Maid In Royalty

♛ 32 ♛

Iris's POV

"Elior will kill us if he finds out!" Lee squeaked as I threw the bag out the window.

It was past six in the evening, while the sun was still out, and I had asked Lee if we should go find Kai right now.

"Are you out of your mind?!" Lee shrieked as I warned him about his voice.

"Shh! Listen, if we go right now, we can be back by midnight. It's like we were never gone."

"I'm not doing this!"

He ended up doing it anyway. After I promised I would take over the stable job for a few days obviously.

"Ok jump! I'll catch you," He said looking around for any guards on duty. I rolled my eyes and jumped on my own, landing on my own two feet. He watched with his mouth open as I had just made a nine feet jump from a window. I stood up dusting my hands and gave him a wink.

"Don't need no man," I sassed as he was taken back in surprise. I chuckled and grabbed the duffel bag with supplies from the ground.

"That was amazing! Where'd you learn that?" He questioned as we started to make our way from the back of the palace. A place no one really went to since it opened up into the cursed woods. Which by the way are called, believe it or not, Canursed Wood. It's a mixture of Canna and cursed. Inventive, I know.

"A friend of mine taught me."

"Is she hot?" He wiggled his eyebrows. I gave him a disgusted look.

"How'd you know she's a she?" I inquired as he shrugged his shoulders.

"None of the men here can do stuff like that. Mostly women were taught combat fighting on the island. If I think about it, men didn't do shit." He swung his additional backpack over his shoulder.

"Shocking," I said with a bland tone. "Dhalia is pretty hot." I looked at him and smiled as he nodded with this "sacred" information.

The rest of the walk was silent. Except for a few times where a noise came from the woods or trees causing Lee to jump up in fear and making me laugh at him. The woods were actually beautiful, and calm. I had only seen half of it during my training, but the rest was almost magical.

"Why do they call it cursed?" I asked as I took a bite of my apple. Lee chewed and thought about an answer to give me. We were taking a short break from all the travelling we had been doing for five hours.

"A few years ago, some girl saw a ghost or a demon vampire or something. The news spread like wildfire and hunters went out to look. Some returned with stories about magic, and mind control." he swallowed his bite. "But it's all bullshit in my opinion."

"Ghosts? And vampires?" I scoffed at his story. He nodded eagerly and glanced around. All I saw was birds and rabbits, maybe a dear if you're lucky.

"You know the other six lands?" He whispered leaning his head in as I followed.

"Yeah?"

"They say, some ghosts and vampires from Land two and mutant forms from Land four escaped to Canna. They live in disguise, right here, in the woods." He leaned back with an almost frightened look. "But that's a whole, different story for another time."

"I thought you said this was all bull?" I asked crossing my arms.

"So? It's still scary." He feigned a shiver and packed up his bag.

I looked to my right at a blackbird sitting on a rock. What if that was a mutant? A demon in disguise? What if this entire forest was disguising itself as something utopian?