It took, in the princess's rather humble opinion, an unnecessarily long time for Seraphina to hunt down Alios.
When the carriage had deposited Willow at the front of his clothing shop, a brightly painted two-story affair with a signboard of looping letters and windows crammed with mannequins posed provocatively and dressed in gorgeous attire, the wily spider had encouraged her to try out his outlandish suggestion and let him know how it had gone. They had even exchanged a sliver of their magical signatures so that she could send messenger butterflies to him and vice-versa.
As soon as she and Mena had arrived back at the castle, Seraphina had expected to find King Alios Caligo still in his office, that hulking proud form bent over days' worth paperwork, but instead all she found was an
