Oh, yeah, that's got to be Prince What The Fuck Is His Name Actually. And dammit, she was not finished processing the dawning realization that either she has totally failed to notice her parents being enchanted to behave conveniently for a suborned court wizard's purposes, or her parents decided without outside assistance to have that same not-suborned-just-kind-of-a-jerk court wizard enchant her to behave conveniently for theirs.

Very grumpy swan peeping between the leaves, trying to get glimpses of all the Golden Fields nobles. Whose horses are the most fancily dressed, she should be looking at those first, probably the prince will have one of the fanciest, right? Or maybe he's like her, and he clothes his horses for practicality first and sparkle second...

As she looks over the horses and people, trying to determine who to look at based on the way their horses are dressed, 

Sdfjhks. Zldkfkshpf. Ghlrnhlrhlll.

psodflkjsdkjwlrkSDLKFDFFFFFFF—

—Hawk, that's his fucking name, Prince Hawk of Golden Fields, Hawk who squeaks adorably when she scoops him up and spins him around, Hawk whose passion in life is art and mathematics. Hawk who has been her favourite person since the week they met, since the minute he fell in the lake and she pulled him out and demanded to teach him to swim. Adorably shy, adorably kind, adorably adorable Hawk.

It feels rather like Iris's entire brain is on fire. Long-dead memories flare to life in a blazing cacophony, all at once, associations chasing associations chasing associations as they all scramble back into place.

They argued with their parents about the engagement to Nightingale. Hawk wanted to marry his best friend and not a stranger. Iris declared as a matter of principle that people should get a say in who they marry, both because who you spend the rest of your life with is kind of an important major life decision that shouldn't be made for you when you're too young to think about it and also because on a practical level if you marry someone you don't get along with you will have a bad marriage and there will be trouble about it. And then one day Iris went to bed after a particularly shouty argument with her parents, and woke up the next morning with no memory of ever having met Prince Hawk.

All right. All right. She has her mind back.

What's her next move?

Find a portrait of her and get it to Hawk. Optionally, if she happens to encounter the Autumn Hills delegation's suites on the way, soak their curtains. Optionally, if she happens to encounter Reed's arms on the way, break them. Repeatedly. Until he runs out of whatever magic he used to fix his broken nose, and then once more for good measure.

She withdraws quietly from the hedge and spends a moment considering possible routes, then heads back through the rose garden maze to see if she can get into that garden shed after all. Picking the lock is a wash, but sometimes an absent-minded gardener will leave it open, and she doesn't remember for sure how big the back window is but it's possible she could fit through it if she tried hard and believed in herself. Otherwise, she'll have to sneak all the way around the castle to the docks at the back, and use the secret passage from the lake.

If Iris wants to get in via the garden shed, she likely wants to act quickly, as there is only so much time that she has before the party from Golden Fields is done making their way to and being greeted at the gates. She'll have to cut through the rose garden, but she knows the rose garden very very well (even better now than she did 10 minutes ago) and as a swan, she can make a much more direct route by cutting under the hedges. 

Unfortunately, by the time she gets there there is much more of a commotion than she expected: several guards in gold and red livery (Autumn Hills) as well as a number of them in Silver Lake's blue and silver are scattered around the area as something happens by the stables. There are too many people for her to not be noticed trying to sneak into the shed. 

When she makes her way closer to the stables, she can see that King Diamond of Autumn Hills is waiting slightly impatiently as his horse is finished being saddled. Apparently, according to the hubbub all around, he's preparing to take a short morning ride around the lake, along with a few other nobles from Silver Lake. 

How annoying of him. Has he considered instead staying in bed all day, perhaps taking a quick nap while he's at it so she can sneak into his rooms with a bucket of water and dump it over him?

Actually, that gives her an idea...

Okay. She should not do this. This was not part of her plan. If you make a plan and then ditch it ten minutes later, what you have is not a plan, it's an idle daydream.

But. But. She really really wants to see King Diamond fall in a nice juicy mud puddle. And there is one such puddle right over there. And it is so very conveniently close to the hedge that encircles the rose garden. And she could so very easily lurk in that hedge, and wait for him to ride past, and bite that nervous-looking horse's ass—that is, bite the rear end of King Diamond's nervous-looking horse—and get King Diamond dumped straight into said puddle. After which, she hopes, she can skedaddle before anyone in the vicinity has the presence of mind to stop her. She'll have to take the long way around through the docks, but she's going to have to do that anyway because the stables are likely to stay busy for a while.

She lurks in the hedge while she thinks about it. It's not like lurking in the hedge is committing to anything. This is a perfectly reasonable spot to lurk in the hedge even if she's just waiting for an opportunity to slip past and sneak around to the docks. (There are, perhaps, better spots to lurk in the hedge for that purpose, but this is a reasonable one.)

She doesn't have to wait too terribly long; the king seems to think this ride is a matter of some urgency (he seems quite anxious about it), and the groom is somewhat rushed into allowing him onto his horse despite some protests. Within a few minutes he's cantering towards the hedge where Iris is hidden, with the other nobles who planned to ride with him scrambling to mount their own horses and follow after. 

She might not have ended up following through on this strategically inadvisable whim, except that the horse sidesteps a little closer to the hedge right as it's passing by, and Iris actually does find that kind of startling, and she recalls that startled swans have been known to take off and make noise kind of in the middle of taking off and making some noise, and by that point she might as well snap at the horse's rear on her way past.

It's got to be the clumsiest flight a swan has ever made since earlier this morning when she was in the meadow, but it only has to carry her across the path and over the top of the garden shed and then she can land and waddle at top speed through another hedge and into the vegetable gardens, where she promptly assumes the casual air of a swan who has come by the vegetable gardens to beg for oats.

(Why do they feed the swans oats in the vegetable gardens, you might ask? Well, before they did that, the swans would occasionally discover that they can eat vegetables in the vegetable gardens, and this was very inconvenient for everyone except the swans. Now there's a big trough of water at one end of the garden and it's always somebody's job to keep half an eye out for swans and start scattering handfuls of oats in the water as soon as one shows up, thereby luring them in with the prospect of a comforting and familiar nibble of waterborne plant matter, and preventing them from getting ideas about trying the much more confusing and difficult task of eating herbs and vegetables growing out of the ground.)

Both the horse and its rider are rather startled by the sudden appearance of a swan taking off right in front of them, and have no sensible point of reference to be able to tell just how clumsily her flight attempt is. For a moment, it looks as though Diamond is going to maintain control of his horse, but then the swan makes a loud noise as she takes to the air, and the horse spooked immediately sheds his shocked rider and he lands neatly ass-first in the mud puddle with a satisfying squelch as the horse rears and gallops away for a hundred yards or so. 

Most of the servants and guardsmen are shocked by the sudden occurrence, though enough have the presence of mind to quickly rush to the embarrassed royal's aid. 

One of the nobles, however, who had just managed to mount his horse stares calculatingly at the swan, and hardly misses a beat before ordering a few blue-and-silver liveried guardsmen to follow as he spurs his horse on in pursuit of the troublesome swan. 

There are three directions she could've gone from the little space behind the shed (which a horse barely fits into in the first place). On the left, a narrow wooden gate leads into the vegetable gardens; even if you could physically fit a horse through it, which you can't, you still probably shouldn't. Straight ahead across a narrow footpath is the gate, still partly open, to the little meadow with the other swans clearly visible inside. On the right, another narrow wooden gate, equally impassable to horses, leads into a small ornamental flower garden. Both the wooden gates are too opaque to yield at a glance the answer to the question 'are there swans here?', and will have to be opened and scouted on foot.

(She could also have landed on that narrow footpath and turned to either side, parallel to the hedge enclosing the vegetable garden on the left or the ornamental garden on the right, but even a very determined swan does not waddle all that fast, and a quick look along the path suffices to prove she isn't on it. Not unless she went left and then teleported all the way to the lakeshore.)

The noble curses when he arrives with his guardsmen, then barks some quick orders to his two guardsmen, sending one each (after some small protests) to the flower garden and the small meadow. The noble himself heads through the wooden gate into the vegetable garden, where he should be able to recruit a few gardeners to help him catch a swan if there happens to be one that looks plausibly enough like the one who horribly attacked the poor king, and he can be richly rewarded for his service to the crown by bringing the misbehaving animal to delicious justice and well-roasted justice. Whichever crown wants to give him the favor, he isn't particularly choosy about who wants grant him the position and and power so he doesn't have to languish in mediocrity in this small court, hoping for proper recognition and the riches that come with it. 

There is indeed a swan in the vegetable garden, ambling up and down the rows. It's hard to say whether this particular swan is actually the one he's after. Seems awfully calm for a swan who was engaged in such exciting pursuits a mere half-minute ago.

A sharp-eyed gardener at the far end of the vegetable garden has already tossed a handful of oats into the trough and is making the encouraging chirping noises of someone hoping to attract a bird's attention before said bird discovers the secrets of vegetables. The swan, meanwhile, pauses to inspect a stalk of celery before deigning to heed the call.

The noble tears open the door and looks around and sees the swan. He doesn't mind terribly much that it might not be the same swan (indeed, who could say for certain?) -- it's traveling in the right direction and all the swans look basically the same. "You there!" he shouts to the gardeners. "Grab that swan!" 

"Uh, what? Why would we be doin' that?" asks one of them, slightly confused. "She's suppos'd to be here, and they're mighty dangerous when provoked, begging your pardon, good sir." He gives a small bow, and the rest of the gardeners also bow and nod their heads along with the first fellow. 

"He attacked the King of Autumn Hills, you fool!" the noble shouts. "He's going to want revenge on this bird, I'm sure of it." He is in fact not at all sure of it, but more than willing to take that chance, or more accurately encourage him to take revenge upon it if he needed to. 

"I'm... not so sure, good sir," the gardener replied. "The royal faml'y has us feed 'em, and as long as you don't get in their way, they's friendly enough. I'm sure 'twas just a..." 

"I don't have time for this, it's getting away!" Shouts the noble, as the swan calmly wanders in the direction of the water trough. "Five gold pieces to whoever brings me the damned bird, you hear! Ten if you can bring it to me alive!" 

The gardeners look at each other, shake their heads a little and start to half-heartedly approach the swan with their gardening tools, though the one who spoke back hangs far back, clearly not willing to get involved, but also having no desire to further anger the furious noble. 

The highly innocent swan ambles up to the trough, hops in, and munches on oats while paddling back and forth in the water.

The gardeners approach with rake and trowels, stealing nervous glances at each other as they approach. Clearly none of them particularly want to be the first to try and grab the swan, despite the promise of gold. 

Finally, though, one of the gardeners, the youngest one of the set, makes a grab for its neck as she paddles close to his end of the trough. 

She bites his hand, makes her terrifying hissing sound, and flaps awkwardly out of the trough toward the nearest hedge.

"Stop it, it's getting away, you idiot!" shouts the noble as the gardener cradles his slightly injured hand. He receives no further help. With an annoyed shout, he grabs a trowel from one of their hands and chases after the swan. 

This random baron has not actually done anything especially awful besides try to capture her, so she doesn't feel justified in breaking his arms. But he's really annoying, so when he catches up to her before she reaches the hedge, her first move is to bite him somewhere very indelicate.

The baron screams in shock and pain and falls over sideways, his hands between his legs. The gardeners very pointedly do not laugh at his plight, no matter how much they might want to (they may be hiding some smiles behind their hands) and go over to help him up (still very carefully not giggling, out loud anyways), as the swan escapes out through the hedge. 

Once she's through the hedge, it's a short glide down a gentle slope to reach the lake, where there are enough other swans around that she doubts anyone will be able to find her. She paddles toward the docks, trying to look like she isn't in a particular hurry while also hurrying as much as possible.

Is Reed watching this entrance too?

No, he's not, he's currently in the guest quarters where Nightingale and her parents are staying, having gotten there via a secret passage. Diamond has left for a morning constitutional, but Nightingale and Juniper are both there. 

Ostensibly, Reed reports to Juniper and Diamond, but over the years he's picked up who holds most of the power, and is directing his (somewhat edited) report to her. 

"...they're not going to be a problem," he says to Nightingale. "Iris is, elsewhere, and so you'll have the prince all to yourself. Both sets of parents have made sure all the things that could remind them of each other have been removed, and if you need a little bit of extra persuasion there's a potent love potion brewing in my study. It shouldn't be necessary. Hawk's parents report that without the additional distraction he has no problem being a good prince and doing what his parents deem necessary for the kingdom." 

"Good, good. Thank you, Reed. We will be sure you are well rewarded for your success."

"Oh, serving as the power behind Iris' throne will be sufficient reward," he says, "though I would be glad for any small tokens for my service that would help to solidify control over this kingdom once it is Iris' throne, as necessary." 

"Quite."