The prince woke up to lights flickering. He sat up and frantically tapped Anna as he heard footsteps approaching. "Anna wake up!" Anna sat up rubbing her eyes and yawning. The footsteps stopped at the door and a soft tapping on the door was followed by a female's voice. It was the friend of Anna. The girl had allowed them to hide out in her attic through the night as they recovered from the mess that was the day before. She opened the door slowly peeking her head in.
"I wanted to bring you guys some food." She wielded two plates with bacon, scrambled eggs and toast. The prince's stomach growled. He hadn't realized just how hungry he was. He wasn't used to this feeling. The sun was high in the sky judging by the light shining through the attic vent and usually his mother's servants would have awoken him by now and he would have been eating his lunch right now following a prior breakfast and brunch. She always made sure he was well fed. He looked hungrily at the food and the girl smiled handing both him and Anna the plates of food.
"Thank you so much," the prince greeted in appreciation as he took his plate. Anna took her plate repeating his thanks.
"Of course!" Her smile grew. She looked fondly at them both. "Anna has told me so much about you. I am so sorry about everything that is happening right now. I can't possibly imagine what you could be going through."
The prince shook his head, "Somehow, some way, I must find justice for her!" He kept shoveling the food in his mouth talking in-between bites. "I thought I could trust him. He was my father. Isn't a father supposed to be someone who protects you!? I just don't understand what happened, but I will find out the whole truth and expose his lies and deceptive will. He will pay for what he had done." The girl nodded in agreement.
"I may know someone who can help. I have heard stories about your family, and how someone that was a grand enemy of your father's family lived in the mountains north of here. Maybe he can help you."
"Wait," the young prince stared up at the girl in confusion, "what stories?"
"Has Anna never told you?" The girl looked at Anna who shook her head in declination.
"I didn't want him to be bias against his family." Anna quickly explained. "I see now maybe I should have. Maybe it could have helped us see this was coming, but then does anything ever prepare you for what just happened?" Anna was right the girl supposed. Someone like the prince with such a compassionate heart shouldn't be tainted by such Shakespearean drama. This whole small town was founded on the fued that seemed to now tear the prince's family apart.
The prince glanced nervously at them. "So, what are these stories?"
"Julie you should tell him. You're better at telling these stories than I am." Anna said as she continued to eat her breakfast. Julie came all the way into the room and shut the door behind her. She sat down on the chair in the corner of the make-shift room. Boxes labeled "christmas decor," "winter clothes," and more were piled up behind her almost as a wall blocking all the stored furniture and boxes of odds and ends behind them.
She began by bringing them back two hundred years before the prince's father. She told a story of two brothers who fought off a great evil that no one was allowed to speak about. They were on the brink of defeating the evil when the youngest brother turned against the older brother, and banished him siding with the evil so he could claim all of the victory for himself. No one had ever seen the older brother after that and the younger brother told the people of the village being tormented by the evil that the older brother had died in combat. Someone about five years ago had climbed up the mountain to hunt and stumbled across the man living in the mountains. Julie told how he may be the descendant of the older brother.
"So I could have family out there?" the prince was stunned by this. As far as he knew the only family he ever had outside of his mother and father was his mother's mother who passed away when he was a boy of pneumonia.
"It's possible." Julie replied.
"I think we should go visit him, baby. He may have some answers about how to defeat your father." Anna said.
"Right," Julie continued, "maybe that evil from the stories is still in the family and being wielded by your father."
"Could be." the prince looked sad again remembering his mother's lifeless body on the patio of their two story plantation home. It's an image he imagined would never leave his mind.
They finished eating their meal. Julie gave them a backpack that they could fill with supplies and two sleeping rolls from her camping stuff. They packed everything they thought they may need. The prince grabbed an old bowie knife that he normally carried in his boots. He never had a need for it, but "a man should always carry a knife to hunt or defend himself when needed," is what his grandmother had told him when she had given it to him. It was her husband's knife before and now it was his. He never left his room without it, and so he was lucky enough to have remembered it the morning his mother died. Now he tucked it into his laced boots. Julie gave Anna a bow and some arrows that she had from her late husband who died a few years back of the Spanish flu. "You will need this more than any of us ever will," Julie told Anna. "It would find better use with you two." They gathered everything they had and headed downstairs to the door after checking through the attic vent that the coast was clear.
"Thank you for everything you've done to help Jules." Anna said as she hugged her friend. The prince nodded in agreement and shook her hand.
"Of course, Anna. You've always been like a sister to me. Please be safe." She turned to the prince, "Good luck and may the gods be with you young sir. I hope you find the answers you are looking for and bring justice to your mother."
"Thank you. I will forever call you a friend and I owe you. When I return I will repay you. Your family will want for nothing."
The prince was sincere with his proposal Julie could see. "You owe me nothing," she replied. "Any love of Anna's must be worth something. You just bring her home safe." She was right too. Anna never took any lovers flippantly, so Julie knew that this young master must have been special and she could see in his eyes that he was a good man, a brave man, and Anna was brave for standing next to him. Julie and Anna shared one last hug and turned to make their way through town and up the northern mountain.