As Malphus said, they stole the dance floor. Everyone followed their lead, and they even convinced the King and Queen to join them without saying a word.
Everything was going great, Valerie finally talked to a girl who wasn't Dorthy. Dorthy, oh Dorthy, she was having the time of her life over on the sides of the ballroom with Edwin. It turned out that she had been crushing on Edwin since 5th grade. It was meant to be, at the time at least. No one would know when one stopped liking the other.
Malphus, however, refused to leave Valerie's side the whole time the school was in the castle. He followed her to talk with the girls, who use to talk about her or look at her weirdly. He followed her to tease Dorthy about her crush on Edwin after she knew for sure they were dating. He made sure to follow her to talk to the boys that would hit on her in class, he even made it clear they were together by holding her hand, tightly.
He didn't bring her anywhere alone with him while the school was still here, he knew how much the people of those days fed off false words from another.
Valerie had to go to the bathroom, and after she left a girl approached Malphus. All she wanted to do was spark a conversation with the prince.
"Hello, I'm-"
"I honestly don't give a fu- ahem, I don't care who you are. Now leave my presence unless you want your head above my fireplace." He told the girl, with a cold murderous look in his eyes.
Something told the girl he wasn't kidding, and she walked quickly away with tears bubbling in her eye's begging to come out.
The truth about Malphus was that he was as cold-blooded as a snake. He was never nice to anyone unless he needed something from them. He had been murdering people from the age of 10. Some would call him a sadist, as he made the people he killed suffer through their death. He enjoyed eating away at their life force before leaving it to rot in the cold undergrounds of their castle.
Things like this went unnoticed by most people. The royals were all this way and made sure it didn't leak through to the commoners as they wanted their people to respect and not fear them.
In the bathroom, Valerie couldn't seem to find where she had placed her crown until she saw a maid that looked her age cleaning it in the hall.
The maid had thought it needed cleaning so she took it and got a wet towel to clear it of its smudge's.
"Thank you for cleaning my crown, would it be a problem to know your name, sweet Miss?" Valerie said while walking out of the bathroom. She made sure to talk in a calm, sweet voice just in case they had got her from the slave establishment.
"Hello Mistress, my name is Mariel, but I like to go by Mary." The young maid bowed to Valerie as she spoke. She didn't want to come off rude to someone she didn't know.
"Thank you for clearing my crown of its smudge's, Mary. I wouldn't have noticed it myself." Valerie thanked the girl. She would have noticed the smudges herself but thanked her for doing it anyway.
After that, the two hit it off. She even invited Mary into the ballroom with her. She didn't think the prince would mind, and he didn't. At least not in front of Valerie, any time she'd look away from the prince he would look at the maid with a blood cold stare.
Unlike any other person, she liked when the prince gave her that blood cold stare. She liked that he looked at her more than once, unlike any other time she was around him.
This time, the prince had a good excuse to have this person's head on his wall. He knew there was more to the story than what was on the cover, but he didn't confront her on it. He wanted to see how this would play out.
After another hour, he sent the maid back to work while Valerie checked up on Dorthy. When Valerie came back he said that Mary wanted to return to work so that she didn't have extra work the next day.
'Ek! The prince looked at me, I mean he actually looked at me!' Mary thought to herself. She was so excited about the prince looking at her she didn't realize she was about to walk straight into the wall.
"Ouch!"
She stopped thinking about the prince for a second so that she could walk without killing herself.
When she entered the young prince's room she noticed dresses in his dressers and she thought they were a gift to some rich girl, for her parents' partnership with something.
She didn't know, the prince was betrothed to a princess from the next kingdom over.