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According to what I read in the webnovel, my father can dim his aura, pulling it close to his figure so that others can stand right by him. However, based on his personality, such a considerate thing must happen as often as a blue moon. Thus, when Harold delivers me surprisingly before the strategy tent I’ve always seen from a distance as opposed to the black tent I was in last night, Emma is forced to wait outside.

None of the surrounding attendants or guards change up their grim expressions and the summer sky is overcast above me. It seems even the universe doesn’t have high hopes for the meeting.

I push my way into the white tent and am instantly greeted with massive tables depicting the battleground. The table map is peppered in flags, but I can distinguish a few landmarks such as the Dredgen Woods and the open expanse where soldiers are constantly losing their lives, even right this minute.

The grass underfoot is well trampled by the sea of men who have been in and out strategizing and I step in a massive footprint nearly 4 times the size of my tiny foot. I shiver slightly, my memory calling back to the mountainous Sir Berrick and the horrifying way he’d dragged me back into my sister’s dwellings.

A gaze has been following me since I’ve entered the tent, one I’ve been well aware of as my eyes leisurely dance across the interior of the strategy tent. It pierces me like a laser beam and I’m grateful that I’d given the hug in the cover of night as opposed to during the daytime.

Having made my way around the larger map table, I curtsey, my height briefly eclipsed by the nearby chair, before I straighten again.

.....

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” I say perfunctorily, not opting to refer to my sperm donor as ‘Father’. I look up at Emperor Helio, who looks as dashing and impressive as a youthful emperor should in his golden armor. His inky black hair has grown longer, I realize. It spills nearly halfway down his back would be considered a fashionable length for a woman’s hair back in my world. But with his prominent stature and reputation, only someone looking forward to an appointment with death would dream of saying that to his face.

The father, if I can even call him that, that held me in a hug until I couldn’t breathe does not sit before me today. He is the Lord of Seven Lands, the Conqueror of Kings, and the Emperor of the Erudian Empire and he has sought little, old me out for the first time since my royal blood was confirmed.

“You can heal,” my father says without preamble, his head propped up on one palm in an intentional image of laziness.

“Yes.”

I wonder how it must feel to be an emperor at odds with the Holy Church, but then have a daughter whose abilities tie her firmly with said Holy Church. Will he discard me? Or will he use me to bring the opposition to heel and cut off one branch of House Duvernay’s power?

But I’m thinking too far into the future, for now.

“How far dead can they be, before they cannot be revived? How many at once?” The emperor’s questions are asked in an even, almost pleasant tone. But I pause, vexed on how to answer.

“I’m not quite sure for both questions,” I answer, allowing confusion to color my voice. I’m sure he could easily inquire what state John was in before I healed him and infer the answer himself. And yet, he asks me.

I can feel Emperor Helio’s eyes on me and they are as uncomfortable as when he’d first looked at me in the throne room. Back when I thought I could melt the insurmountable ice wall of his persona like a proper transmigrated individual. But now, between the two of us lies a pit of disappointments that continues to grow with every second.

There was no greeting on his part. No inquiry into my wellbeing. No questions into how I managed to arrive at the warfront which leads me to a sick conclusion.

Either Emperor Helio, the man who single-handedly managed to seize the throne and expand the empire in ways his ancestors hadn’t done centuries, doesn’t know that I was chased by assassins on my way here to escape Empress Katya. Or more likely....

He knows and he just doesn’t care.

I’m just a warm body full of imperial blood, one that he would’ve otherwise discarded if he hadn’t wiped out most of the bloodline and left a void of power that the nobility have taken great advantage of.

I smile wanly at my father for the first time since I entered the tent. “It was my first time healing someone so the extent of my abilities is unknown,” I further clarify.

“Hmmm.” He doesn’t properly answer, but he finally lifts his head from his hand. “Harold. Bring them in.”

The white curtain parts and in walks Harold, leading 3 men in with sacks over their head and their wrists tied to one another. They’ve been stripped of their armor, but I can still tell from the colors of their underclothes that these are not men of our Empire. These are Sarsavalian prisoners of war. The enemy.

Harold leaves the men in the furthest corner from my father, which confuses me until one man who stands closest to my father’s direction chokes underneath his hood and keels over, causing the other two prisoners of war to stumble.

Harold immediately bows. “Apologies, Your Majesty. I shall go fetch another one.”

“No need,” my father answers. He must have pulled his aura in, for the man who was in the midst of the throughs of death shakily moves to stand beside his peers. The fabric around the crotch of his rough pants is noticeably a darker shade presumably from his piss. The three prisoners of war quickly have their sacks torn from their heads, revealing their terror through the shiver of their shoulders and gritted teeth.

They are not alone in their fear. For now, I understand why my father brought them here.

“You will show me, Winter, how effective your healing is.” He does not ask. I didn’t expect him to.

Emperor Helio stands from the chair in a fluid motion, easily reaching his 6’4″ height and looking down at the shorter soldiers. My father is not a man of hesitation. He walks to the first man who is still recovering from the killing aura and wraps a gold plated hand around his throat easily.

“And if it is!?” I suddenly interrupt. The armored hand strangling the Sarsavalian prisoner of war loosens and my father turns to calmly look at me. My palms are sweaty, but I don’t allow my fear to manifest on my face.

“You will heal the army’s injured,” he says matter-of-factly. Daughter or not, I am a tool for him to turn the tides of war in his favor.

“Why?” The one-syllable word cuts harshly between us.

In my heart is the same reckless feeling that overtook me when I’d held the letter opener to my neck in front of Augustus. The overpowering desire to leave myself a chance of survival, even if I have to put myself in harm’s way to get it. Isn’t that what Lord Bromely told me, that in order to receive treatment befitting of an imperial princess I would need to sacrifice something?

Fine. But instead of my future, I’ll just sacrifice my present. My newfound abilities.

I can feel Emperor Helio’s eyes boring into mine, but I don’t back down. He naturally knows what I mean, as a royal bastard who was once discarded and had to fight tooth and nail for a foothold in the murky depths of the imperial palace.

Give me the same royal treatment Princess Julia has enjoyed since she was born and I’ll heal all the soldiers you want.

“It’s your duty, as a member of the imperial family, to aid in the war effort in any way possible,” my father answers.

He holds onto the prisoner of war’s neck as if the fully grown man weighs less than a sack of potatoes, his eyes never leaving mine as he makes the wild claim that we are a family. A family. Us. There are veiled words underneath his speech, a test perhaps? I rise to his challenge.

“Naturally,” I acquiesce, barely biting back a sneer. “But ah... my wrist still hurts from when I healed that poor soldier earlier today!” I pause, making a show of rubbing my itty bitty wrists.

“I was just taking a nap before you called me,” I continue in a saccharine sweet tone. “However, circumstances wouldn’t allow me to properly recuperate. As for how many of these soldiers I can manage to heal in my condition, I’m afraid the number will not be too great. ”

The soft, innocent pout that culminates my answer gracefully throws the ball back in my father’s court. This game of speaking in a veiled manner feels odd, but my father seems to understand my terms of negotiation well enough. I’m not sure if my eyes are deceiving me when the corner of his mouth flicks upward, but just as quickly as I see it, it falls back into an unfriendly line.

Without turning back to face the prisoners before him, my father clenches his hand, the muscles beneath his skin jumping as a sickening crunch sounds throughout the room. I barely stifle the flinch that runs through me, my entire body tense like a bow that had been strung. Emperor Helio opens his hand and the man’s body tumbles to the floor in a heap.

“He will die within the next minute, your highness” Harold adds unhelpfully after my father quite literally broke the man’s neck.

But there is no time for me to gape or scream the roof off the tent. Almost on auto pilot, I rush around the table to the fallen body, the other two prisoners of war shaking so bad I can feel the vibrations through the rope when I first make contact with the body.

My emotions are already high, the familiar burn rising in my chest as I hold the man’s wrist. It comes instantaneously and isn’t nearly as agonizing as it felt the first time. The golden light that only I can see envelops my vision and channels its way into the prisoner of war. There is a clicking from his neck, his bones reknitting themselves together.

Half of my newly regained energy from my nap and meal drains away, leaving me with the same sensation of pounding out a class heavy day at university.

The man taps his neck in awe, patting down his body and jumping up with shock.

“I’m- I’m alive?” he marvels out loud.

But there isn’t much time to admire my handiwork. The man beside him chokes on air and a small red flower blooms on the front of his shirt. There is the slick, disgusting sound of a blade exiting flesh and Harold steps back, wiping the blood from his blade.

It’s obviously a fatal wound, the next man instantly in the same dire straits his comrade was in a minute before. On the downtrodden grass, blood flow unperturbed, making small rivulets that begin to soak through the skirt of my dress onto my knees.

The third man understands what is going on perfectly, a hoarse scream exiting his mouth as he tries to run. But Harold restrains him, his shorter, wiry frame surprisingly holding the final prisoner of war in place.

I look down at the second man, biting my lips in frustration. It takes even longer to heal him, but I smile to myself as the second prisoner stands up bewildered and only a marginal amount of energy leaks out of me. I’m beginning to learn how to finetune my ability, pinpointing the golden light only to the small chest area where he was wounded rather than enveloping his entire body in healing magic.

30 minutes later, when I exit the strategy tent with a winded but pleased expression, Emma rushes to support me. However, I motion for her not to and we walk side by side back to my tent. We don’t need to talk when we are together, the silence between us more like a cozy sweater than a straightjacket. Considering how Emma was right outside the tent, I’m sure she was able to gather what happened inside with the prisoners of war who were led in and the screams.

“Perhaps...,” I finally muse out loud, “I should’ve said no. Does that make me as bad as the emperor?”

A better person would’ve argued against harming the prisoners in the first place, but all I thought about was what personal benefits I can get out of helping to heal as many soldiers as I can.

But before Emma says anything, I answer myself, somehow assuaging the guilt in my heart as easily as I’d regrown the third prisoner’s amputated left arm.

“I only did what I had to do to survive.”

The blood drying on the knees of my skirt disagrees, but the steeliness underneath my soft words leaves little to discuss. As I walk back to my tent unshaken in my resolve to live and thrive, I am quietly aware of the slippery slope I stand on. The same slope my father once stood on many years ago, before falling down and becoming the very thing he’d always feared.