“{You are certain he’ll be okay, Ceruviel?}”

  Aylar sat within her Royal Carriage, armored in her white-and-gold warplate, with red cloth adornments and pennants resplendent upon her armor. Two Daggers of the Royal Guard escorted the Princess-Royal, every Haelfar carefully selected. Tychar led the first dagger, and Leona the second; both of them were trustworthy, and each of the Haelfenn below them was a political Red.

  It was absolutely pitiful that such mattered, but Aylar took the world as it was.

  “{Achilles is like a force of nature, Aylar,}” Ceruviel said from where she sat opposite to Aylar, idly looking out of the window as if the entire situation was one big inconvenience to the Dusk-Lord, who was similarly attired in full warplate. “{The foolish boy is more likely to break something than be broken, and even if he is compromised somehow, it won’t last. Uriel has committed to watching over him as well, so he is relatively untouchable, so long as he does not overtly break the laws of Dawnhaven.}”

  “{The Dawn-Lord agreed to watch over Leonidas?}”

  “{Well, to keep an eye on a potential asset with the chance to become—well, an issue, to quote the stickler,}” Ceruviel said with what Aylar identified as fond pettiness. It was well-known that Duke Uriel Aventus and Duchess Ceruviel Latherian had centuries of friendship, but why neither of them had married remained a question nobody could answer.

  Especially since they are the ones most eligible for each other.

  “{Careful, Aylar,}” Ceruviel said while glancing at her. “{Those are dangerous waters.}”

  The Princess-Royal blushed and tossed her hair in embarrassment upon realizing she’d had her mind read, and cleared her throat as imperiously as she could manage.

  “{I will thank you not to read my mind, Dusk-Lord—}”

  “{And I wish you did not think so loud that you knock on my brain, girl. We cannot all have what we desire,}” Ceruviel said with discourse-ending certainty, and returned to looking out of the window.

  Aylar groaned quietly in response and leaned her head back against the carriage’s cushioned backrest.

  “{How did my mother deal with this…?}”

  “{She had the strength to hit me without consequence, for a time,}” Ceruviel said with blunt honesty. “{That changed eventually, but the Heroine-Queen was not much different to you, in her youth, albeit far wilder. You are the superior image of Royalty by comparison.}”

  “{Wasn’t my mother an Adventurer before she was Queen, though?}”

  “{Yes,}” Ceruviel affirmed with an amused smile. “{Myself, your mother, Uriel, Sinalthria, and some others worked together more than once. Uriel and Sinalthria less often than I. She found Archons fascinating. Divines help me, your mother never shut up about it,}” Ceruviel said, her tone warm and fond despite the harsh manner of the wording.

  “{Did she know you were a Duchess?}” Aylar asked curiously. She rarely managed to get Ceruviel to open up about her mother. Something had clearly stoked the taciturn Dusk-Lord’s memories.

  “{Eventually,}” Ceruviel admitted with a wry grimace. “{After your Father had convinced her he was just a humble Knight seeking glory, and she fell into his bed. Finding out he was the Crown-Prince of Eldormer nearly gave her apoplexy.}”

  Aylar’s cheeks flushed with heat at Ceruviel’s words, and she clapped her hands against them in mortification.

  “{What, did you think they waited until they were wed?}” Ceruviel asked her ruthlessly. “{Your mother may have given her virginity to your Father, Aylar, but it was not for lack of his deserving it—the idiots were so in love it forced me to teach them mind-shielding just to stay sane!}”

  “{Why did—why did he hide who he was?}”

  “{How many Haelfenn have tried to seduce you just for your crown?}” Ceruviel asked instead of answering directly, and then turned back to the window when Aylar frowned in immediate understanding.

  “{So he wanted to ensure the love was true?}” she asked thoughtfully, not quite needing an answer. “{Then what of me, Ceruviel?}”

  “{What about you?}” the Dusk-Lord asked bluntly.

  “{You know of what I speak, Duchess,}” Aylar muttered, her cheeks reddening again for very different reasons. Embarrassment and annoyance, more than any measure of shyness. “{Your Squire, Heir, whatever the hells he is now. Leonidas. What of me? What of him? I do not love him, I very greatly doubt he loves me—yet he will be a Sovereign, the System has declared it.}”

  “{The System declared his potential for it,}” Ceruviel corrected mildly. “{I certainly believe it will happen too, yes, but it is still—strictly speaking—only potential.}”

  “{Why didn’t you tell me earlier?}” Aylar asked, her voice quieter as she tried to resolve the anger, shock, and mild hurt that came from the deception. Ceruviel had been entrusted to watch over her and Braedon both, and while her brother had irreparably sundered that goodwill, she never had.

  “{Because it would have made you calculate, not feel,}” Ceruviel said calmly, her voice carrying a mixture of self-certainty and blunt insight. “{The point of your exposure to Achilles was for you to understand the necessity of his appeal, but to look at it from a more objective standpoint: powerful, charismatic, providential. If I told you of his Ambition, it would have done irreparable harm to your natural inclinations—you would have seen him as a necessary compromise, not a desirable partner.}”

  “{I know of it now, though,}” Aylar pointed out with a frown.

  “{Are you forgetting, Aylar, that I can read your thoughts like an open book?}” Ceruviel asked with a mix of amusement and blithe disdain for her words. “{Your fantasies about Achilles started long before you knew he was a Sovereign.}”

  “{CERUVIEL!}”

  “{Oh, pish posh, you think your mother was any different? Always mooning after your father like a love-drunk…}”

  My fantasies? Aylar thought in horror, while unconsciously clutching her arms over her chest with a clank of plate, and tuning out Ceruviel’s acidic ranting. How much has Ceruviel seen? Divines of Altera, how much has she heard? Worse, what if Leonidas has—

  “{Achilles cannot read minds yet, Aylar, and your mental defenses will work against him at any rate. He is rather less powerful than I am.}”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Aylar snapped her gaze up to the hedonistic Duchess when she spoke, and blew some golden hair from her eyes before responding. “{None of this—none of that matters, regardless, Duchess. Leonidas may be, ah, nice to look at, but Dawnhaven will require a proper King… I do not think he is ready for that. He’s so… wild.}”

  Ceruviel snorted at that and glanced at Aylar pityingly. “{So was your father, when he ascended.}”

  “{My father was a Prince!}” Aylar objected. “{He is the wisest and most composed King we’ve had in generations!}”

  “{Ha! And do you know what he was like before he took the throne? Hells, even for the first century after he did?}”

  “{I…}”

  “{Your father was three times as impulsive and hot-headed as Achilles, and it was to the point your mother, Uriel, and I were forced to tie him down during the Gnoll Crisis and the Savage Orc Incursion. He wanted to go charging off at the head of the Army like the Banneret he once was!}”

  “{...really?}” Aylar asked with surprise, while lowering her arms in thought. “{My father did?}”

  “{It’s no surprise you didn’t know. You’re still relatively young, by Alteran age standards, and if not for the Integration, you’d likely still be in tuition until your fifth decade. He probably didn’t want to give you a bad example. This world, however, has made mincemeat of tradition—and we need a bloody Monarch.}”

  “{I am twenty-five summers, Ceruviel, I am hardly a chil—}”

  “{Physical maturity does not truly forge an adult, Aylar Eldormer,}” Ceruviel cut her off curtly. “{Experience and wisdom do. Though, in your case, I can concede you are certainly doing better than most.}”

  “{And Achilles?}” she challenged, instinctively, and with no small amount of wounded pride.

  “{That one…}” Cervuiel said in reply, and turned to look out the window. “{...that boy could be the father of us all, if intensity of experience equated to years.}”

  Aylar blinked at the Archon, and Ceruviel lifted her left forefinger forestallingly.

  “{No, I will not speak of it. The boy’s secrets are his. If you earn the revelation, then you earn it—but know this: if you go hunting for it, he will only hide it deeper inside. Pursue the man, Aylar Eldormer. The rest will come with time, trust, and love.}”

  “{Love?}” Aylar asked after a moment of consternation, and nibbled her lower lip. “{Love, huh…}”

  “{Win the love of a man like Achilles, Aylar, and he will deliver you the world if you but ask for it,}” Ceruviel said with a serious tone, and then abruptly waved a hand dismissively, as if it didn’t matter at all. “{Never mind that for now, though. Wallow in your hormones later. We are turning into the lane, and my senses tell me we are turning in toward something fascinating.}”

  Ceruviel’s hand gestured to the window on Aylar’s right when the Princess looked at her curiously, and Aylar turned at the exact moment a knock echoed against the reinforced glass. Without hesitation, Aylar unlatched the small section of carriage wall that housed the window and slid it forward and sideways.

  “{Dagger-Master Tychar, what news?}” she asked of the destrier-mounted Dagger-Master.

  “{Your Highness,}” the swarthy Haelfar said with a warm smile. “{We are closing in on the stated residence, but there appears to be some manner of disturbance. Our vanguard reported the Dawnguard, a full Dagger, being held at bay by what looked to be—}” he voice cut out, and he glanced past Aylar toward Ceruviel, who simply glanced at him coldly and arched an eyebrow.

  “{Go on, Dagger-Master,}” Aylar said with an encouraging smile.

  “{...ahem. Yes. It, ah, appears to be Earl Latherian, your highness—the Black Knight. He is emitting some kind of mana field and appears to be refusing the Dawnguard’s advance.}”

  Aylar turned to Ceruviel, who simply snorted quietly at her unspoken question.

  “{How far are we, Tychar?}”

  “{One minute from disembarkation, Dusk-Lord.}”

  “{Then continue. I suspect the day holds more surprises yet.}”

  The Royal Guard Dagger-Master nodded, glanced at Aylar with another smile, and then heeled his horse away from the carriage as she slid the window back into place.

  “{You seem amused,}” Aylar said as the carriage rumbled forward and slowly began to decelerate.

  “{I am often amused when my Squire is in the mix, Aylar,}” Ceruviel said while cracking her neck and shifting her weight in preparation. “{And you should grow used to that. Now, I suspect he’s doing something harebrained and idiotic again, despite his best attempts at proving he has brains under all that muscle and bravado, so ensure you school your reactions. Looking shocked or taken aback will only hurt you, now. This is going to be witnessed—there are many eyes watching.}”

  “{Terrans?}” Aylar asked while turning toward the door.

  “{Terrans,}” Ceruviel confirmed. “{Use English when you depart the carriage. It may make things a little more awkward for the Dawnguard, but the people you want to hear you are not those social-climbing toadies; it is the natives. Achilles will give you a chance with them, but you must prove you are not just another uncaring overlord here to step on their dreams—like this villainous Aye-Are-Ess I keep hearing talk of.}”

  “{Aye-Are-Ess?}” Aylar asked as the carriage came to a halt, and she heard the Royal Guard starting to beat their shields in heralding chorus.

  “{Some villainous cabal of gubernatorial thugs called the Internal Revenue Service that robbed them of their hard-earned coin, from what I can deduce. I never paid much attention to their prior governance, and when I did, few, if any, of the tomes mentioned this group in a positive light. Diabolical, by all rumors.}”

  “{What did Leonidas say about them?}” Aylar asked as she turned to the door and mentally went through her preparatory exercises for being the ‘Princess-Royal’.

  “{Achilles grumbled some nonsense about throwing tea into a river and then ranted passionately about the villainy of taxation with wild gesticulation, as if he actually understood it,}” Ceruviel said with amusement. “{Hells, it was actually rather endearing.}”

  “{Hm…}” Aylar hummed thoughtfully, and then shook her head with a wry smile as something warm kindled inside of her, which she studiously tried to ignore. “{A Knight of the People…}”

  Ceruviel snorted quietly behind her, and Aylar only managed to shoot her a glare before her head snapped back to the door when it opened, and the Princess superseded the woman.

  Her armored gauntlet gripped the edge of the open door, and Aylar stepped out into the afternoon sun, allowing her hair to fall across her chest, shoulders, and back unbound as she stepped down the carriage steps and faintly thunked onto the meticulously laid manastone of the street. Her feet carried her forward, and immediately, she took stock of the situation.

  The Royal Guard had spread out around the carriage in two formations of nine, ten with the Dagger-Masters Tychar and Leona standing by as her personal detail. Meanwhile, the Dawnguard were assembled in a motley formation with uncertainty marking their postures, looking from the Royal Guard to the house—or rather, to the figure standing ominously before it.

  Immediately, Aylar knew him.

  Leonidas stood at the apex of the path to the domicile he guarded as if he had been placed there as an ancient, arcane war sentinel. His bastard sword was planted against the ground with a clear forbiddance, and his hands rested on the pommel with a calm that seemed perfectly ready to precipitate calamitous violence. The armor was new, and it stole her breath with its sheer, daring menace: obsidian-black plate reinforced and thickened, worked with ornate, predatory curves, and completed by a helm with a forboding visor and a pale allocation of faintly-luminous white feathers sweeping back on each side, like wings caught mid-beat.

  His eye-lenses burned a deep, infernal crimson, and the air around him blistered and seethed with scarlet and purple lightning that stabbed itself through the space around him like writhing serpents.

  Aylar’s [Radiance Core] tightened in her dantian at the sight of that power, not in fear of him, but in instinctive readiness. Light did not like being near sources of such flagrant disharmonious violence, and Aylar could feel with certainty that Leonidas was not wielding Psi alone—he was using whatever terrible power had allowed him to dominate the Arena, and the Hydra in turn. She could feel her Core’s power spreading through her channels like in a tidal surge of bracing warmth, reinforcing her will and certainty with radiant purity.

  And yet, despite that, she could not argue with what her heart thought.

  Leonidas looked fierce, vicious, utterly untamed, and ready for violence.

  He looked like a huge potential issue when assessed by a Princess-Royal.

  Yet, he looked beautiful when viewed through a Swordmaiden’s eyes.

  Please comment on what you liked or with theories you have!

  40+ Advanced Chapters can be found on my .