A/N: I don't own "Your Highness."

Isabel's mission was completed far more quickly than she had anticipated. Once leaving Thadeous and his brother, she had traveled to the nearby Thorn Forest, where thieves were known to make camp and take shortcuts to their destinations after robberies. She had climbed up a thorny tree and hidden, until a band of robbers came into view, their purses and pouches bulging with stolen gold. Then Isabel leapt gracefully from the tree, her sword twirling into motion, and slashing off the first thief's head before she'd even landed. The other three went down with ease, and in less than sixty seconds body parts were strewn about the thorny forest floor or dangling from the tree branches. The symphony of shrieks wasn't quite as enthralling as she had thought it might be. It was usually more enjoyable when there was someone like Thadeous nearby to show off to.

Quick job, but a messy job. Isabel was now drenched in blood. Her mint green tunic would never be mint green again. In any case, it was also filled with small tears from the thorny trees and underbrush. Miniature's balls, she'd loved this tunic. Ah, well.

Not knowing what else to do, Isabel began to rummage through the thieves' pockets. (It was not stealing, according to Code, if the people you were looting were dead and had it coming.) She fished out some bread and salted pork, and a pipe equipped with a bag of fine herbs. She searched for a new change of clothes, but unfortunately all of the thieves' shirts and pants now had the arms and legs cut off. She finally unrolled one of the thieves' packs, and found a fine woman's robe and a matching cloak. (Why four male thieves carried womens' drabes, she neither knew nor wanted to know.) She stripped down to her chastity belt, and threw the robe over herself. She sat on a thornless patch of ground and ate the pork and bread, and then smoked the pipe for a while, thinking over her adventure with Thadeous and Courtney.

Thadeous, why could she not stop thinking about Thadeous? He was the exact opposite of the kind of man she had been raised to value. He wasn't particularly strong, brave, or physically toned. Well, he had slain the minotaur, that was pretty impressive. But she'd met a lot of impressive heroes in her life. Why did Thadeous's dopey, chubby form keep flying through her mind (lying on a red velvet bed, wearing only a pair of white under loins, while rose petals rained over him, no less)? His chubbiness was rather a change from the rock-hard six-packs and toned muscles she normally saw in her line of work. It was a lazy, luxurious softness Isabel had been denied most of her life as a warrior with a mission.

"You have a sword so far up your butthole that you cannot enjoy yourself on a night like this…?"

Not a sword Thadeous…just a cursed chastity belt.

Thadeous, Isabel realized, represented everything she wished she could be, and never could.

Or couldn't she?

He was soft and squishy, yes, but also a formidable enough warrior, able take on a daunting foe. He had the intelligence of a snapping turtle, but his ability to read Dwarfish, and other knowledge only princes were taught, was certainly an asset. He was lazy, horny, brash, and crude, yet just noble enough to risk his life for someone he cared enough about. Perhaps Isabel could have her cake and eat it too.

She would test Thadeous. If he truly wanted her, he'd risk his life to help her on this quest, just as he had risked his life to help his brother save that innocent maiden. If, on the other hand, Thadeous had only eyed her on that quest because he had been denied his chamber maids to bring along, then he would not waste his time with her request, and Isabel would not waste any more time on him either.

And that was perhaps the best part of all. Because Thadeous wasn't exceptionally noble or brave, because his virtues were only large enough to be distributed amongst those most important to him, she would have her answer for certain. Any other knight might kill that witch for her simply because the witch was evil, Isabel was a maid in distress, and it was a chance to be a hero. But Thadeous would only go after that witch if he really, truly, wanted to fuck Isabel.

And to think, most maidens who wanted to test their knights' love usually had to come up with some absurd request like, "lose this jousting match" or "ride on this cart for prisoners," or "beat off before this Pegasus" or "count the hairs on this ogre's ass." For Isabel, it would be much more simple. "Help me kill a witch, or prove you don't want to fuck me."

A wave of excitement rushed through Isabel, and she stood up, wrapping the cloak around her. Time to find out if Thadeous had been thinking of her as much as she had of him. She gathered some supplies from the slain thieves, and made her way out of the Thorn Forest, towards the kingdom of Morn.