Alice didn’t respond when the Jester spoke to her, and merely watched as Melissa seemed to lose all sense of self right before her eyes.

She was petrified, frozen in place by the sheer terror of it all. In her life, Alice had seen some things that would make a grown man cry. She’d seen people beheaded, and people with open sores all over, and recently-born babies (which wasn’t as magical as some midwives said). But watching this girl rapidly unraveling.

It was too much. Alice waved the guards away, and they left with the door closing behind them.

And then something novel happened.

The princess began to cry, to weep, for her captive’s lost faith in everything. She knelt down as Melissa grabbed at her ankle and put a hand on each of the other girl’s cheeks, and angled her face so she had little option but to look at her. Though it was disgraceful to weep in front of people, especially prisoners, but she couldn’t help it.
“It’s not time to kill you, Melissa. Life’s not pointless and I won’t kill you. Now more than ever I know that you are a good person, just like the other people I’ve sworn to protect. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” her voice shook as she wiped her tears and forced a smile. “Okay? Shh. Don’t cry. We’ll work it out. You’ll see. It’ll be okay.”

She sat down near the white-haired girl and petted her softly, as any competent mother would have done. She forced her urge to sob back, insisting on at least partially soothing Melissa first. She wouldn’t have her dying now.

That was the problem with Alice’s plan from the get go, as Arthur had tried to explain to her. As soon as she first spoke with the prisoner, she was allowing herself to see her not as a brutal killer, but as a human, and that was not something easily revoked.

"It'll be alright. You'll see. I'll make sure no harm comes to you."

It was optimism to say the least, but the princess had every intention of coming through. Whether or not it was possible was another question, but if Alice knew anything at all, it was that her words had a lot of weight, and if she really worked hard at something and was smart about it, she could do it. Well, up until then...