"Has anyone seen Elena?"

Luisa had been searching for her granddaughter, Crown Princess Elena, for several minutes now. She had checked her bedroom, her sister Princess Isabel's room, the breakfast hall and kitchen, Royal Wizard Mateo's laboratory and a few other areas Elena spent a lot of her time in, but couldn't find her anywhere.

None of the nearby palace guards or Lt. Gabriel Nunez, her personal guard, had seen her in a while either. Gabe appeared to be quite alarmed about not knowing where she was and was following Luisa around, helping the elderly lady search the castle.

Finally, the ruffles of Elena's favorite red dress fluttering in the wind caught Gabe's attention. The princess was sitting on the railing of the palace's long first floor balcony. Her face was downcast and she was sitting silently with her hands clasped in her lap.

Luisa sensed that Elena was dealing with some delicate inner turmoil and dismissed Gabe so that she could have a private talk with her granddaughter. She sat down on the railing next to Elena, saying nothing for the moment. The gentle breeze rustling the nearby potted plants and the faint laughing that could be heard from the nearby palace kitchen were the only sounds that could be heard.

"Que estas pensando?" Luisa asked.

"I'm thinking about Julio's family. I don't know what to say to them."

Luisa put her arm around Elena and pulled her close. Is was now that she noticed how red and puffy the teenager's eyes were. She had been crying recently. It broke Luisa's heart to see her eldest granddaughter so distressed.

"What do I say to them?"

Luisa paused. This was not an easy question and there was no easy answers to it.

Julio Noriega was a young palace guard. He had been hired by Shuriki two years ago and stayed on with Elena's family after Shuriki was ousted from the thrown a few months earlier. He had been a dutiful and bright young man, whose life was cut too short.

The night before the royal family had thrown a ball to honor Mateo de Alma and bestow on the teenager the role of Royal Wizard. Things had not gone as planned and an evil wizard, also known as a malbago, named Fiero tricked Gabe into letting him in. While there, he turned all the party guests and palace staff to stone. The only ones to escape were Elena, Naomi, Gabe and Mateo. They managed to defeat Fiero and find a cure for those who had been turned to stone.

The requirements of the cure was that it be applied to those who had been turned to stone before the first sunrise. The four were just in time to save those in the ballroom. They had thought that everyone was in that room during Fiero's attack, but they were wrong.

A lone guard had caught Fiero trying to break into one of the palace offices just prior to Fiero's attack on the ballroom. That guard was Julio Noriega.

The morning after the ball, once Elena, Luisa, Francisco, Isabel and Esteban were heading back to their rooms to get some rest, they discovered Julio standing, turned to stone in the hallway. The family was at first dumbfounded. How had the guard been turned to stone in the hallway, away from the others?

It didn't take them long to figure out that he had most likely discovered Fiero lurking around the private offices and had bravely confronted him.

Realizing that they were too late to help him, Elena had been inconsolable for the rest of the day. The others had called for Mateo and pleaded for him to find a cure. He had vowed to do his best. He would go through the Maru Codex and all his grandfather's writings to see if there was anything to be done.

Luisa had suspected that he was just saying this to give Elena hope.

Now, Elena was preparing herself to notify Julio's family about his apparent death. She was supposed to be on her way to the Noriega family's home at that time, which was why Luisa had been scouring the palace for her in the first place.

"I don't know what to say to them," Elena sobbed. "If I had been more observant none of this would have happened."

"This is not your fault, Elena," Luisa said. "Fiero is the only one to blame. You were very brave, standing up to him and fighting him like you and your friends did."

"But, I didn't save him. I'm to be this country's queen and I let someone I am supposed to protect die."

"Elena, you have to realize, you can't save everyone. In a bad situation, you can only do so much. What if you had found him before you cured everyone on the ballroom and then moved him in with the rest of us. Would you still have had time to save us?"

"I-I don't know."

"What happened to Julio was not your fault. You are going to be queen in two short years, Elena. There's something you are going to have to realize about being queen. You are going to have to make some hard, even terrible decisions. Your mother and father had to learn this as well. There is no easy way to learn it."

Elena said nothing to this, she just stared out over the palace gardens.

"But, what do I say to his family?"

"It's not something that will come to you easily. Focus on any memories you have of Julio. Talk about how dutiful he was and how brave he was. He gave his life for the safety of the palace and Avalor."

"We can still save him, right?"

"I have faith in Mateo. He will do all he can. I have no doubt in that."

"Do you think they will be upset that we are keeping his body?"

"We are keeping it in hopes of curing him, so just explain that to them."

Elena nodded. After a second she stood up and helped her grandmother off the rail.

"I'm ready to go, abuela. The sooner we talk to the Noriegas the better."

"Do you know what you want to say?"

"I do," Elena nodded.

"Very good. Death notifications are things that will never get easier to do."

The pair began walking to the palace courtyard where a carriage was waiting to take them to the Noriega house.

"I'm so nervous."

Luisa took Elena's hand and gave it a quick squeeze.

"So am I, querida."

Definitions:

Que estas pensando?: What are you thinking about?

Abuela: grandmother

Querida: dear