Rosie slid off the Bloomguard's lap mid-braid.
"Princess, where are you going?"
The archer's fingers hung in the air with three strands still pinched between them, and by the time the confused words left her lips, the dryad girl was already twenty paces away with her bare feet cutting through the grass toward the western edge of the stronghold.
The young lady never jumped out of any woman's lap who was in the middle of pampering her.
Never.
'What is going on...?' she wondered, but the question stayed inside, because of the far too serious look Rosie wore.
Her destination sat behind three layers of illusion, and most people never found the first.
Rosie's roots sank into the earth beneath the first step, thin as spider silk, and mapped the truth the illusions were built to hide.
Where the magic said the wall was solid, the ground said it was empty air with the real door six steps to the left.
