DALE, JOSHUA DONOVAN

CELEBRITY CLAIM Shawn Milke.

EYE COLOUR Gray.

HAIR COLOUR Jet black.

HEIGHT & WEIGHT 6'3"; 179 pounds.

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES Joshua's most noticeable features are the scars that mark his skin; the worst of which is a jagged mark on his right cheek. He also had a deep gash on his left palm that almost cost him the use of his hand, a slash mark across his stomach, and a deep wound just under his collarbone. All are badly healed and stand out against his light skin tone. He's also got slightly faded scars on his right side just below his ribs; when the gang attacked him at fifteen, one of their bats had nails embedded in the tip. It was these nails that caused the ragged scratches.

CLOTHING STYLE Casual and comfortable, but in designer names and brands. Sunglasses are very popular in his style, and he's almost never seen in anything besides jeans. If in a work environment he will dress professionally and adhere strictly to dress code. If he has to go formal, he is not afraid to. He actually quite likes suits, though he saves them for special occasions.

POSITIVE TRAITS

• INTELLIGENT. It's probably the defining trait of Joshua's character. He's booksmart and attentive when it comes to learning and seems to have a natural gift for it. This is also due to having good educational opportunities and taking full advantage of them.
  
• AMBITIOUS. Not in the cutthroat sense where he would knock down others to succeed—Joshua merely wants to go far in life and applies himself to anything he does in order to accomplish these goals.
  
• CONFIDENT. Though there are some exceptions to this, he's pretty pleased with himself. He also doesn't feel the need to brag about his accomplishments. He is not, however, modest. If you compliment him on his achievements he will indeed enjoy it.
  
• LOYAL. It all depends on who you are. If you manage to take down a few of the walls he has around himself and count yourself amongst his group of friends, chances are he would do anything for you. Friendship has one of the highest values in his life.
  
• INDEPENDENT. He can speak for himself, think for himself, support himself, ect. He never really feels the need to rely on other people for his own needs and desires. Asking for help is one of the hardest things for him, for he thinks that giving up is a weakness and should never be done.
  
• QUIET. Joshua doesn't like to draw too much attention to himself. Though he is smart, for example, he will not put this on constant display by answering all of the questions in a class. He also isn't a person who often yells, finding no need to raise his voice even in argument.
  
• STUDIOUS. Intelligence is nothing without application, and Joshua definitely applies himself to his studies with fervour. He spends most of his spare time in the library thanks to his near-lack of a social life and his grades reflect positively upon this.
  
• AMIABLE. He's relaxed in recent times and gotten used to the idea of having friends and befriending people. That isn't to say he's incredibly outgoing or a social butterfly but he's at least pleasant toward people who haven't given him reason not to be.
  
• SENSE OF HUMOUR. A lot of people don't realise how much Joshua enjoys making jokes until they get to know him better, but behind that stoic and serious exterior he really does like to have a good laugh every now and then.
  

NEGATIVE TRAITS

• ENTITLED. Growing up in a wealthy and privileged background, Joshua has learned to take many things for granted and gives little thought to how lucky he is. He won't often notice if he's being too careless with money, even in the presence of someone less fortunate than he is.
  
• SARCASTIC. He's got a biting tongue, this one. If you infuriate or annoy him he will definitely give you a taste of how snide and condescending he can become. He is sarcastic with friends, also, though it's usually in a more light-hearted way.
  
• JEALOUS. He tries not to get jealous, he really does, but if he catches someone looking at someone he's with, he will feel that rush. This is strictly in the sense of relationship-based jealousy. He's pretty well-off in terms of money and intelligence so he feels nothing there.
  
• STUBBORN. Admitting defeat, admitting he's wrong... it's difficult for Joshua. He'll insist that he's right even if he knows that he's wrong if only to defend his pride, at times.
  
• PROUD. Going hand in hand with the above, this can become a dangerous combination. He doesn't like to admit that he's wrong and he doesn't like to back down, which isn't always the best in some situations.
  
• TEMPERAMENTAL. He definitely doesn't have the most respectable control over his anger. In fact, he can barely control it at all. It's always advisable to watch what you say around him for he has a short fuse and the tiniest of things have been known to set it off.
  
• UNFORGIVING. If you cross him, if you wrong him in some way, don't expect that wrong to be forgiven. There are very rare occasions where he's forgiven people but they are just that—very rare. Joshua doesn't exactly believe in second chances.
  
• SECRETIVE. Josh doesn't talk about the things he considers personal, to the point where even some of his closest friends are in the dark about his past. It's safer to hide away and feel safe than to risk judgement or bringing up bad memories.
  
• INSENSITIVE. Sometimes Joshua forgets that not everyone sees things the same way that he does. Sometimes he won't be empathetic unless the person in question is a friend. He's gotten better with this over the years but it does display itself sometimes.
  

LIKES

• CATS. "I've always had at least one cat in my life. Now I have five and I certainly don't regret it."
  
• READING. "I'm an avid reader and I have my own personal library at home. It's mostly filled with non-fiction."
  
• MEDICINE. "Dad's job fascinated me as a kid and it still does now. I want to be a doctor some day."
  
• SUGAR. "So I like candy about as much as your average five year old. Sue me."
  
• PUZZLES. "There is something so god damn satisfying about figuring something out for the first time."
  
• QUIET. "I'm trying to concentrate, I can't have people yammering in my ear all the time."
  
• FIRE. "Must I explain this?"
  
• HIMSELF. "Can't a guy appreciate his own accomplishments?"
  
• SUNGLASSES. "Not so much to shield my eyes, they just look cool."
  
• HISTORY. "I like it so much that I took a second major just to study further."
  
• CARS. "I drive a Lamborghini Aventador. It's an LP700-4, white."
  
• TENNIS. "It's about the only sport I'm good at."
  
• CHESS. "I love a good, analytical game of chess. It's fun to trick people by thinking ahead."
  
• CHALLENGES. "Bring it on."
  
• WHISKEY. "I love the burn. Plus, it's hard for me to get drunk off beer any more."
  
• INDEPENDENCE. "I like to do things for myself."
  
• SPRING/RAIN. "Goodbye winter, and good riddance."
  
• HIKING. "It's something I did a lot as a kid. There's plenty of good trails around the Hollow."
  
• MONEY. "Greed? I wouldn't call it that... I grew up with money, why shouldn't I like it?"
  
• RESPONSIBILITY. "It feels good to take the lead."
  
• BEING TRUSTED. "I'm glad you know I've got your back."
  

DISLIKES

• DEEP WATER. "I... I can't swim, okay?"
  
• FAILURE. "I tried so hard... sucks to know it was all for nothing."
  
• BEING WRONG. "I am not mistaken! I'm just... I don't want to have this conversation."
  
• HIS TEMPER. "I don't want to be angry all the time but I can't control it."
  
• THE POLICE. "They tricked me into snitching. They almost had me killed."
  
• GANGS. "I've learned my lesson."
  
• DRUGS. "I'm quite fond of my brain cells, thank you."
  
• GUNS. "They kill too quickly. You don't mean to take a life, but then..."
  
• NEEDLES. "I can hold them, handle them, but I hate getting injections."
  
• THE UNKNOWN. "How can I fight what I can't see?"
  
• SPORTS. "I'm awful at them, apart from tennis. I was never that great in gym."
  
• BAD GRADES. "Anything less than the best I can do isn't good enough for me."
  
• OPENING UP. "My secrets are mine to keep."
  
• GROUP PROJECTS. "I don't exactly do well in a team. I want credit for my work and mine alone."
  
• MENTAL ILLNESS. "I don't want to see anyone become like Bryce. Ever."
  
• BEING IDLE. "I feel so useless when I'm sitting still and doing nothing. I need work, school, friends... something to keep me occupied."
  
• BOATS. "Can't we take the plane, instead?"
  
• BEING TRICKED. "There's a reason it took me so long to get used to the Waters."
  
• FIRE/THUNDER ALLIANCE. "I don't hate my element, no, but I hate the alliance it's in. I'm more comfortable with my new allies."
  
• BOREDOM. "Need... something... to do..."
  
• LARGE CROWDS. "I prefer a smaller group of friends."
  

STRENGTHS

• INTELLECT. He's got a natural gift for learning. His IQ is above average and he's got excellent memorization skills, making school an easy and enjoyable experience. He loves to challenge himself with learning new things and is very well-read/booksmart.
  
• LOYALTY. Once a friend, a friend for life. Joshua is intensely protective and loyal over the people that he cares about and though they are few, they are most definitely treasured. He would take a bullet for anyone that can consider themselves in the rank of a 'best friend'.
  
• AMBITION. He wants the best for himself. Passing his classes is not enough, he needs to be at the top of his class. Getting an average job is not enough, he needs something that will bring him the respect and credibility he desires. He is not too vicious about his ambitions but he knows what he wants and is determined to get it.
  
• PHYSICAL STRENGTH. At 6'3" and muscled, he can defend himself. He knows a bit about how to fight in terms of throwing a punch and bringing up his arm to block a hit but he is no trained fighter. Still, his strength and fitness is enough to make him at least decent at defending himself from someone of a similar untrained fighting skill and lesser stature/muscle.
  

WEAKNESSES

• TEMPERAMENTAL. Joshua has a short fuse and is rather unrelenting in his anger. His friends are not immune to his temper, though he is not violent toward them, and so he has lost several friendships through his explosive moods. There are times when the anger is justified and there are times, more often than he'd care to admit, that it is not.
  
• PROUD. He doesn't like to admit he's wrong. He hates people having some sort of upper-hand on him and he can't apologise to save his life unless it's to someone he cares about above all others (such as his sister or a significant other). Even then he might not sound as sincere as he wants to because it's difficult to swallow that pill.
  
• MISTRUSTING. Mostly due to the rather unfortunate experiences he's had with people in the past, it's hard to get close to him and earn his trust. Once he does trust you it's hard to lose that trust so long as you don't betray him but earning it takes a long time.
  
• ONE-TRACK MIND. He's an incredibly focused person. Incredibly. If he has something that he needs to get done then it will get done... at the expense of other things like eating and sleeping. It's not very healthy for him but he cannot help the fact that he tends to get too serious about things.
  
• WON'T QUIT/BACK DOWN. He'll keep going until he's forced to stop. It gets him into more trouble than it's often worth and he's wound up passed out and in the medical wing when he's pushed himself too hard in fights or passed out on the couch if he studies too long and neglects to rest.
  

FEARS

• DEEP WATER. It doesn’t extend into a fear of water in general, for Joshua can still take showers and actually quite likes the rain, but he has an intense fear of deep water, mainly for the idea of drowning in it.
  
• GUNS/GUNSHOTS. He has a somewhat rational fear of firearms, stemming from the fact that he watched someone get shot when he was fifteen. When faced with a gun, he immediately goes into a defensive sort of panic.
  
• FAILURE. It may sound strange or even pathetic, but the idea of failing at something when he puts everything into it terrifies Joshua. Most of this is due to his desire to please his father; if he doesn’t do the best, Donovan will never notice him, or so he thinks.
  

BEST MEMORY He can still remember with clarity when he got an award in middle school for his good grades and everyone was congratulating him. Even his father gave him a stiff sort of nod, which at the time was the best thing he could ask for. It was pride, albeit gruff pride, and it's what he's always aspired to get again.

WORST MEMORY Either one of the times where he was jumped by the gang—the memories horrify him. Looking at his scars often triggers these painful memories and makes him tense up.

LONG-TERM GOAL Become a doctor, like his father, and leave enough of an impression to be remembered.

MOTHER Patricia Lillian Dale (41), Member of Parliament (Fire)

FATHER Donovan Patrick Dale (42), Surgeon/Hospital Owner (Fire)

SIBLINGS Bryce Michael Dale (19), Student (Fire)
Annabel Lynne Dale (13), Student (Water)

OTHER Patrick Michael Dale (67), Paternal Grandfather (Fire)
Nell Doe Dale (20), Wife (Earth)

HISTORY

0 - 6 yrs

Born to a medical student and an aspiring politician who already held claim to the vast Dale family fortune, Joshua's life was off to a good start. He would grow up in a mansion with anything a child could ever want and he even got a younger brother to play with when he was almost two years old. Except Bryce and Joshua did not get along as well as any parents would hope. Their tempers and personalities clashed and they were constantly fighting, sometimes getting so physical that their parents would need to break them apart. Joshua was the quiet and intelligent child, always tagging after his parents and asking questions about every little thing. Bryce was louder, much more rambunctious, and he expected things to go his way at all times. As Josh was the older of the two, Bryce would point fingers and his parents would listen. It was Joshua who got yelled at and Josh who was punished for the fight. Despite the fact that his father was not afraid to lay a land on him if he did something wrong, Joshua still idolized Donovan from a young age and would ask a lot of questions about his work and try to figure out what some of the words in the complicated books he read meant.

Due to his intelligence and the ease with which he picked up on new things, his parents opted against sending him to kindergarten and instead home-schooled him for those two years, allowing him to learn at his own pace, which was significantly faster than the average kid his age. However, this also created an isolation from the outside world. The only other kid he interacted with was his brother and they did not get along, so when Joshua finally did start private school at the age of six years old, he was shy and awkward around the other children. Kids being kids, he was often poked fun at for his lack of friends. Small for his age and uncertain of how to change their opinions, he accepted this without much fight and kept his head down, throwing himself even more into academics. He excelled in school but his luck with the other kids his age only seemed to plummet further. It got to the point where some of the more cruel individuals would gang up on him and shove him around, call him names, but Joshua never told his teachers for fear that his father would find out and be disappointed in him. His pride kept his mouth closed and he only served to shut himself off from the idea of making friends for the entire year.

7 - 9 yrs

When he was seven years old, two very important things happened. One, his baby sister was born, and two, he met his first and only friend.

When his mother first announced to the family that she was pregnant, Joshua feared the worst. He thought that the constant fights with Bryce had led his parents to believe that he was a bad kid and that they wanted to replace him. Annabel was going to be a girl, after all, and maybe they thought a daughter would make a better child than him. His parents picked up on these fears and thus tried to give him an active role in caring for his little sister when she was born, usually with small things like 'watching' her while they answered the phone or the door. Insignificant as these things may have seemed, the constant reminders that he was a big brother and that he should protect his little sister worked wonders on Joshua. Meeting his friend was another positive experience. The boy was a couple of years younger than him but they hit it off well and Josh was glad that he finally had someone to talk to. Unfortunately, his friend could not hang out with him at school since they attended different ones and his life there did not much improve.

In fact, it only got worse, especially when his brother Bryce started attending his school. Bryce had been attending school since kindergarten and was Joshua's polar opposite when it came to social situations. He flourished in a crowd despite his issues with anger and made a lot of friends, further isolating Joshua from the crowd. Bryce was also a school bully, starting fights with other kids and sometimes even his own brother. The fighting and teasing did not stop at home. Eight years old, Joshua was studying by the lake in their backyard when Bryce and a couple of his friends from school decided to harass him. They managed to back him up onto the end of the dock and Bryce thought it would be funny to push him into the water, give him and his friends a laugh. Unfortunately for Joshua, he did not know how to swim and panicked, nearly drowning. Luckily his father had came out to call the boys in for dinner and witnessed the scene, managing to pull him out before any real damage could be done. There was enough psychological damage to last a lifetime, however, and Joshua fears deep water and drowning to this day. He has never learned how to swim.

If he had hoped that life would improve after this, he was wrong. His parents still blamed him for a lot of the fighting, for Joshua was stronger than Bryce and tended to do more damage in a fight even if Bryce was the one to hit first. What was worse, his grandmother on Donovan's side passed away and so Patrick, his grandfather, was around a lot more often. Patrick preferred Bryce over Joshua outright and would praise his involvement in sports and his large groups of friends. On the flip side he would pick on Joshua, making cruel remarks and suggestions against his masculinity. They might have been the bitter words of an alcoholic but they hurt Josh enough to have an impact, especially when his father tried to push him into getting into the same things that Bryce did. (Though Joshua did not realise it, Donovan's intentions were good—he only wanted to make sure that his son had friends). Josh was smart and not athletic, so when he joined the soccer team in third grade it did not do well for him. He didn't work well in a team, he was more of a lone wolf, and he ended up resigning to save his own dignity. He knew he was only doing these things to try and keep his father happy and that they were not what he wanted.

10 - 14 yrs

Tensions between Joshua and Donovan had always been high. Josh was a tough kid to raise, having a violent temper and quite the mouth on him, and Donovan's constant nudges in directions Joshua did not want to go with his life made him bitter. Built up to breaking point, he snapped at his father one night at ten years old and the man struck him hard, causing a mixture of hurt and hatred to well up in Joshua's chest. He decided that he was going to run away and caught the first bus leading who-the-hell-knew-where, which turned out to be the very heart of Maple Hollow's downtown area. He knew immediately that running had been a bad idea, for he was lost and he didn't know how to get home, not to mention it was after dark and all the bright lights and loud noises scared him. An older boy from a local street gang noticed the skittish boy and decided to take advantage, taking him under his wing and introducing him to the rest of 'the guys'. Josh instantly took an idolized liking to the group, fascinated by the idea of having such a tough and cool group of friends. The gang knew that he was young and vulnerable and they played this in their favour. He spent a couple hours with them, ignoring the phone calls from home, until at last he faced his father and asked to be picked up. But it would not be the last time he saw the gang. He parted from their company with a promise to come back, and return he did.

Several times over the next few years, actually, and before he knew it, he was 'one' of them. They convinced him to try alcohol, steal from convenience stores, help them harass people that they had an issue with. They gave him a switchblade to call his own, a weapon for his defence (which he still keeps). With their influence he became much more confident and independent. He also learned how to fight from them, how to stick up for himself. But it came at a rough price. He was brainwashed by their pretty words, did not realise that they did not care for him as much as he did them. He spent less and less time with his best friend and more and more time with the 'wrong' crowd, sneaking out during the night or making excuses during the day to hang out with the gang. He stole a bottle of liquor from his father's cabinet, got caught, and he swears to this day he'd never try it again for the punishment he recieved. He started to get into more and more fights at school, for when the bullies pushed, he now pushed back. He was nearly expelled for twisting another boy's arm so hard that it nearly broke. His parents were incredibly angry with him and he was grounded for the entire summer, much to his brother's delight. He continued to sneak out whenever possible to hang out with the gang, who were as much his idols as anyone could be.

Despite the negative influence from the gang, Joshua remained at the top of all his classes in school. Though his parents' money was the main factor in his being allowed to stay at school after the incident with the twisted arm, a part of it was the fact that many teachers took pity on him. They knew how smart he was and how he'd been pushed around, he'd so often been sent to the office as the victim and not the instigator, so he'd been allowed a second chance of sorts. Joshua even managed to skip the sixth grade and so graduated the eighth grade at age twelve instead of thirteen. Since his parents were elementals and wanted to know if he would exhibit signs of an ability as well before they sent him to a normal high school, he was allowed to take a year off. Sure enough, at age thirteen his ability of Fire presented itself. It was nothing special, just lighting the fireplace without having to actually get up and do so manually, but his parents were more than happy to sign him up for the Academy in the new year. He assimilated surprisingly well with his element, helped in part by the fact that he knew one of the girls and that Fire was such a loyal and close-knit group. He did not have many friends in them, but they were companions of a much more reliable sort than the gang had ever been for him. He started drifting apart from the gang over the next two or three years, and unfortunately for Joshua, they noticed.

15 - 18 yrs

He was fifteen when the gang asked him to accompany them to a fight with a rival gang member. It was over the summer after his tenth grade year and he could not think of any excuse to get out of it without raising alarms, so he went. It turned out to be a bad idea. What was meant to be a simple roughing up of the rival member turned deadly when one of the gang members pulled a gun. Joshua will never forget how loud the gunshot was, they'd never sounded so deafening in the movies, and before he could recover from the shock, the other members had bolted. He was lost and alone and tried to dash down another alleyway to find cover and hide from the police when the sirens started blaring but they found him and took him into the station. As a ruse, they threatened the fifteen year old with a promise of life in prison. ("Do they know what they do to you in prison, kid?") He was naive and ignorant of the fact that he could not be tried as an adult automatically and after hours of intense questioning eventually broke down into tears and told them all of what he knew about the gang. Their names, where they lived, who had pulled the trigger. He was let off thanks to his cooperation, but the gang were not going to be quite as kind. They tracked him down and jumped him, left him for dead, and if not for an older woman peering down the alley and calling an ambulance, death probably would have been the final result.

The worst part was having to tell his parents about the gang, seeing the disgust and disappointment as he admitted to his father that he'd been spending his days around a bunch of low-life street kids. His parents took pity on him in his battered and shaken-up state, though, and there was no further punishment except for a much stricter set of rules about his leaving the house to hang around his few (real) friends. The gang had instilled in him some serious trust issues and he had difficulty making new friends, instead sticking to the few that he already had. He told them nothing about the double-life he'd led for a while. His brother knew but his parents made Bryce swear not to run his mouth about it to anyone else. Tensions between Bryce and Joshua had not lifted, only getting worse when Joshua got more vicious and reclusive. Their fights escalated more quickly, happened more frequently. Bryce had always been angrier than most kids and had problems keeping control of himself, but it was not until he was fourteen and Josh sixteen that his true colours really came out. He snapped and stabbed his brother in the shoulder with a kitchen knife, resulting in Joshua's brief hospitalization and his brother's being committed to a mental asylum in Nova Scotia, where Patricia's family lived. He would not speak to his brother again for several years.

He continued on a rocky relationship path with his parents, having a falling out with Donovan and being kicked from the house when a girl accused him of knocking her up when he was eighteen. He lived on his own for a while and worked at a tattoo parlour in order to support himself and the girl in question, who, it would later turn out, had been lying to him. In the same year the gang caught up with him a second time and tried to finish what they'd first started, leaving him with the scars he now has. It was through the help of a friend that he managed to get out and at last he had enough evidence against the gang to put the last of them behind bars. He testified in court when the trial came around and moved back in with his parents when the misunderstandings had all been cleared up, finally ready to move on with his life and try to restore to it some sort of calm and normalcy.

19 - 20 yrs (present)

And so he did.

Though there were some rocky months when his then-girlfriend went on trial for murder and he fought with his parents again over his right to maintain the relationship, things eventually evened out and he was able to settle into a routine. His grades have miraculously remained steady thanks to a fierce dedication and he's pursuing his dream to become a doctor, a dream that he's had since he was eight years old and tagging behind his father's footsteps. In his junior year at the Academy he took the MCAT in order to qualify for medical school after his senior year was completed, as well as getting engaged to his girlfriend and moving into the mansion that his parents passed down to him. Annabel opted to move in with him and her Water elemental powers manifested, putting them at the same school. He took on the position of her legal guardian to make things easier and is now in his senior year at the Academy, double majoring in History and Biology.

YOUR NAME Taylor.

YOUR AGE Nineteen.

RP EXPERIENCE Five years.

HOW'D YOU FIND US? Created this site.

SECRET WORD Correct.

RP SAMPLE

The letter was long and rather extensive, coupling both a catch-up on his life thus far, as well as an apology that he hadn't shown her around the temple properly when she'd visited it and bumped into him. 'It's one of Lunara's prideful landmarks, and I failed to give you a proper tour,' he wrote, and a soft smile tugged at his lips. 'Allow me to make it up to you, perhaps?' He was headed to the temple anyway. Joshua was sick of this emptiness inside of him, inside of... what was it, exactly? His heart? His soul? He wasn't entirely sure. As the Prince of Lunara he didn't have much time for serious reflections on such matters, and the feeling had only been called to his attention when he'd discovered his gift along with serious feelings of abandonment. 'I will be taking a personal trip to the temple on horseback, but I wouldn't mind the company. Mention your name at the gate and the guards will surely let you in; I'll be hanging around the stables for a little while.' That way, should she show up, she'd be able to ride on a horse of her own and keep an easy pace with him. It would be a much quicker journey when not on foot.

With a chuckle, he added, 'Hermes says hello,' before attaching the letter to the falcon's leg and opening the window for it to fly off through the night.

His father approved the trip, with only a mild question regarding Joshua's business at the temple. "I just need to think on some things, sire," Joshua replied without missing a beat, having already been prepared to lie before he'd approached the King. And when he lied, he did it well. "It has been quite some time before I paid my respects to Luna, and though I am a prince—no, especially because of it—I feel it is something I must do." Donovan had regarded him heavily for a moment, and Josh had worried that he might pry further, but the older man had nodded. "Very well," he'd replied, "but travel on horseback so that you may return quickly." Donovan had grown used to the extra help of his son, and managing the Kingdom by himself was possible, but not the most entertaining prospect. "Of course, sire," Joshua had replied with a dip of his head, then left the castle and headed around back to where the stables were located.

His servant was waiting for him, having already been told of the trip (though he was similarly unaware of it's purposes). "Remember, when we stop at the edge of the forest, I'll have to go the rest of the way on foot," he said. "You take the horses and head to the inn on the edge of the wood, wait for my return. I shouldn't be longer than a few days." After all, he couldn't very well have his servant see what he was going to do when he got to the temple—especially not due to the last spectacle they'd had involving the 'dropped candle'. He had feelings that the kid still hadn't entirely forgiven Joshua for snarling so harshly at him when he hadn't done anything wrong, but the Prince wasn't about to apologise. After all, he was supposed to think that it had been the guy's fault. Admitting he knew the servant to be innocent meant letting him in on the fact that there was more than meet the eye. "If I do not return within the allotted time, then you may investigate," he added. "But only then. Understood?" The boy nodded, and Joshua leaned against the wall of the stable.

"I may have company, so you might want to prepare a third horse," he added with nonchalance, then settled down to wait.