The way he held himself, the way he spoke, the way he took it all in stride—like a monarch surveying a new realm ripe for conquest. It was a warning sign, more than the way we connected ever was. I should have known he would destroy us all the moment I saw that, and yet all I could fathom was his strength, his power, his potential. I was blinded by my desire, and though it shames me, I must admit in retrospect that I wholeheartedly regret it not a whit.

  Arthur stared down at the woman beneath him for several long moments after she spoke. His eyes, which had already told him the truth of her words, probed more sharply across her features to fully assess what it was she was saying.

  Beautiful features. Jade green eyes. Graecian skin.

  Tall, proud, female, warrior.

  Arthur pulled the blade back from Circe Leos’ neck with muscle memory-fueled precision and promptly tossed it over to Endymion, who caught it with a faint whine of his armor’s servos and said nothing.

  His mind was racing while he regarded the heiress, and worked over a mix of shock, disbelief, bewilderment, confusion, and most of all a general sense of absolute incandescent rage.

  His eyes narrowed while he stared at her, and she stared at him, and something passed between them.

  A sense of… rightness that he couldn’t instantly place.

  Until his memories as Arthur Zacaris flashed to the fore.

  Resonance.

  He had suppressed unnecessary thoughts during the fight, but with the immediate danger gone, the realization crashed into him like a freight train. He had been resonating with her, with a degree of ease that even Zacaris had rarely encountered.

  The odds of that seemed ludicrously small.

  Yet somehow, he knew, it was true.

  “Well?” Circe asked in a strangely breathless voice.

  “What?” He asked distractedly while staring down at her.

  “Are you going to get off of me?”

  Arthur stared at her uncomprehendingly for a long moment, and then realized belatedly that he was still on top of her, with his legs straddling her hips, and her wrists gripped in his far stronger left hand.

  A moment of processing followed while Arthur’s brain attempted to work through why he would let go of someone that attempted to kill him, and then a quiet cough from Perseus stole his attention instead.

  “You really shouldn’t be holding the heiress of a Graecian Great House captive, Arthur. It’s somewhat ill-advised given you’re to be her family’s Hetairoi.”

  “She tried to kill me, Perseus,” he growled without taking his eyes off of Circe. “And besides, if it’s such an issue, why didn’t you just tackle me off of her?”

  “Seemed inappropriate, given she ordered everyone away and said to ‘ignore any disturbances’.”

  “She—?”

  “We didn’t find out until we came to check in on you,” Perseus said apologetically. “And besides, she didn’t appear to be in much distress when we entered—and it was pretty clear who attacked who,” he shrugged before continuing. “Still, you should have been a little less forceful, perhaps.”

  “She tried to kill me!” he exclaimed irritably.

  “False edge,” Endymion grunted while looking at the xiphos, “won’t cut flesh, but it will cut everything else. We use them for training. Tricky bit of technology, this.”

  Arthur turned to stare at Endymion blankly for a moment, and then with another wordless growl he released Circe’s wrists and smoothly pushed himself to his feet. He gained distance when he did, while keeping his eyes once again fixed on the onyx-and-gold haired femme fatale.

  He noticed her gaze shift from his eyes to elsewhere, and saw her blush deepen.

  Arthur frowned at her in momentary confusion, and then flicked a glance downward.

  The towel and hastily buckled belt had fallen off.

  He was completely naked.

  Arthur took several moments to parse this development, and then sighed in irritation.

  He had long ago divested himself of embarrassment over nudity. The amount of time he’d spent barely clad or naked with peers of both genders while training for war on Albion had almost completely inoculated Zacaris against any sense of shame or embarrassment, and Magellan had never had that shame put back into place. He had often forgotten, in fact, that many others—especially among higher social echelons—still adhered to a more rigid sense of conservative propriety.

  An impatient frown took hold of Arthur’s lips and he studiously ignored the staring heiress and decidedly silent Kidemónes. Instead he walked purposefully toward the partially destroyed cupboard and retrieved a black chiton, a scarlet himation, some black silk briefs, and a pair of knee-high sandals.

  Still he said nothing while he started laying the clothes out on the bed, and attempting to collect his thoughts.

  Circe Leos.

  He had been attacked, apparently falsely attacked, by Circe fucking Leos.

  His soon-to-be potential liege-lord’s only living heir.

  Arthur’s temper danced between a bonfire and a frosty seethe while he habitually laid the clothes out, one after the other, on the ruined doona of the four-poster king size. His hands were shaking slightly, he noticed, from the after-effects of the adrenaline—and only his personal sense of control stopped him from snarling in renewed fury at seeing it.

  He felt completely out of sorts, and more than that, was assaulted by the resonance he felt with Circe.

  The moment he’d recognized it for what it was, it was like he’d opened the shutters to the sun and they could never be closed again. She was simply there. He was aware of her, passively, in a way he would never be able to explain to anyone that wasn’t experiencing the same thing. It wasn’t as thought their minds were connected or as if he could read her thoughts.

  It was something both far more and far less intimate.

  Circe Leos was, within a certain proximity, both a beacon of life and a deluge of instinctive responses. He could tell where she would move before she did, feel the intentions of her actions before she made them, and even pinpoint her exact location blindfolded. It was not something he did with perfect awareness, but more akin to a gut feeling.

  It was like knowledge whose veracity he could never quite properly explain.

  Even worse, Circe Leos had the highest resonance he’d ever experienced.

  What that even meant he wasn’t sure. Somehow, he doubted it would end well.

  At least after a hundred or so meters, the resonance would fade again.

  Even when it did, however, it would still exist in the back of his mind like the embers of a fire that remembered what it meant to burn. That was the true cruelty and power of resonance between psions: it never, ever faded. It would last until one of the pair was dead, and even that the other would feel the moment it happened.

  Like a miniscule part of themselves had died.

  The very notion of it, he knew, was repulsive and invasive to Arthur Zacaris.

  Arthur Magellan, though, had possessed no direct experience with resonance.

  Arthur as he was at that moment, however, didn’t know what to feel. The Inquisitor’s latest memory thread had seemed purposefully timed to awaken when he experienced his first strong bout of resonance, and there was almost something uncanny about the fact he had done so with Circe Leos.

  It was, he reflected, almost too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.

  Arthur reached out to take the briefs in hand, and pulled them on at the same time as Circe’s voice cut through the silence.

  “I wish to speak to Ser Magellan alone,” she announced firmly.

  “My lady, I am not certain that would be—”

  “It will be fine, Ser Kidemónas,” Circe declared with the tone of a woman who expected to be obeyed, “wait just outside the doors if you must, but I will have privacy for what comes next.”

  Arthur looked over toward the pair of stoic, elite royal guards of the Vasilikós Kidemónes—and almost snorted in amusement when the pair bowed, gave him shallow nods, and retreated outside of the doors with a quiet thud of her closing.

  “Pushovers…” he muttered while turning back to his clothes.

  Shoes on marble pulled his attention, and Arthur turned to see Circe Leos step up beside him.

  “We should talk,” she said in a tone tense with suppressed emotion.

  “Should we?” he asked blithely. “In that case, should I prepare for you to try to subdue me with your fists again?”

  “You are being needlessly caustic,” she huffed.

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  “You tried to break my skull with a sword!” he shot back.

  “Ser! Open your eyes!” she exclaimed while stepping forward and into his personal space to glare up at him. “Do you have any idea what manner of situation you’ve walked into?” Circe demanded with a narrowing of her jade eyes. “Do you even understand how dire things are for House Leos? Do you understand how close our enemies are to the proverbial gates?”

  Arthur glared at her in response, and she continued without cessation.

  “It is only luck, Ser; luck, my talents for battle, and an inordinately strong-willed father that have kept me from the marriage bed of one of those vipers seeking to prey upon our weakness!” she said angrily. “A weakness they created, mind you!”

  “And that explains your assault on me, how?” he asked stubbornly.

  “Because you may be a very big issue for me, Ser!”

  “I am failing to see how I could be an issue for you, Lady Leos,” Arthur said flatly.

  “You could be an issue, Ser, because you seemingly belong to no one and fight for nothing,” Circe explained in a fiery tone, “you are a mercenary. You sell yourself to the highest bidder, and do whatever they ask of you. You have no home among us, you have no roots, you have nothing that motivates you to persevere—even when everything goes against you.”

  Arthur narrowed his eyes at her presumption, but Circe wasn’t done.

  “I have seen mercenaries before, Ser! I have seen them make promises of aid and service to my father, only to renege when our enemies band together to intimidate them with force and send them running, or when that fails; offer them a fee so extortionately large, we cannot pay a matching one!”

  Her expression tightened while she spoke, and Arthur vaguely sensed more than just anger; he sensed a clear pattern of feeling betrayed.

  “Not simply out of honor do we not pay,” she continued fiercely, “which is a factor! But because we simply cannot afford to engage in that manner of escalating bidding war with regularity, and still provide the quality of care our people deserve.”

  Circe’s words were firmly resolved when she said that, Arthur noted.

  “Every mercenary we retained would be a dent to our coffers, which while immense, are not endless.”

  “And you divert much of those funds toward the development of Pallikári,” Arthur surmised from her earlier words, “which impacts their quality of life.”

  “Exactly!” Circe agreed fiercely. “We cannot even consider not investing actively in those that rely on us to invest in them, for their futures. We have a duty to our people we cannot set aside!”

  Arthur finally gave up on his clothing and turned fully to face the heiress, whom he quietly noted had already attained the signs of rapid healing on her cut lip. If his rough assumptions were correct, the superficial wound would likely have vanished in a scant few hours.

  “If your family is destroyed, Lady Leos, their lives will fall to ruin regardless,” he pointed out with unveiled skepticism.

  “Yes,” she agreed without missing a beat, “but that does not mean they should suffer for our weakness. If we are no longer here, then their future deprivation will stain the honor of those who claim our lands after the fact—but House Leos is the owner and defender of these lands here and now,” she declared with an earnest conviction that Arthur couldn’t help but be intrigued by.

  So he listened, despite the rage still burning within him, and barely noticed it cooling.

  “These people look to us for safety, and we can no more betray that than we could not call ourselves Graecians! It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak, and it is the duty of a Noble to ensure the prosperity of their charges.”

  Circe’s green stare was fierce when she finished, and her cheeks were flushed.

  She was passionate, if nothing else. Passionate, and dogged to a fault perhaps.

  “Noblesse oblige,” Arthur said with a raised eyebrow. “Some would call that a naive, idealistic, or even antiquated outlook.”

  “Look around you, Ser.” Circe said fiercely. “Our whole civilization is built on naivete, idealism, and antiquated notions. The colonists that first landed on Hellas made the choice to build a society that reflected Greece-on-Terra in antiquity, and did so with the knowledge it was both optimistic and patently absurd in the cosmic era! We are well aware of how unlikely our current prosperity was, especially within this age of bipedal war machines and interstellar warships!”

  Well, someone had to say it he supposed.

  “And your attempt to brain me with a practice blade?” he asked, now more curious than angry. Much of his ire had abated following her impassioned explanations of her motivations, and though he still harbored some solid embers of fury, they were largely smothered by his growing curiosity in the tall, powerful woman before him.

  She was interesting.

  He wondered idly how much of that was her, and how much was their resonance.

  “The point of that exercise was not to hurt you,” she objected immediately and stubbornly. “Anything short of decapitation could be addressed by our medical teams, anyway, thanks to the geneticists’ legacy. No, Ser, the point of that was to test your preparedness,” she continued as if that made perfect sense.

  “My preparedness?” Arthur asked skeptically. “For assassins in maid costumes?”

  She blushed more brightly at his query, but did not appear deterred.

  “No!” she insisted. “For assassination in general! There have been no less than forty-seven attempts on my life in the last five years alone!”

  Arthur’s eyebrows rose at that, and her words finally gave him pause.

  Forty-Seven? That was… a lot. Even on Albion, where assassination was very much a ritual part of each generation’s struggle for the title of Heir; there had been some measure of reasonable restraint with the amount of attempts. Arthur himself, he remembered, had only had to endure thirty in the last decade of his push to become his father’s heir.

  For there to have been so many attempts on Circe’s life… he might have underestimated how badly House Leos’ enemies wanted them off the board entirely.

  “I can see from your expression, Ser, that you grasp the gravity of my words,” Circe said with a hint of triumph to her tone, “I had to be certain that you were ready and able to react to such a situation, and so I acted. Perhaps a little brashly, I admit… but I do not regret it!”

  “And why did it have to be you,” Arthur asked with a frown of thought, “instead of one of your House guards or an actual assassin you could have paid for a mock attempt? I could have hurt you. Badly.”

  “With hindsight the risk was… probably unwise,” she admitted with a grimace, “but given that I am the most enhanced person I know of, I thought that I would be the best form of pressure.”

  “You were wrong,” Arthur said without hesitation, “because you failed to consider two things, my lady.”

  Circe looked at him with what Arthur recognized as a mix of anger at the implication she’d failed in her due diligence, and genuine curiosity—begrudging or not—for what he had to say.

  It was a sign of her complexity, he decided. A mix of passionate warrior and intelligent lady. She was a noble as much as she was a combatant, so much so that the trope of the ‘warrior princess’ almost seemed to have been created solely for her benefit.

  “You failed to account for the fact that I might have been capable of meeting or even out-matching your physical capabilities, and for the fact that technique trumps power.” Arthur said with utter conviction.

  He knew that well enough from his own experiences in his memories, and the amount of times humans with almost no genetic enhancement at all had nearly ended his life as Zacaris.

  “I understand you probably realize this rationally, but accepting it conceptually is a different beast. It is very hard to be able to accept that someone whose fist would break against marble, when yours would break the marble, can still defeat you with superior technique and simple muscle memory.”

  “That is…” Circe trailed off with a thoughtful frown, before her face shifted to a look of embarrassment. “That is a very astute observation, Ser, and a very Spartan one at that. I suppose you may have a point. I may have been needlessly reckless in my actions.”

  Arthur raised his eyebrows in surprise at that. He had not expected her concession.

  At least not so readily, and certainly not with as much humility.

  “Well, it speaks well to your character that you at least acknowledge it so easily,” Arthur said quietly while reaching up to brush his fingers through his thick, blond locks of hair out of habit.

  “You are kind to say so,” Circe murmured with a tone of embarrassment, “and have my thanks.”

  Arthur watched her for a long moment after she finished speaking, and braced his hands on his hips in thought. She was headstrong, stubborn, self-righteous, utterly implacable in her convictions, and completely selective about when she chose to actually approach a situation with something resembling tact—at least from what he’d seen.

  Circe Leos would not have lasted a month in Pendragon.

  And for that reason alone, Arthur couldn’t help but like her.

  “Alright, Lady Leos,” Arthur said after a further moment of consideration, “let’s say I empathize with your stance. Let’s say I even forgive you for attacking me like a mentally unhinged serial killer.”

  “I already told you that—!”

  Arthur lifted a finger warningly, and to his surprise, Circe’s mouth snapped shut.

  “Allow me to explain my motivations, and hopefully ease some of your concerns about my mercenary nature.”

  He understood her concerns regarding that, after all.

  Abandonment was something Arthur Zacaris was very familiar with.

  “I didn’t come here because I wanted money, fame, or anything else. I can see why you’d think that, but you made assumptions about me—assumptions that were false,” Arthur said while maintaining contact with her jade eyes, and willing his sincerity to shine through to her.

  “I’m here, my lady, because House Leos is a way for me to build my foundation within Graecia. I’m here because your mother struck me as an honorable woman, and your father is known as an honorable man. I’m here because House Leos needs a Hetairoi, and I need a reputable sponsor to eventually make my own place among the Eupatridae.”

  “That makes sense,” Circe said after a few seconds’ silence, “but that will all mean nothing if you can’t fight in an Eidolon.” she added almost as an afterthought.

  “Or if I’m blindsided by another custom,” Arthur muttered with a look back at his clothes and a quiet grumble. “Atreus and the others are supposed to mentor me, but I can see that being a haphazard process at best.”

  “Mentor you?” Circe asked with a frown.

  “Graecian customs,” Arthur explained with a glance back at her. “I know essentially none of them.”

  “That would pose a problem, yes.” she said with immediate understanding. “Not the least of all because Hetairoi are representatives of their Houses, and if you fumble an encounter with a notable ally or enemy or worse, someone that could go either way, it could be disastrous for House Leos.”

  “Yes,” Arthur agreed. “Which is why I need to find a better way to learn.”

  Circe’s eyes narrowed at his words, and she eyed him speculatively.

  “Are you trying to trick me into volunteering?”

  “What?” Arthur asked with a genuinely bewildered glance. “No. I don’t work that way.”

  “Truly not?” she pressed.

  “No!” Arthur insisted with a flare of irritation. “You just tried to cave my head in. You may be more understandable now, but I still have no desire to—”

  “Then you may learn from me,” the princess said decisively.

  Arthur stared at her when she did, and Circe stared right back.

  “What?” he asked with an immediate look of skepticism.

  “My family needs a Knight that can win battles in all arenas, not just within a cockpit—and you need to understand Graecian culture enough to become part of it. We can help one another, Ser. I will teach you about Graecia, and in return, you will prove to me you can be the chivalrous blade House Leos needs.”

  “How?” Arthur asked with a mix of suspicion and wary interest.

  “One week,” Circe said simply while raising her forefinger. “We will spend one week together, learning from one another and teaching one another. You will absorb all I have to teach about relevant Graecian culture, and you will teach me in turn all about you and your motivations… and at the end of that week, we will fight.”

  “A duel, you mean?” he asked curiously.

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “A duel. A chance for you to prove, beyond all doubt, that you are the warrior you claim to be.”

  Arthur stared at the tall, proud, strong-willed warrior maiden in front of him and couldn’t help but see in her eyes the hope, sincerity, and intensity of her desire to make their joint desires come to fruition.

  Well, desires as far as House Leos went.

  “And you truly believe this will be enough?” he asked with some remnant of doubt.

  “I believe that if you are even half as genetically enhanced mentally as you proved to be physically, we shall face no issue at all.”

  Another moment of consideration passed, and then at last Arthur nodded.

  “Very well, Circe Leos,” he said with a cautious smile, “one week. It’s a deal.”

  Circe smiled back at him without reservation.

  She really was strikingly beautiful.

  —and don't forget those comments! They motivate me.