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Naturally, Calix was displeased to find such a leech clinging to his prize. Dashien had confidently assured him that the princess was what he\'d be getting. Nothing more and nothing less.

He had no trouble overlooking the fact that he hadn\'t received a princess at all, but to think he had to keep a useless Mevanian soldier alive just to avoid getting on Keliyah\'s bad side.

And for what?

In the end, Barclay went ahead and got himself killed, and Keliyah, obtuse as she was, could only think to blame the emperor.

"How did this happen?" Calix growled to the groveling man below him.

He recognized the pathetic man as a misplanted spy from Subterra.

Originally, the man tried to join the emperor\'s shadow guard, but Calix wasn\'t about to let one of his half-brother\'s men get so close to him. Instead, he made a nice spot for the man to pretend he was a spy and gathering information as a guard of the emperor\'s forest.

Seeing as the suspicious guard and another just like him were the ones who ended up killing Barclay, however, Calix was beginning to suspect that they weren\'t so misplanted after all.

Under different circumstances, he might be amused at his brother\'s witty move in their endless subtle game of chess, but this time, he was furious.

"I asked how this happened!!!" he slammed his fist into the arm of his throne, momentarily silencing the room.

The man\'s explanation was ridiculous, of course. Almost as ridiculous as the fact the emperor had to hold an official trial for some lowlife paid off by his brother.

Despite his disgust, Calix was doing a good job keeping his emotions in check. (Though, that might not have been how it appeared to everyone else in the room.)

The trial certainly wasn\'t going well, but it was going, at least, until Keliyah entered the room.

Everything around him froze when she stood to testify. He couldn\'t see or hear anything except her, the broken girl. And the look she gave him, empty yet somehow stinging, made him lose control.

"I told you not to bring her!" he later shouted angrily to Ira, Roland, Thane and Lucy.

The four of them stood before him with their heads down, not one daring to look the emperor in the eye.

"I thought it would help," Ira, the ever outspoken, piped up.

"Help who? Her? That man whose head is waiting to be burned alongside his body?" Calix shot back.

"You," Ira replied. "And that man and her comrade,"

"And everyone else," Lucy bravely added.

"Do you even know what the nobles are saying about you now?" Ira went on. "They-"

"I don\'t care," Calix hissed. "I don\'t care. I don\'t care!"

His four subordinates winced at the fury in his voice.

"A-are we dismissed, Sire?" Thane questioned softly, his eyes still focused firmly on his feet.

"Yes. Get out of my sight," Calix glowered.

With slow and careful footsteps, Thane, Roland and Lucy all backed out of the room. Ira remained, however, doing his best not to flinch under his master\'s murderous glare.

"Despite how much you yell or how many throats you slit," the man began cautiously, "Sir Barclay will die."

"I know," Calix replied.

"Then don\'t you think there\'s somewhere else you should be right now?" Ira asked.

Finally giving up on the last of his rage, the emperor sighed.

"I know," he repeated. "But.."

"Haven\'t you seen those death sentences she wears around her neck as if we wouldn\'t notice our own creation?" Ira went on.

"She is prepared for this, if only a little."

Keliyah, supposed incredible soldier and royal body double, was definitely not prepared.

As if fueled by something decidedly un-human, catastrophic rage and anguish overtook the emperor\'s lovely little hostage soon after her tear-jerking farewell to her comrade.

Calix had never encountered a person with such fiery, powerful emotions before, but he assumed that eventually, they\'d calm down and Keliyah would listen to reason once more.

When she ran away again, ending up in the arms of both Dashien and Soren, Calix couldn\'t wait any longer. It may have been a mistake on his part, due to his own unfamiliar blazing emotions, but he dragged Keliyah back to the palace and confronted her.

Like two raging fires, they argued with one another, neither entirely sure what they were arguing for. All Keliyah knew was that she was angry, furious and couldn\'t seem to find relief for her painfully bitter heart. Calix, on the other hand, was sinking further into a strange abyss with every vicious word from the girl\'s sharp tongue.

He wanted to die.

For the first time in his entire life, he wanted to die.

Whether it was seeing the girl in such a miserable state or knowing that she blamed him for it, he couldn\'t take it any more.

Was it because of the ancient warrior\'s blood flowing through him being called by Halrad\'s blood flowing through her?

Or something else? Something that had nothing to do with their heritage?

By the time the Dragon Emperor thought he\'d be consumed by his own emotions, Keliyah collapsed to the ground, consumed by hers.

At his urgent call, maids and physicians rushed in to care for the girl, but they all came away baffled by her mysterious condition.

"I want you to stop being angry," Calix whispered, sitting next to the sleeping girl\'s bed after the latest round of disappointing news. "But first, I want you to wake up."

Gently, he placed a hand on her forehead. It was almost hot enough to burn his skin.

Aside from the blazing heat below his fingers though, he felt something else. The left side of his back tingled in recollection of the familiar feeling.

"The dragon\'s power," he thought aloud. "My body can absorb the dragon\'s power."

If Keliyah\'s illness had something to do with the amount of power in her body, then Calix could take some of it away. He only knew one effective way to do that, however.

"Give it to me," he said, softly pressing his lips against the girl\'s.