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Victor Delgado was standing in the doorway of the treasury. He had promised himself, Elena, and his daughter, that he wouldn't do any more crime, he was a changed man and he wasn't going to make the same mistakes twice. But, well, just walking into the chamber wasn't technically a crime.
Especially since he wouldn't be breaking in, the door was wide open and there were people coming in and out of there all the time. With Elena's coronation next week the whole palace was in a state of controlled chaos and the security was more than questionable (something that Victor had to remind himself wasn't a good thing). Just today Armando, Francisco and a few other people responsible for planning the ceremony were taking out the most flashy jewelry.
Victor supposed he shouldn't be in this specific part of the castle at this specific time but since he wasn't officially forbidden, he wasn't breaking any law either. And it's not like he was going to take the opportunity of the treasury being left unattended to steal something. He was just going to take a look.
Slowly, Victor walked into the chamber, almost subconsciously balancing his steps so as not to activate any traps. When he was finally sure that the security system had been turned off, he quickened his pace, only glancing at the jewels as he passed them. But then one specific piece caught his eye and made him stop in the middle of the room.
The crown that Elena was supposed to be crowned with only a few days from now was beautifully displayed on it’s velvet cushion. It’s gems and pearls glistening in the afternoon sun, casting white and blue reflections on the gold rim and adornments turning them a warm brown color. And yet, something was not right…
He came closer and bent down to examine it better. It certainly looked regal and expensive - like a proper crown should, but when he looked through the topazes embedded in the crown, he noticed something inside the gem, like a blurry smudge inside the stone. A theory started to form into his head, a theory he’d very much like to be wrong. He instinctively reached to touch the crown but-
“Victor Delgado,” a loud voice echoed through the treasury and made him turn around. “What are you doing here?”
Standing in the doorway was Elena, with barely hidden anger on her face.
The ex-thief in question just blinked in surprise. “Well, I did come in to just have look at the jewels since the treasury was left open but then I noticed the crown and-”
“And what?” Elena tightened her grip on the scepter.
“Elena, I am not stealing anything!”
Elena didn’t look convinced in the slightest but anger in her eyes was now replaced with suspicion.
"And why should I believe you? As far as I know, last time you came into the palace you also 'weren't stealing anything.'"
"But I've changed! I told you, and I’m trying all the time to prove it!" Victor tried to explain himself. He promised his daughter a new life and he wasn’t going to let that life be destroyed by a crime he didn’t commit.
"And how is looming over my crown, in an empty treasury, proof that you've changed?!"
"The crown is fake." Victor explained flatly.
Elena froze. All anger on her face was exchanged for confusion. "The crown is what now?"
"It's fake and if you'd let me lift it, I'm sure it would also be too light for a crown this size." Victor continued.
Elena blinked, looked at the crown, then at Victor and then again at the crown. "How do you know that by just- okay I'm not sure if I want to know..."
"Elena, my mother made this crown, of course I'd know that by just looking." The hurt in his voice was prominent.
An uncomfortable silence fell onto the room. Victor gritted his teeth and turned away while Elena lowered her scepter and sheepishly rubbed her arm. She tried to break the silence but couldn't find the right way to do that.
“I’m sorry, sometimes I just forget that you haven’t always-”
“Been a thief?” He finished with bitterness in his voice.
“No! Just that you’ve also been part of the court. I mean, your father was the royal treasurer.”
“And my mother was the best goldsmith in Avalor City.” A soft smile lit up his face. "I used to spend most of my days in her workshop when I was a boy, that's how I know so much about jewelry. And that's also how I know this crown is fake." He added turning back to Elena. "Now if I may?"
He didn't wait for the princess's response and quickly took the crown. Elena watched him closely but didn’t stop him.
Victor raised the crown to his eyes and looked through it with the light from the windows. He turned it all around and looked at the bottom. Finally he examined the ornamental fleur-de-lis on the front as well as the smaller ones on the sides before he - causing Elena a minor heart attack - tossed it into the air.
Elena let out a terrified gasp but before she managed to yell at him, he caught it and put the crown back onto its place like nothing happened.
“Yup, it’s totally fake.”
Elena just stared at him with pure horror on her face. She was this close to yelling at him for almost damaging such a precious object but seeing how calm and sure of himself he was, she actually became curious.
She put her scepter back into its scabbard and carefully picked up the crown. It really was light. She lifted it to her eyes and tried to look through it like Victor did but didn’t notice anything unusual. She checked the ornaments and even tried to toss it like he had, but other than it being light, she couldn’t tell if that really was a counterfeit.
“I suppose you do have more… expertise than me. I’ll assign someone to check it with umm… the right tools! Just to be sure, you know.”
Victor let out an offended snort but didn’t say anything, so Elena continued her thought.
“But if this crown’s a fake, then what happened to the real one?”
Victor didn’t respond. Elena looked up at him, expecting him to be intentionally ignoring her or just to repeat again that he didn’t steal it. Instead, he just looked deep in thought, stroking his goatee and furrowing his brows. She also realized that he was humming something under his breath.
“Victor?” She finally got his attention. “Do you know where the real crown is?”
“I am not sure but… I may have an idea.” Seeing Elena’s encouraging look, he continued.
“There’s just this odd thing my mother said to me before they-” his voice broke a little. “Before my parents had to flee. She told me to find the true treasure in the song or- or something like that and well…”
He took a deep breath, steadying his voice.
“There’s this one song she liked to sing during work, it went something like this…”
"As sure as sun in the east
As Jaquins flock like starlings
As lively as sprouting greens
I love you so my darling...” He trailed off, not remembering what came next.
“...I'll dig up gold from the ground
I'll steal topaz skies of blue
I'll keep you always in my heart
To show how much I love you." Elena finished, nostalgic smiles slowly rising on their faces.
“I remember that one.” She said quietly.
They let the silence linger, each of them deep in their own memories and thoughts.
Elena was the first one to break it as she asked: “What does it have to do with the crown though?”
“I suppose it’s a riddle of some kind. We… weren’t on the best terms back then but… I think she wanted to tell me something.” He paused, “I’ve heard that many things disappeared during those days but I didn’t want to think about it. About any of...this.”
Elena saw the pain in his eyes and felt a pang of compassion in her heart. She felt like she should react somehow but before she got the chance to, Victor continued.
“But now it all seems to be coming together and this song… well it might be a clue, if my theory is correct.”
“Your theory?”
“That my parents hid the real crown somewhere and left this hastily made counterfeit instead, when they had to flee.”
“That... actually makes a lot of sense.” Elena said, nodding. “So now we just have to figure out how the song can lead us to the crown.”
Victor let out an agreeing hum and they both went quiet as they pondered. Elena looked intensively into the crown, repeating words of the song in her head.
“As sure as the sun in the east, as sure as the sun in the east…” She looked up to look at the sky, darkening behind the windows. The treasury was more or less in the centre of the palace so they were facing North. “As Jaquins flock… I know!” she exclaimed victoriously. “The ‘this and that’ tower! It’s facing East and it has a mural of jaquins on the ceiling!”
“That’s it!” Victor exclaimed.
They both rushed out of the treasury, a familiar excitement burning inside them as they felt again like kids who just started a fantastic new game.
They run through various corridors and staircases, jumping two steps at a time and sliding on carpets. When they finally got to the tower, Elena's youth showed it’s advantage as she outran him and ended up waiting for him at the top.
“I was first!” She gloated as he finally caught up to her. “So I guess that makes YOU El Segundo now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Victor huffed, catching his breath. “We’ll talk when you get over fifty.”
“You know, technically I am over fifty.”
“But only technically. Now let’s find that crown.”
Elena grinned and opened the door. A cluster of random objects and “things that are definitely going to be useful someday” almost poured out on them.
“...it might take a while.”
An hour later they sat down to take a break, each on the other side of the room and surrounded by giant stacks of thingamajigs and whatchamacallits.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Elena asked, flopping on a pile of old ball gowns.
“A crown. Big, gold, you’ll know it when you find it.” Victor responded from his own makeshift lounge chair.
“Very funny. What do you think the rest of the song means?”
“Well, the ‘gold from the ground’ and ‘topaz skies’ definitely refers to the crown. And I suppose ‘I’ll keep you in my heart’ means that it’s hidden inside of something.”
“So now we should probably look for ‘as lively as sprouting greens’. Maybe something to do with springtime, or gardening…?”
“Yeah, though it might not have a literal meaning. She did love riddles.”
“Like that treasure hunt she made for my twelfth birthday!” Elena exclaimed, finally catching the memory she’d been trying to remember for the past half an hour.
Victor chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it’s a little like that.”
They shared a laugh before they got up again and went back to their search. The spare room was full of stuff that could be interpreted in hundreds of ways. Elena checked all of the gardening gear she could find, looking through pockets of gardening aprons and checking a watering can she found. Meanwhile Victor decided to look through everything that was green. He turned all green clothes he found inside out, checked every green bottle and even dipped his hand into a can of green paint to make sure the crown wasn’t in there (he then secretly wiped it on some old gala suit and put it in a pile of cart pieces.)
Exactly as Elena was about to slam a flower pot on the ground, she heard a sudden yelp on the other side of the room.
“Everything's alright?”
“Yeah! I just pricked myself on this weird spring that has been driven into the floor.”
“Wait did you say,” Elena quickly got to his side of the room to see if she was right. “ A spring?”
“Yeah that’s exactly what I- oh.” He noticed Elena’s grin growing wider as he understood what was going on.
“It’s a-” Elena could barely hide her amusement. “It’s a literal spring.”
They made eye contact and Elena’s self-control failed and she bursted with laughter. Victor also laughed, both at the pun itself and at how long it took him to get it.
When they finally calmed down, Victor grabbed the spring and tried to pull it out, to see if it had any more clues on it. But to his surprise, the whole plank came out from the floor with it. He pushed it away and reached into the hole. Inside it he found a big wooden box, so big they actually had to remove some more planks to take it out without risk of damaging the contents. Carefully he passed it to Elena and put the planks back in its place.
“It has a keyhole on the side.” Elena said after examining the box. “It’s locked though”
“That won’t be a problem.”
Victor took the box from her and took out two wires from his pocket.
“What?” He asked, seeing Elena’s raised eyebrows. “I’m doing this for the greater good.”
Elena laughed and he proceeded to pick the lock open. Finally with a quiet “click” the box unlocked. They both held their breaths. Victor passed the box to the princess.
“I think you should open it.”
Elena smiled and took the box. Exhaling slowly, she opened it and…
A silent "wow" escaped her lips. The crown, even in this dusty room, wrapped in an old rag, was the most beautiful piece of jewelry she had ever seen. She wondered how she could ever take the counterfeit as the real thing. After the first impression faded a little, Elena noticed something white under the crown.
"What's that?" She asked gently, pulling it out.
It was an old envelope, already yellowed a little by the time. She turned it over and read the name of it’s intended recipient: "Victor Delgado.''
She gasped quietly and put her hand on his arm. "Victor?"
He finally looked away from the crown and she noticed there were tears in his eyes.
"I think that's for you..."
He took the envelope and blinked quickly to chase the tears off of his eyes. He was about to tear it open but in the last second stopped. He moved his thumb across the old ink. He let out a shaky sigh and put the envelope into an inner pocket of his jacket.
“Okay, let’s put it back where it belongs.” Victor decided, closing the box.
Elena nodded and handed it to him. They didn’t run on their way back to the treasury. They also didn’t talk - Elena could see that Victor had a lot on his mind and didn’t want to interrupt him for some random smalltalk.
They reached the treasury just as a guard was locking the door. Elena quickened her pace and called out to him.
“Open the door, Felipe! We have an important artifact that has to be locked in there.”
Felipe looked a little surprised but followed the order, eyeing curiously the box Victor was holding.
It was dark inside the treasury, since the sun had set a few hours ago already and there was no need to keep the light on if the chamber was to be locked for the night. Elena didn’t bother with lighting a lamp either and just used her scepter to light their way. Victor whistled in admiration. Now that it wasn’t aimed at him, he was actually quite amazed by the princess’s magic scepter.
They stopped at the center of the room, where the fake crown was sitting on a velvet cushion, shining dimly in the magical light. Elena took it away while Victor set the box on the ground and took out the real one.
Suddenly the whole room lit up.
Each crystal not only reflected the light but magnified it, each one shining like it had magic of its own. The pearls turned a cold shade of silver and blue, really resembling the deep sea they have been taken from. And the rainbow reflections they cast on everything around them, the gems, their faces and the golden ornaments. Fleur-de-lis adorning the crown on all sides turned the most deep and warm shade of honey yellow they’ve ever seen. Its brightness and softness contrasting the gems and making for not just a beautiful piece of jewelry but a whole feast for the eyes.
They both held their breath in adoration. Victor raised the crown even higher, letting the light pass through it and reflect on the whole room, before he put it down on its rightful place, storing the fake one in a drawer nearby. Elena dimmed the glow of the scepter, slowly turned back, and they left the chamber.
They kept silent as they walked through the halls of the quiet palace. They finally stopped as they reached the main staircase where they were to split up - Elena will go to her royal chambers and he could go to the guest room that he had been assigned.
They finally looked up at each other and Elena smiled. “Thank you for finding the crown Victor. And well, for recognizing the old one as fake at all. I probably would have never realized that without you.”
“Thank you for trusting me.” He responded, returning the smile.
They stayed in the comfortable silence for a short while before Elena yawned and said “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight your highness,” he responded but turned to the main exit instead of his chambers. “I have someone I have to thank as well.”
Elena turned to look at him as he was leaving and noticed him take a few marigolds from a pot of flowers before he headed towards the city.