Chapter Text
After a long eventful day, the sun was setting over the kingdom of Cariza. Inside its palace, Victor Delgado walked through its halls towards the dining room, taking in the architecture as he went along. He thought that it wasn't quite as nice as Avalor Palace, but still, a palace is a palace.
One thing was for sure, the grounds around it were definitely bigger than in Avalor. After he'd helped his wife and daughter infiltrate the palace and come up with the words for the letter to send to Princess Elena, he had been sent to check the perimeter for any guards. Meanwhile Ash and Carla would send all the palace staff back to their homes.
It had been pretty tiring doing the search alone, even though it turned out there weren't any guards left to find. On the bright side, he was able to find a nice fruit tree during his search. Now he was just looking forward to making some dinner with his daughter. It wasn't every day that they got to cook in a fully stocked palace kitchen! He reached the dining room door and opened it to find Ash and Carla were already sitting down at the table waiting for him.
“Look what I found!” He triumphantly held up the two fruits he was carrying. “There's a huge papaya tree outside and all the fruits are ripe! So I was thinking we could use these for dinner tonight. Maybe as part of a fruit salad, or we could stir fry it, or we could just cut it up and use it as dessert...”
Carla looked at him in surprise. “But the Royal Chef is already making dinner for us.”
“Chef? But I thought you and your mother had already dismissed all the servants!” he exclaimed. Inside his head he added: “And I thought we were going to make dinner together.”
“Oh don't worry dear, it's much better this way.” Replied Ash. “It has been such a busy day and we're all so tired now. I thought it would be better to get some professional food cooked for us, so we would have a bit of time to relax.”
“But cooking is relaxing,” he thought. He forced a smile to cover up his disappointment. “Well I guess we can just have this as an appetizer while we wait for the main course.”
“Thank goodness! Dinner is taking forever to cook and I'm starving!” His daughter exclaimed.
“All right, I just need to find a knife then I can cut these up for all of us.” Victor looked around the room and saw a cabinet against the wall filled with dishes and silverware, and probably a few knives as well. He walked to the cabinet. Right as he reached out towards it, the door suddenly swung open, nearly hitting him before he leaped out of the way.
“Oops, sooo sorry dear, just opening it for you in case it was locked.” Ash said as she batted her eyes innocently.
He clenched his teeth “It's perfectly fine. You did miss me after all, mi amor.”
She scowled at him then looked at the cupboard “You know what, I have an even better idea of what we can do with these papayas. Levaluq !” Using the spell she moved three crystal glasses through the air and onto the table in front of her. “I know a spell that can turn these fruits into juice in no time.”
Carla looked intrigued. “Really? That sounds delicious!”
Ash smirked, “It will be.” She levitated one of the papayas over a glass “Aplazumo!" She shouted as the burst of white light lifted up the fruit and squashed it on all sides. After enough pressure the skin of the fruit broke open and the juice began to pour out. It flowed down the sides of the fruit and was funneled down into the glass without spilling any onto the table.
When the first glass was full she filled the second one in the same way. She moved both glasses to her and her daughter. Then she took what was left of the fruit and dumped it in the third glass in front of Victor.
“Wow, it looks...delicious.” Victor said trying to sound sincere, but it still came off as sarcastic.
“Oh I'm so sorry. There wasn't quite enough juice left in the fruit to give you a glass.” Ash said “I could use the second fruit if you wanted. I would just love to give you a glass as well.” As she said it, she hid her sarcasm better than he had.
“No thanks, I'm fine.” He replied, waving his hand dismissively. At this point it seemed like it wouldn't be worth the trouble.
Carla looked a bit confused at what she’d just witnessed. But instead of asking about it she took a sip of her drink and decided to change the subject. “So Papá, did you see any more guards when you were out there?”
“No,” he replied. “It seems when we recalled the guards earlier we really did get all of them. Everyone we sent away has already gone back to their homes.”
“Well of course! It's not like they were going to defy the king's orders.” said Ash smugly before taking a large sip of her juice.
“And is that how you convinced this chef to cook for us?” Questioned Victor.
Carla spoke up, “Actually, the chef realized that mamá was in control of him. But she still agreed to cook for us. In fact, she insisted on it!"
“She did!?” Victor exclaimed.
“Yeah!” she replied proudly “I guess she could just see that it was time to join the winning side!”
“It's certainly the best option. Although, really, it's the only option.” Added Ash as she finished the last of her juice.
“Hmm, I guess you're right.” Replied Victor, with doubt in his voice.
That's when the door to the kitchen opened, and the cook entered with the three plates of food in her hands. “Dinner's ready!”
“Finally!” Yelled Carla. “Oh wow, the food looks so good!”
It really did look good. Dinner was three plates of professionally done, perfectly seasoned meat and vegetables. The cook was wearing oven mitts on her hands as she carried them in. She placed a plate in front of each of the Delgados.
When Victor received his, he cautiously touched the plate with the back of his hand to test if it was too hot to eat, he didn't want to risk burning his mouth. But to his surprise it didn't feel very hot at all. But then why would the cook need oven mitts now? Especially when she was carrying three plates at once. It would have been much easier just to carry them with her bare hands. Unless she had another reason for not wanting to touch the plates….
With this suspicion in his mind, he leaned over and smelled the food as hard as he could. There were the scents of the different spices and vegetables, but he could detect something else. Something sinister lurking beneath those different fragrances.
He looked to his side to see Carla lift a fork full of food to her mouth. Victor quickly grabbed her hand to stop her from eating it. His wife noticed and put down her cutlery as well.
“What's wrong? I just want to eat!” she whined.
“The food, it's been poisoned.”
Carla gasped and pushed the food away from herself.
The chef gasped as well, “What no it hasn't! It's perfectly fine! I would never do something like that.” She insisted.
Ash nodded, “Of course you would never. You work for the Royal Family, always cooking meals fit for the highest of society. You never do something so ghastly as to poison someone.”
“Obviously!”
Ash stood up. “And besides, why would you do that to a meal that you worked so long and hard on that just looks so perfect? A meal that anyone would just immediately devour without a second thought?”
“Exactly.”
The lips on the malvago’s face curled up into a smile, but not a happy one. “This meal looks so good in fact, that I think someone else deserves to have the first bite.” She tapped her tamborita and softly whispered something into it.
After a moment of quiet, the dining room door was pushed open and in trudged King Joaquín. His face was vacant of all emotion. His eyes stared off into nothing. His mind was buried under layers of endless fog.
The chef’s expression changed when she saw him come in, she became very tense and clenched her fist
Ash’s smile grew wider when she saw this. She turned back towards the king. “Look at this, your majesty. It's such a wonderful meal! Come, sit down.” she said as she pulled out her chair for him.
He did exactly as she told him. He would not have been able to do anything else thanks to her mind control spell.
“Pick up that fork and take a bite. I insist.”
His hand limply grasped the fork and lifted it up towards his face. Right before it got to his mouth the cook suddenly sprung up and grabbed the fork and plate right out of his hands.
“You know what, I don't think this supper is up to my usual standards. Here, I'll just take these back to the kitchen and make you all something else.”
“No you won't. Bilicú! ” Ash hit her tamborita and a burst of white light shot out to immobilize the chef. Then she got up close and made a fake pouting expression. “Now poisoning our food wasn't a very nice thing to do, now was it?”
Her act broke “Look who's talking, you just took over our castle and now you're using our king as a puppet! You're a monster! As soon as the royal wizard gets back you'll all be sorry!”
“Really? Last time I heard, she was off visiting Norberg and wasn't due back for another week.”
The chef gave her a defiant look “Well it doesn't matter; you’ll all still lose! No matter how long it takes! I'll make sure of it!”
Ash just walked back to the table and picked up the second papaya. With a word and a wave of her tamborita, she had filled up her glass once again. She picked it up and walked back towards the chef, watching the liquid move inside it as she went.
“You know, this spell is great for juicing papayas. But it can work on much bigger things as well.” She looked the chef dead in the eye. “Like. Your. Head.”
The chef winced and closed her eyes, expecting the worst,
After a long moment, Ash turned back towards the table. “Carla, go lock the chef in the servants quarters.”
Carla had been mesmerized by the scene but snapped out of it when she heard her name. “Okay Mamá! Of course, right away!” Carla picked up her tamborita and yelled: “Emenari!” A violet light burst forth from it and wrapped around the chef’s legs. She tried to struggle out of it, but with a bit of extra effort, Carla maintained the spell and began to escort her from the room.
Victor stood up and shouted to his daughter right before she went out: “After you're finished, come back and help me prepare dinner.”
“Alright papá!” She replied as she left.
The door closed, leaving Ash and Victor there alone. Well not completely alone, King Joaquín was still there, but only physically. Victor tried to ignore him. The thought of his wife (who seemed to have lost all affection for him) knowing such a powerful mind control spell made him very uneasy, to say the least. So he tried to take his mind off it just thinking about what he should cook. He looked over at the squished papayas and thought about how he could still use them for certain dishes. Maybe for some kind of puree, or if there was any coconut then possibly a-
“Are you just going to sit here doing nothing?” Ash sneered. “Or are you maybe going to be useful and clean up a bit before you actually start cooking?”
“I was just about to.” Victor responded dryly as he stood up and took a napkin from the table. He used the napkin to cover his hand as he picked up the plate in front of him. Better safe than sorry.
Ash just rolled her eyes and used her magic to lift up the other two plates instead.
He felt a bit embarrassed for not thinking of that himself. He reluctantly put back down his plate and used his own magic to lift it.
There was a bin for trash in the kitchen so both of them dumped the poisoned food into it. After that Ash picked up a washcloth and began to clean the counter, using magic to move the cloth around. Victor went to the cupboard and sorted through the different fruits and vegetables.
He thought about what could have happened to them from eating the poison. They probably wouldn't have died, but they definitely would’ve been rendered defenseless by the poison's effects. And if he hadn't stepped in, that's how they'd be now. Ash was just overconfident. Mind-controlling people to get them to do what you want is one thing. But she thought that she was threatening enough to immediately receive obedience from someone she didn't know at all! He sighed to himself. Admittedly her overconfidence was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place, but now... it was just becoming a hazard more than anything else.
He realized she might have missed something else important, so he decided to double-check. “Are you sure the Royal wizard will be gone the rest of the week?” He asked. “We don't want her taking us by surprise.”
“Of course I'm sure! Just take a look at this palace schedule I found.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to him “It says clear as day that she's not due back until the 12th!
Victor looked and saw it was true, but he saw something else that was worrying. “You're right, but it also says that the Queen and Princess will be returning to the palace tomorrow!”
“What? You must have read it wrong! They aren't coming back for another three days!”
“Really? Because it says they're coming back on the 6th, which is tomorrow.”
“That's an 8!”
“No see, the 8 is after the 7, right there.” He pointed to it.
She ripped the schedule out of his hands and read it again. Realizing her mistake Ash fumed “Well it's not my fault whoever wrote this had such illegible handwriting!”
“Well what are we going to do about it? If they see the King, they'll know he's being mind-controlled. And if they see me and Carla, they’ll know we are wanted criminals.”
“And of course they won't know who I am, because I'm not as sloppy as you are when it comes to crime.”
Victor was about to argue, but realized there'd be no point in it. He sighed “Well I say should we just send them some kind of letter telling them to go away for a few more days.”
“Oh sure, if you want to waste an opportunity like this.” said Ash “We can use them as practice for tricking royalty, so when Princess Elena arrives we will be more than prepared!” she paused for a moment. “Of course, I'm already more than prepared, I just want to make sure that you won't mess it up!”
“I wouldn't mess it up anyway!”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely sure!” He replied but that's when he heard a door open behind him and his daughter walking into the room.
“Absolutely sure that you're the most wonderful wife in the entire world!♡” He added, putting on his familiar lovey dovey husband act.
“Thank you, but only because I'm married to the most wonderful husband in the entire world!♡” she said, doing likewise.
Carla giggled “And does that make me the most wonderful daughter in the world?”
“Yes absolutely!” They both said with a bit of genuine sincerity.
“Great! Now let's make the most wonderful supper in the world! Or at least one that's not full of poison.”
Victor nodded. “Of course, but first there's something we have to tell you. There's been a bit of a change in schedule for tomorrow...:”