A/N: I'M BACK! Cassie was calling to me, I missed writing her, so I wrote this other character too to keep you from boredom with me. Next chapter is all about our favorite Camelot residents

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As soon as the sun began to slant through the cracks in her window shutters, Danielle Greene was awake. She slipped out of the bed, careful not to wake the still sleeping figure that laid beside her.

She pulled off her nightgown, stretching her long body before tugging on a dress for work. She grabbed an apple out of the basket on the table and hurried out the door, heading to work.

It was still early and the sun had not yet burned off the mist of dawn, making the little outer town she lived in appear mysterious and beautiful, just for a few moments.

She shook off her thoughts and focused on reality, turning towards the castle and beginning to walk in its direction. As she threaded her way through the town she saw some of the other servants and staff making their way up to the little bridge that led to the main courtyard of the castle.

"Danielle!" she heard someone call her name and an unconscious smile took her lips. She turned, continuing to walk backwards, grinning as the man behind her huffed out an annoyed breath and jogged to catch up to her.

"You couldn't have waited?" he asked, his voice feigning annoyance, but his face incapable of keeping with the charade. He was too happy to see her.

"No" she said simply, before turning to walk forwards again, the smallest of smiles on her pretty face.

The two walked in silence for a minute, Danielle sneaking glances at him as she braided her long red-gold hair over one shoulder.

He was a mess, his dirty blonde hair sticking in every which direction, making him look like he'd just rolled out of bed, which he clearly had, judging by the state of his dress.

"Ethan" she said his name softly, pointing at his shirt to direct his attention from her to it. He looked down and let out an annoyed groan. The two slowed slightly as he fixed the shirt he'd had on backwards.

"Some days I'm not sure I'd even make it through the castle gates without you," he admitted, a lopsided grin on his face.

The woman shook her head, "It's doubtful," she agreed. They continued on their walk in silence, Danielle biting into her apple and munching quickly. The apple was nothing but a core by the time they reached the short drawbridge that led to the castle and she dropped it into the moat as they waited for the bridge to be lowered.

"Morning," the guard grunted as they walked past him into the castle courtyard. The poor man looked like he had been up all night, his shift probably coming to an end. His name was Naryn if she wasn't mistaken and she shot him a smile.

"Don't burn anything today," she reminded Ethan as he made the turn for the kitchens and she headed up the main steps.

With a mock glare, Ethan gave a short bow, "And make sure that her ladyship's hair is perfectly coifed," he teased back.

She laughed and dipped into a half curtsey, before turning back to the steps and entering the castle. The Lady Brenna, sister to the King of Moria was well into her forties, though she wished everyone to believe she was much younger and insisted on behaving as such. As her personal servant, Danielle helped her dress and ready her hair for the day. She helped the woman dye her hair once every few weeks to hide the strands of grey that had begun to lighten it. Brenna applied cream after cream, some imbibed with magic to keep her wrinkles from showing or to banish them altogether. Danielle was at her beck and call and spent most of her time fetching powder for the lady's face. She hated it, but it was a good position in the King's household and she had a small sister to look after.

At twenty years old, Danielle was too young to have a six year old to keep track of, but when her father died soon after Leanne was born and her stepmother, Leanne's mother, had died five years later, she loved the little girl far too much to let her go. She had arranged for the girl to study with the court librarian, so she would learn to read. Danielle's father had taught her, but she didn't have the time to teach the smaller girl. In exchange, Leanne helped the librarian with shelving and cleaning. She was young to have a job, but it was a good one, and there was not much else to do at her age.

Prior to waking Lady Brenna, Danielle had much to do. She had to prepare the lady's breakfast and get her low-cut gown of the day ready. Her hair rollers were to be heated and her makeup laid out on her vanity for application. The woman was so pressed and coiffed that it was impossible to tell what she really looked like.

Unless she was seen first thing in the morning. The way Danielle had to. The Lady Brenna wasn't a hideous woman. In fact, she had probably been rather beautiful in her youth, but years of makeup and dirty looks had made her skin wrinkle and sag despite all the firming salves she slathered on her skin each night. Her hair which had once been dark and shiny had thinned and faded and was now laced with gray underneath the dye she rubbed into it.

Had she simply been unattractive in her older years, Danielle would not have minded working for the woman. But she was as ugly on this inside as she was on the out. She was nasty and rude and mistreated the girl who rose before dawn to wake her. She was unforgiving and had a short temper that flared easily.

Hours later, Danielle finally pushed back the curtains, "Good morning my lady" she recited in a practiced tone of pleasant but not too chipper, as the lady was not a morning person.

Brenna groaned and rolled over, throwing a pale arm over her face, "Must you be so loud in the mornings?" she complained.

"Apologies my lady" Danielle curtseyed and lowered her voice.

The older woman rolled herself out of bed, and glared out the window at the bright sunshine coming in through the glass before situating herself at the table in her room on which sat a large breakfast spread.

She looked over everything with a critical eye before turning to her servant, "Why are there no grapes?" she asked, glaring at the redhead.

"Apologies my lady, there were no grapes in the kitchen this morning, I believe they are no longer in season and any that we had saved have been eaten," Danielle spoke with a bowed head.

The lady made a disgusted noise, "Probably eaten by greedy servants like you," she snapped and began to eat her breakfast, grumbling through it, though she ate everything on her plates.

For the rest of the morning she ordered Danielle around, snapping her commands and berating the girl over nothing. It was not much different from any other day and the young woman had become expert at tuning her out.

Around midday, Lady Brenna sent her on an errand, to fetch a jewelry box from her sister in law, the queen. The queen was a much kinder woman, and Danielle was much more willing to deal with her.

"Enter!" the woman's voice floated through the door.

The servant opened the door quietly and entered the room, falling into a deep curtsey and keeping her head down.

"Rise, child, speak" the queen's voice was soft and melodic. When Danielle looked up, she saw the bright blonde locks and wide blue eyes of the woman in front of her. There were laugh lines around her eyes and her mouth, lines she made no effort to hide, wearing only a touch of rouge by way of makeup and a lavender gown that was much simpler than anything her sister in law would wear. The queen's room was much more modest than Lady Brenna's as well, with a few tapestries hanging on the wall, a simple white bedspread on the large beautifully carved bed, and an unadorned mirror over a plain wooden vanity, nothing like the marble and gold monstrosity sitting in Brenna's room.

"The Lady Brenna sent me your majesty. She is requesting a jewelry box. She said the top was decorated in emeralds and that you would know which I meant, my lady," the redhead still kept her eyes cast downward.

She saw the queen get up, and walk to a small wardrobe, which she opened and slowly sorted through. From what Danielle's curious eyes could tell, it was full of jewelry boxes. She removed one and closed the door.

"This must be the one she's looking for. Here you are, child," she handed the box to the girl and returned to her chair where she had been reading.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Danielle dipped into another deep courtesy and scurried from the room. As kind as the queen was, she was still terrifying.

As she walked back to Lady Brenna's rooms, she observed the box in her hands. It was small but ornate, the metal carved in intricate patterns, swirling and curling around each other and what had to be thirty jewels of varied sizes set in the top and along the sides of the box no bigger than her outstretched hand. The jewels themselves were so stunning, she couldn't take her eyes off them and ran her fingers over each cut emerald in its inlay in the box.

She was so engrossed in the box that she didn't pay attention to where she was going. She slammed into someone, the box falling from her grasp and the sword that the man she slammed into was holding clattering to the ground. Both fell, and landed hard on the ground.

Danielle looked up and felt the blood drain from her face. Prince Samuall sputtered his annoyance as he heaved himself from the ground and picked up his sword. While the queen was kind, her son took after the other side of the family. Samuall was cruel and angry. He had been through six servants already in the last two years and had beaten the hell out of all of them before he dismissed them, demanding to his father that they be executed for failing to follow his commands exactly. He was even unkind to his poor young wife, a princess from another kingdom, left at the castle of Moria by her father and forced into a miserable marriage with an awful prince in order to solidify relations between the two kingdoms. Even she had arrived in court with bruises and scratches until the king had a talk with his son about appearances.

"How dare you, you stupid bitch," the prince cried stabbing his sword towards the girl who still lay on the ground, clutching the jewelry box that her hands had found moments after she hit the ground. "Don't you know who I am?!"

She opened her mouth but her voice stuck in her throat and all she could do was stare in terror at the sword pointed with startling accuracy at her hammering heart.

Samuall swung his sword aside and reached out with a gloved hand to grab Danielle by her hair and yank her upwards, "I asked you a question," he growled in her ear as he heaved her up.

Danielle let out a cry before snapping her mouth shut, realizing that it would not help her situation. It didn't. The Prince threw her into the wall, his hand not leaving her hair. She held in a whimper.

"You imbecile! How dare you knock me? Do you wish to die?" he shouted at her. Several servants had passed the corridor and were staring in terror and sympathy. She cowered against the wall, while the prince shook her by her hair.

"Hey!" someone shouted and Danielle's heart sunk in fear, it was a voice she recognized, "Let her go!" Ethan shouted as he approached, his kitchen boy apron only serving to make him look more innocent.

Samuall dropped her, letting her body slide down the wall into a heap, strands of her hair he had ripped out floating down next to her.

"Fool boy," the prince smiled as Ethan made it to her side, cupping her face and looking her over for injury. The kitchen boy had just given her a relieved smile when his face suddenly froze in an expression of agony. Danielle looked up to see the prince standing over him, his sword buried deeply in Ethan's side, right between the ribs and into his heart.

"No!" she screamed as Samuall removed his sword from her best friend's side. "No, no, no," her hands moved frantically around his wound, trying to figure out where to press them to put pressure on the wound even though a small voice in the back of her head reminded her that it would not help. Pulling him to her chest, she stroked his hair, tears dripping from her face onto his, as one hand soaked with his blood and another ran through the dirty blonde locks on his head.

Samuall had moved on, evidently bored now that he had shed blood, and he wandered away, the blood dripping off his sword onto the stone floors he walked on.

"Danielle…" Ethan muttered.

"Shh, its okay, don't speak," she gasped through her tears. They both knew she was lying. She felt it when the life left him, there as he lay in her arms, her sobs wracking both their bodies. A small crowd had gathered around her and one of the guards, Michael, a friend, gently pulled Ethan away from her, while Gella, one of the other servants held her, pulling her arms away from the body of her best friend.

She was covered in blood, and a mess, her hair in disarray and her cries loud and broken. But she didn't care. The only thing she could see was Ethan's lifeless body being carried away from her by two guards. She hadn't yet risen from the ground and fought the woman pulling her up, her hands scrambling for purchase on the cold stone floor, her clean finger scraping against the jewelry box. She clutched it, bringing it into her lap and curling around it, hysterical and crying. Suddenly she found herself being lifted, curled up around herself and carried down to the kitchens, and to the spare servants quarters. She was laid on a bed, by a large man who was the stable master if she wasn't mistaken. Left there, she cried herself out. Her sobs devolving to soft whimpers and her eyes becoming less swollen with tears. Her hands still shook and her body ached with the pain of her beating and of Ethan's death. A death brought about because of her. Because he was trying to protect her. Another sob made its way out of her mouth and she forced herself to sit up, to stop crying, to breathe deeply. There was nothing she could do to take back the death of her best friend. But there was no way she would stay in Moria, serving the family of the man who had just murdered him in cold blood.

It was clear what she must do. She moved herself into a sitting position and breathed deeply. She would have to get Leanne. She couldn't leave without her. As she stood, the jewelry box she had forgotten about tumbled out of her skirts. It made a clang on the floor and popped open, a string of emeralds and old spilling onto the stone. The necklace was beautiful, but Danielle was tempted to kick it away. Her fascination with the jewelry box was the reason for Ethan's death. A moment later she reconsidered, after the anger that flared within her had died, she realized that the jewelry box and the necklace within would be able to pay her way for a few months, maybe even a year. She would have to leave the kingdom, as she would be wanted for theft and leaving her position at the palace. And if Samuall managed to skew the story, maybe murder.

Sometime during her cry, someone had left a bucket of water for her just inside the door. She rinsed her hands in it, scrubbing until most of the bloodstain had come off. Next she stripped off her clothes, finding a dress in one of the small drawers in the cabinet next to the bed that fit well enough and pulling that on instead. Better a little short than covered in blood. The dress had deep pockets she used to store the jewelry box in. She pulled the tie out of her hair and re-braided it, coiling it into a bun at the back of her head. When she felt presentable, she kicked her ruined dress under the bed and pulled open the door.

Leanne was probably in the library already and she had to find her sister. She checked that no one was watching and slipped from the room, keeping her head down as she ducked down corridors. Thankfully the castle wasn't busy this time of day. She knew she had to hurry, as Lady Brenna probably could already tell she was missing. The woman had little patience.

The library was a massive room in the center of the castle that seemed to go on for ages. Danielle was unsure she had ever actually seen the four corners of it.

"Leanne!" she hissed as she entered the room, seeing no one at Lister's desk. When there was no answer, she cautiously moved into the room, her steps fast and silent in her worn boots. "Leanne!" she called, louder this time. Still no answer. She continued down the main hallway between the bookshelves turning her head back and forth as she did, searching for her sister. Suddenly, something slammed into the back of her legs, wrapping small arms around her middle.

"Dani!" the six year old cried, excited to see her sister in the middle of the day.

The older sister turned and leaned down, so she was at eye level with the smaller girl, "Lee, sweetheart, we need to leave, right now. Where is your bag?" she asked. An expression of confusion crossed the child's face but she pointed back towards the desk. "Okay, lets go. We're leaving to go on an adventure!" Danielle forced a smile and took the little girl's hand.

"What kind of adventure?" Leanne asked as her sister stood and took her hand, dragging her towards the door, barely stopping at Lister's desk to pick up the small satchel the child took to the library every day.

"A secret one, we cannot tell anyone," she insisted. Danielle dragged her sister through the corridors, towards the castle exit.

"Not even Ethan?" the child asked and her sister felt her step falter as pain shot through her chest at the still fresh wound.

She breathed deeply, before starting to walk again, pulling her sister along quickly, "No, honey, not even Ethan" she choked out.

They made it out of the castle, Leanne somehow aware of the silence needed of her. Walking across the courtyard, Danielle's heart thumped against her ribs, threatening to burst out of her chest in her fear and anxiety. Her palms were sweating, slipping around her sister's small hands. She kept her head down and the child, seeing her, did the same.

"Danielle!" a guard called as they crossed the drawbridge. She froze, terrified that she had been caught, her mind racing, wondering what would happen to Leanne when she was gone. She turned to see a guard she knew, but whose name she could not remember. "Where are you two headed?" he asked with a smile. Her breathing evened, he didn't know.

"Leanne isn't feeling well, so I snuck out to take her home. But you have no idea where I am if anyone asks, okay?" she shot him a grin and Leanne, bless her heart, coughed for effect.

The man's smile turned sympathetic, "Feel better little princess," he said to the child, the turned to her sister, "I haven't seen you at all today," he added with a wink.

"Thank you!" Danielle called over her shoulder as she hustled the girl down the road towards their small house. Her mind was flying through plans and contingencies. They had to get out of the city. Out of the kingdom would be best. Of the neighboring Kingdoms she figured Camelot was their best option. The kingdom was prosperous and often took in refugees. The King there, Uther didn't have a close relationship with Moria's king and queen, so it was unlikely she would be found there. They would need supplies, as Camelot was a few days journey, and what little money and valuables they had.

"Get your things, only what you can carry," she instructed her sister as they burst through the door. The girl scurried to the back of their home and began to pack her clothes into her bag. Danielle set about packing a bag of food, the little they had in their home. Bread and a few small bundles of meats and cheeses, a few tomatoes, and a few bruised apples. A skein of water joined them, though she knew they would have to refill. She moved over to the small chest of drawers she and Leanne shared, helping the girl pack extra socks and undergarments before adding her own clothes to the bag of food. As discretely as she could, she plucked the jewelry box from her pocket and placed it on a shelf above the smaller girl's line of vision. A clay pot sat on the same shelf and she opened it, dumping its contents onto the wood shelf. A set of gold earrings and three gold wedding bands that had belonged to each of their parents spilled out along with two silver bracelets designed for tiny wrists. She deposited them all into the jewelry box and slipped it into a hidden pocket in the bag wrapped in a pair of mens pants she sometimes wore under her dress when she had to go riding. They had been Ethan's when he was a few years younger and a few inches shorter. She fit them well since she was so tall, but the thought of her now dead friend made her throat choke up and her eyes blur with tears.

Blinking them away, she opened one of the few cabinets by their small kitchen and pulled out the knives they owned. Two were for the kitchen, one of which went in her bag and the smaller of which she tucked into her boot. The third had belonged to her father and she tied a belt around her waist, adding the sheath of the knife to it so it sat at her hip within reach. She slipped the compass that had also belonged to their father into her pocket and gave the single room that made up their home one last look over.

"You ready?" she asked Leanne who was handling this startlingly well for a six year old.

With a smile, the little girl skipped up to her and took her hand, "Lets go on our adventure!" she began tugging her sister out the door.

"Yes, lets" Danielle agreed with a small smile, pulling Leanne's cloak around her shoulders and throwing on her own. It was only early spring and the air was still cool, the nights promising to be colder. They walked out the door, as if off for a regular stroll, or to pick up food from the market. The door closed behind them and she felt a twinge of sadness at leaving the only home she had ever known, but she could not stay. She could not live in a kingdom where the future king had so senselessly murdered her best friend. Her Ethan. A man she could have found herself in love with. One who had been so kind to Leanne and her both, and one who had given up his life to protect her. She refused to make that in vain.

So they walked through the town, nodding to those she knew, but for the most part keeping her head down while Leanne hummed to herself, lost with her head in the clouds as the child was wont to do. Camelot was to the east but they had not yet made it out of the town to the main paths. Staying on the highway was dangerous, but it was better than getting lost, and it gave them an opportunity to possibly sleep in an inn or a tavern, rather than under the stars.

They had made it past the last of the small houses that marked the end of the town when the bells from the castle began to toll. Panicking, Danielle scooped Leanne into her arms and began to run, ignoring the child's protests and questions. It wasn't far to the woods, and if she ran fast enough she could lose the castle guards and patrols in the dense trees. So much for the highway plan.

From what she could tell, no one was on their trail yet, but Danielle refused to take any chances, sprinting through the trees, her muscles burning from her speed and the tightness with which she was clutching her sister to her chest. The girl's cries and questions had silenced and she simply clung to her sister, trying to hold herself up, had buried in the older girls shoulder.

The trees became denser as she ran, and she heard nothing behind her but the now growing faint tolling of the bells. She was headed east, but unsure of where the road was and where she was in the woods. Finally her legs almost gave out under her and she stumbled into a tree, letting Leanne slide down her body to stand on her own. But she wasted no time, her breath coming in pants, taking her sister's hand and walking, still East, her pace quick so that the little girl struggled to keep up. She didn't slow for a long while. Until the sound of the bells was a faint echo in the distance.

Finally she stopped, figuring they were safe enough for the time being to stop and have a drink. She had only just pulled the skein out of her bag when a man, apparently fallen from the sky, slammed shoulder first into her.

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed, I'm a bit rusty, so constructive criticism is more than welcome. Chapter 2 will go up soon!