Ever After - Ella Enchanted AU

Ever After - Chapter 17

 The rest of the night was a blur as Adrien was dragged from the Hall of Mirrors and escorted back to his room by a pair of guards at his father's request. While Adrien would typically protest being treated like a child being grounded for causing trouble, that night he wanted to go back to the solace of his chambers. After everything he had just been through, he needed time to think about all had just happened.

Marinette had come to the ball, even though in her letter it sounded like she wouldn't. Marinette declined his proposal, even though he was pretty sure they felt the same for one another. Marinette said she loved him, and then pulled a knife on him.

She had tried to kill him.

Marinette had tried to kill him.

Adrien changed out of his formal clothes, that thought a constant buzz at the back of his mind as he numbly sat overlooking his kingdom from his window nook. His forehead was pressed against the cool pane of glass, the only thing grounding him to reality, when his father finally made an appearance. He didn't knock, naturally, and strode into his bedroom without any kind of announcement, Natalie trekking in after him, his ever present shadow.

The king examined Adrien's disheveled appearance and the untouched food left on his dressing table before perching on the bench at the foot of Adrien's bed. He laid his staff across his knees smartly, looking down his nose at his son with the same bored expression. "You haven't eaten."

"I'm not all that hungry," Adrien growled, not bothering with the nuances of their typical dance. He didn't have enough energy to act composed for his father at the moment.

There was a long and heavy pause, Adrien assuming that his father was calculating how best to get to the point without needing to embellish with all the typical fatherly questioning. He hadn't even asked if his son, the one who had nearly been stabbed in the back hours before, was okay. "You need to keep up your strength, Adrien. The cook even went through the trouble of making your favorite dish."

"Get to the point, Father." Adrien snapped, hugging his knees closer to his chest. "We both know you're not here because of that."

King Gabriel paused at his son's rude outburst, but seemed to think nothing of it for once. His grip tightened on his staff. "You realize, of course," his father mused, "she'll have to be put to death immediately."

"No!" Adrien cut him off, pulling away from the window to look his father in the eye with a kind of crazed, anguish filled look. It was the same as when his mother died. Adrien had gone into complete denial. The young man's eyes dropped to the floor before he turned to look back at the window. "I just don't understand."

He pressed his forehead back onto the window pane, the cool glass a comfort in his flustered state. "Maybe I should go an talk to her."

"No," King Gabriel said abruptly, piquing Adrien's interest slightly. "No, I forbid you to go down there."

Adrien scoffed at the command, not bothering to dignify it with an answer as he watched the people leave the palace grounds and head back to their ordinary lives. It was Natalie who spoke up next, stepping away from the king's side for once to come closer to Adrien.

"Your Highness," the king's assistant said evenly, "your father didn't want to frighten you, but the secret police informed us of a possible uprising. Those ogres in the forest, they were after you."

That caught Adrien's attention, his brow furrowing together in thought as he pulled away to look from Natalie to his father. "What are you trying to say?"

"This girl was obviously part of the scheme," Gabriel stated gruffly. "The ogres never planned to hurt her. She was just toying with your emotions, Adrien, so she could get close to you and commit the murder herself."

Adrien found it hard to breathe under the weight of all that was being told to him. Marinette, a murderess? Surely not, he never pegged her for someone so heartless, not when he had seen the depth of her affections for those around her. Then again, the evidence of such a fact now sat in the armory along with all the other deadly weapons after having been collected from the Hall of Mirrors where Marinette had dropped her knife. He found himself shaking his head despite the reality of it all. "I... I just don't believe it."

"Yes. Yes, it does seem quite fantastic," The king concurred, standing up from his seat and straightening his robes. He gathered his staff, beckoning Natalie back to his side once more. "You let me worry about all this, Adrien. You just concentrate on tomorrow's coronation. Go to bed."

"Yes, Father." Adrien droned morosely, rising from his seat by the window and flopping onto his bed just as his father and Natalie left his chambers.

Just outside the chamber doors, the king and his assistant paused in the sitting room, Gabriel pausing just outside of his own bedroom. "Finish organizing everything for tomorrow, Natalie," Gabriel ordered, removing his crown before inspecting it with a considerate gaze. "I want everything to be confirmed and prepared for the big event."

"Sire," Natalie said cautiously, "you know I've been working with the Red Guard. Why not call them in now and take over the whole kingdom like you planned?"

Gabriel considered the idea for a moment. Yes, they could simply send in the Red Guard and enforce his foreseeable lifetime reign, but to do that would put a considerable strain on his credibility with his people. Gabriel wanted to remain king, yes, but in a way that wouldn't provoke his subjects into a revolt if cornered by sheer brutality. The king set his crown down on a nearby end table, his hand pressed on the table top as he leaned onto it. "First, we must find a way to get rid of my son," The king said in a tone that made it sound like he were merely discussing party plans instead of premeditated murder. "And I think I have an idea of how to do it."