple of the boys for horseplay, but all in all, everyone agreed that was pretty fair and reasonable. Still, there was one person in this group who was definitely going to come out of this the worst.
Panicked, the chancellor rushed up to Fie and shouted, “Are you all right?”
Fie tumbled to the ground safely, sprang up, and flashed a peace sign to the crowd. “I did it, everybody!” she called. In her concentration, she hadn’t even noticed the chancellor. This was probably a good thing—he might have startled her and caused her to lose her balance—but now she had no idea why everyone looked so worried.
She was confused. “Huh?” Realizing something was up, she looked over and saw a middle-aged man she didn’t recognize running up to her. He was looking right at her, his eyes as wide as saucers in petrified horror. She could tell he wasn’t a knight, or anyone related to the knights, but he looked kind of like a government official. Judging by the boys’ reactions, she realized, Oh, shoot, I’m in for it now.
The boys rushed to Fie’s aid before she could be told off. “I’m sorry, Lord Chancellor,” one wailed. “We started this! We made him do it.”
“No, it’s my fault!” another confessed. “I was the one who found the hoop.”
“And I helped set it up,” a third squire added.
“Um, I mean...” Fie admitted, “I did say that I would, you know...” She was well aware she had the bad habit of knowing something was dangerous but rushing into it anyway just to get attention.
However, for some reason, the man didn’t move, staring fixedly at Fie’s face.
She knew who Orstoll’s chancellor was through hearsay. People said he was strict, but this was her first time actually meeting him. Stern wrinkles lined his face, yet Fie thought there was a kindness in him as well. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt oddly fond looking at him. She tilted her head, puzzling over this strange sensation.
The man remained frozen to the spot throughout all of this until, dumbfounded, he finally opened his mouth and said, “Your Highness Princess Fie, what in the world are you doing here...?”
This baffled the boys. They knew who Princess Fie was. She was infamous for having an illicit love affair with King Roy and forcing her way into Orstoll by becoming his second wife. She was now supposed to be shut up in her own consort’s chambers in a corner of the castle, but apart from that, who knew what had happened to her. Come to think of it, the boys couldn’t recall hearing any fresh rumors about her lately; she had blended into the background of their collective consciousness.
Yet right now, the only people here were the squires, who all recognized one another and were friends with each other. There was no one like the rumored Princess Fie here whatsoever. Therefore, the boys were completely stumped when they heard the chancellor address one of their number as Princess Fie.
However, Fie’s reaction was different. Her mind raced. How did this man know who she really was? Furthermore, how had he seen through her with a single glance? It shouldn’t have been possible! The only people in Orstoll who knew her true identity were her sister Queen Fielle, the maid Lynette, and her former chef Biffe. Maybe, she thought, it was possible she misheard him saying something else as “Princess Fie.” She couldn’t believe this was happening otherwise.
However, the chancellor finally returned to his senses and repeated “Princess Fie” quite clearly. “Your Highness Princess Fie, what are you doing in a place like this? Why are you jumping through a flaming hoop, of all things?” No doubt about it, the chancellor knew with conviction that she was the princess.
Fie turned rigid. She had never expected this to happen! What do I do, what do I do? she thought. Her mind was a blank, gaping hole where thoughts should have been. She couldn’t deny that this was a product of her own carelessness, but she wanted to think this through. Even though it was possible for someone to find out that Heath was secretly a girl, the chances of someone finding out Heath was secretly Princess Fie were so low that Fie had barely considered the possibility at all. After all, practically no one in the entire kingdom had even seen Princess Fie before... and yet some complete stranger recognized Fie immediately.
“Please explain yourself, Your Highness,” the chancellor said. It finally dawned on the boys that something wasn’t right. The chancellor was ignoring the rest of them and only talking to Heath; furthermore, for some strange reason, he kept calling Heath “Princess Fie.” This made no sense whatsoever, but Heath looked like he was in trouble, so the boys stepped in front of him to protect him from the chancellor.
“Lord Chancellor, sir,” said one boy, “you keep calling him ‘Princess Fie,’ but he’s not the princess. I mean, in the first place, he’s a boy after all.”
“That’s Heath,” another one put in helpfully. “He’s a squire like us.”
“That’s right,” said a third. “He’s been living with us for a whole year, ever since we all became squires, so we can’t be wrong.”
The boys were attempting to clear up the misunderstanding but, Fie realized, couldn’t help but be the ones who had made a misunderstanding themselves!
The chancellor’s eyes widened in shock. “You mean to say she has lived and trained as a squire for an entire year? What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?” Despite the squire’s claims that Fie was a different person altogether, the chancellor refused to let his conviction be swayed.
Fie groaned internally. She had no idea why he was so confident that she really was Princess Fie, but she had no choice but to try and fool him.
“Th-They’re right,” she stammered. “My name’s Heath. I’m not a princess or anything. What, do we look that similar? Man, talk about a coincidence, am I right?” She forced herself to laugh as she desperately tried to conceal her trembling.
The boys nodded. To them, she was just Heath, the great friend they had studied with and goofed off with for a whole year now. The chancellor had to be mistaken.
The chancellor looked at Fie like she was a child telling a fib to get out of trouble, and then sighed. “Very well,” he said. “I understand. Then I shall have to report this to His Majesty the King and his wife. As she is your younger sister, Her Majesty Queen Fielle should surely be able to tell if you are the princess.”
“Please do,” the boys replied, confident in their knowledge that this really was Heath. “Then you’ll see that this is all a big misunderstanding!”
The chancellor turned on his heel to return to the castle and report this incident to the royal family. But suddenly, Fie’s trembling hand caught his sleeve and gripped it tightly, stopping him in his tracks. he was by no means strong enough to stop anyone with brute force alone, but her hold stayed him anyway. She stood there without saying a word, her eyes downcast.