It was the tickle of grass poking up from beneath the bedroll that drew Gretel out of tranquil sleep. For a merciful moment, the wizard lay there with his eyes closed, listening to the crackling of the fire, and thought he was back at his campsite.

The next moment, his eyes opened, and he remembered how much trouble he was in.

He was alone in the clearing, to his slightly confused relief. The crystalline pools glittered around him, and though it was ice-cold that night—he was fairly certain it was the witching hour—a campfire chuckled beside him, keeping him nice and warm. There was a black pot nestled in the ashes on the outskirts of the firepit. Beside it lay to a pair of tongs and a folded white handkerchief.

A piece of paper lay in the grass beside him, pinned to the ground by a smooth river stone.

“Drat.” Gretel let out an exhausted sigh, lifting his head and striking the pillow with it. He’d gotten caught up again, wasted more time. And his hands were still bound in that red silk cord.

His heart raced at the thought of Marise returning and finding him like this, bound and squirming, cock still… enhanced…

At least she’d put his borrowed shirt and pants back on for him. He wasn’t sure why she’d done that, and he wished his cock didn’t have to strain against the tight fabric like that, but a little dignity was better than nothing.

He tried not to think about how much dignity lay in a girl dressing him while he sleepsuckled at her breast.

Gretel shook the thoughts off. Time to go. He braced himself against the ground with his legs and sat upright.

His head hit the pillow a half-second later.

Gretel blinked blearily. His head felt like a… like a liquid. The sudden waves of exhaustion and vertigo had caught him utterly off-guard.

He took a deep breath and shook himself, blinking rapidly. He had to force himself out of the daze. He was not proving that insufferable Limini woman right. If there was anything he hated, it was just… letting people like that talk down to him.

Well, he was supposed to hate it, wasn’t he?

How many times had he let it slide since he’d left the Ivory Tower?

Gretel tried to sit up again, his mind lingering on the thought. He just knew so little about the outside world. He wanted so badly to just trust that people wanted what was best for him, just like he tried to want for them. Back in the Ivory Tower, nobody smiled. It wasn’t a smiling place. Out here, people were so much more friendly, so much more… inviting. Welcoming, even.

Gentle. Warm. Soft. Sweet.

Gretel jolted back to wakefulness, realizing he’d been on the verge of nodding off again. He hadn’t even noticed himself falling back down onto the pillow this time.

He looked around, trying both to keep himself awake with new sights and figure out what was wrong. What was…

Oh.

The cord around his wrists trailed away through the tall grass to encircle around a small green statuette he hadn’t noticed before. It looked to be carved out of soapstone, but particularly glassy, almost translucent. It took the shape of a sleeping curled-up kitten.

He let out a groan. Of course.

He managed to roll over—the magic didn’t seem to trigger as long as he didn’t try to get up—and took the note in his bound hands. Let’s see what she had to say.

It wasn’t a long note, but his face grew hotter the further he read.

Good morning, sweet boy~

I trust you slept well. In fact, I’m quite sure you did. You seem to be perfectly content in my arms as I write this, and even though I’m sure you’ll be missing my heat, I’ll make sure to leave the fire burning nice and toasty for you~

I’m also sure you’ll be feeling positively famished without my sweetness, so I made sure to cook up something quite special. It should be done cooking now.

Use the tongs, though, darling, and eat with the cloth. We wouldn’t want you burning yourself or making a mess!~

Oh, and if you want to leave, you’re absolutely free to, of course. But I’m sure that bed is wonderfully enticing, so I’ll be surprised if a weak little thing like you gets far.

Be back soon, sweet boy,

Marise~

Gretel bit his lip. He’d once heard tildes were called ‘serpents’ by non-mages, popularized in casual writing by a well-known set of similar wavy sigils employed in goblin marriage-collars. He knew what they connoted.

And he was hungry, too. His eyes lingered on the pot. All it had taken was a reminder of her ‘sweetness’ to send memories of her milk’s taste flowing through his mind, and he couldn’t get those memories to stop as long as his stomach rumbled. Eating something might help with that, he reasoned.

Except he knew the idea had nothing to do with ‘reason’.

His eyes lingered on the pot.

In the Mage Towers, curiosity was upheld as one of the great virtues. In the real world, at this rate, curiosity was going to get him killed—or worse.

Curiosity still won out every time.

Gretel just wanted to see what it was. Maybe it was something meaty. Everyone knew fey spells worked much less effectively with meat. There was an order to magic and food, a way of doing things, and he was no culinaromancer, but he was pretty sure…

He reached up and touched his mark, shivering slightly as the magic glittered through it, into his mind, and formed a bubble around the pot. It floated over to him and alit in the grass beside him. He turned the bubble into snow and let it pop, spilling a frosty chill upon the steaming iron.

He touched the lid tentatively, then, confirming the spell had worked, opened the pot and brought his head just high enough to see the contents.

Inside glistened a honey-golden cheesecake. Cracks split a cross-shape through the center, revealing pale, creamy filling that glistened with moisture beneath the upper skin. The steam was filled with rich, decadent sweetness, and he could smell the nuttiness of the crust beneath without even cutting into it.

His mouth watered. He breathed in deep of the steam, trying to remember why he couldn’t, why he shouldn’t, why he mustn’t…

“Oh my goodness. He really is stupid.”

Gretel gave a start. He craned his neck to see the source of the sweet, high-pitched voice.

A lady had emerged from the nearest of the sparkling pools. That was all he could think to call her, too—a lady. She had candy-pink hair decorated with tiny glittering stars, and long loops of pale pearls hung from around her neck. The largest of these pearls were embedded into a delicate golden diadem strung through her hair. Her lips were painted bright red, with just the slightest lean towards pink, and her eyes were a solid hue of brilliant turquoise with just the faintest pale pupil-like shapes at the center. The false ‘pupils’, he noticed, were shaped like wavy W’s. She wore a black dress with string straps that fully bared her slim, delicate shoulders.

And her skin…

Her skin didn’t have a color. Its hue rippled and glimmered like the bed beneath shallow waves in bright sunlight. Caustics danced across it, dazzlingly bright. It was hard to look away. It was hard to remember why he needed to.

Gretel managed to at least focus on her face, though. He saw that those pinkish-red lips were curved upward in a smug smile.

His mind was racing. He was positive she hadn’t been there a moment ago. And he couldn’t see her bottom half. Was she some kind of mermaid or siren?

Her words, and their teasing tone, registered to him a moment late. He stared at her, squirming slightly beneath her gaze. “E-Excuse me?”

She put a finger to her plump cheek, cocking her head cutely. “I suppose I can, if my approval is so important to you.”

Gretel felt his cheeks already warming up. “What?”

“Excuse you.” She shook her head, tsking. “Honestly, you really must be so stupid if you can’t even keep up with what you’re saying. Or, like, more importantly, what I say! Most people find listening to me to be, like, so diverting, they can’t do much else~!”

Gretel managed to roll himself onto his side, allowing him to view her more comfortably. This was, he realized belatedly, a bad idea. Now not even an aching neck could distract him from her enchanting, shimmering form.

Luckily, her rudeness more than substituted.

“I am not any kind of fool,” he huffed, “for your information. I just—”

“Aw, that’s so, like, precious.” The fey woman giggled, shaking her head in degrading pity. “You seem quiiite burdened beneath the errant impression that I, like, care.”

Gretel squinted at her, trying to shade his eyes with a hand, to spare himself the worst of the glow. This lady used fanciful language, so she clearly had high education, but her manner remained so… so petty and vapid. A rich girl who thought money could buy wits, he guessed.

She’d have fit in well at the Ivory Tower.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed in a sly smile. “Give me yours first, stupid.”

“Gretel.” The name slipped out without thinking. Gretel immediately bit his lip. Pretty girls had been messing with his head for so long, doing as they said was becoming a habit.

Especially when they insulted him first.

She grinned, clearly pleased at getting what she wanted. “You can call me Ida, if you reeeally need a name.” She winked. “Instead of just my title. You happen to be speaking to the Princess of the Twilight Depth, you know.”

Gretel’s breath came in deeper for a moment. He needed a moment to compose himself. “If you’re just going to be rude,” he managed, “duck back down under the water. I have got to figure out how to get out of here, and I don’t need distractions.”

Her head cocked to the other side. Those plush lips pouted out slightly, and Gretel’s heartrate quickened.

“Did you just shoo me?” she asked, her eyes big and innocent as they bored into his. As sweet as her voice was, it rang with sudden threat.

“I—” Gretel could not afford an enemy like her. All she had to do was call out for Marise, or worse, find a way to slow him down herself, and he’d be… “No,” he said, dropping his eyes from hers. “No, I’m—sorry. I’m just a little distracted right now. Since I’ve landed myself in such a, um, stupid predicament.”

She stared at him.

She put painted nails to her lips in a girlish giggle. “Yes, you have, haven’t you? We watched you let it happen. How embarrassing for you.”

Gretel swallowed. “‘We’?”

He heard feminine giggles echo around the clearing like windchimes.

“Why, my maids-in-waiting, duuuh.” She leaned over the edge of the pool, squishing her chest between her elbows with her chin resting in her hands. Gretel tried not to look at those round, teardrop-shaped breasts, and tried even harder to ignore how they pressed against one another, how they glimmered so prettily, dazzling his vision, scattering his thoughts. “Did you think a Princess would travel without her court~?”

“Travel? Where are you… from?” If she was a mermaid, she was far indeed from the ocean—but he had read once of pools in the Evergreen that had no bottoms, hadn’t he?

The shadows rippled down into her cleavage. Gretel realized he was staring and tore his gaze back up. She looked utterly pleased with herself. “So if you are so very clever,” she chirped, and Gretel realized she was ignoring his question, “how do you mean to, like, escape from this? I daresay you don’t even know what that figurine does~”

Gretel’s eyes narrowed. “I do so. For your information, that is a slumberquartz statuette. All I have to do is…”

He reached up with his still-bound hands and managed to touch his mark again.

A shiver swept through his body as the magic blossomed. He felt very conscious of the eyes on him as he began to shape the spell.

“Ooh, why are you shivering?” Princess Ida laughed. “Are you cold, Gretel?”

Ignoring her teasing, Gretel channeled a slender bubble around the figurine. He brought the figurine over and released the spell, allowing the figurine to drop into his hands. It pulsed with soothing, fuzzy warmth.

“... Stupid.” Ida sounded distinctly disappointed. “Why didn’t you just break it? Or use that magic to slice the cord?”

Though he was still lying on his side to face her, Gretel tried to avert his gaze as best he could as he answered. “Abjuration isn’t meant to be used for harm. And besides, trolls carve slumberquartz from tired spirits.” He clumsily untied the cord and let it fall.” Destroying it would be cruel.”

He set the figurine in the grass at arm’s length.

Immediately, Gretel felt a weight lift dramatically from his chest. He tried to pushed himself to his feet, and this time he succeeded. His back groaned and cracked with relief from his leisurely stretch. Gods, it felt like he’d been down there for days.

After a moment’s consideration, he started towards the edge of the clearing. But as he neared the edge, he paused.

Gretel stood there for a moment and stared into the shadowy woods. Narrow trees with pale bark rose from darkness like anglerfish teeth, illuminated by the light of the glittering pool next to him.

“Mm.” He heard Ida giggling. “You, like, know not the way back to the path, do you, moron?”

Gretel’s cheeks were burning. He slowly turned around, ducking his head from where he knew she swam in her glowing pool. “I—do you know the…”

He trailed off.

Princess Ida had disappeared from the pool. She was nowhere to be seen.

His heart started to pound. He turned back towards the darkness—

—and nearly fell flat on his back as he found himself staring right at the cute, angelic, glowing face of Princess Ida. She had emerged from the nearby pool, beaming ear to ear. Her dazzling light made Gretel’s thoughts sway and swing and swirl into knots.

“Do I know the way?” she asked, her face bright with naivete, but her voice ringing with smug, arrogant pleasure. Her voice dropped to a sweet, cooing whisper.

“Are you in need of my help?”