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The boiling rage within my father does not erupt, but the chained prisoner on the ground before us begins to choke and hack up clots of black blood until Harold drags him further back near where the generals and commanders stand.

“Save him!” yells, not my father but the Mad Dog. Sir Wolfgang puts pressure on the bleeding wound with his hand and turns to look at me.

And it’s not just him, everyone turns to stare, some eyes begging, some curious, some wishing to see a miracle for themselves. And they do, in a way.

Right as I stand from my chair, I see my father’s arm extend towards me from the periphery. It moves faster than a whip, his hand before my face before I can so much as flinch. Clenched between his fingers is a blade as slender as a piece of paper.

I let out a mix between a sigh and a gasp, flopping back into my chair as the evidence that I almost died still hasn’t stopped quivering between my father’s fingers.

“Wolfgang, you’ve lost your edge,” Emperor Helio murmurs in the now dead-silent room.

.....

The commander of the royal guards does not say anything, his hand still pressed firmly against the burbling neck of the captain-general. But his lips press into a firm line when his vision narrows on the blade that Captain-General Vernice had thrown with the very last of his strength.

Meanwhile, the captain-general who had considered more counter-measures than anyone had thought choked out his last blood-filled breath and died in Sir Wolfgang’s arms. The cut to his neck was so deep that his head was only held to his neck by a few sinews of flesh. Without my intervention, even lasting longer than a minute with that kind of wound would be impossible.

“Your Majesty,” the Mad Dog mutters with his head down in shame, “The captain-general has expired. Please permit me leave to investigate his dealings with the Sarsavalians.”

My father doesn’t answer immediately, instead twirling the blade that almost killed me around in his hand like a cigarette before crushing it to dust. It doesn’t take a mad scientist to figure out who the culprit may have been behind my assassination attempt, despite the messy methods employed to hide it.

“Granted.”

Captain-General Vernice is the late husband of Lady Vernice, one of Empress Katya’s ladies-in-waiting. While Empress Katya has maintained the image of a loving mother to all of Emperor Helio’s children, a rare few insiders, including my father, know of her hatred for me. This incident is covered in the fingerprints of not only Empress Katya, but also House Duvernay. However, the bishop’s aid, a deliberate move on his part, has thrown the clear verdict into the mud.

Considering how the Bishop’s man had been the one to unearth Captain-General Vernice’s underhanded doings, tying House Duvernay into the crime would cause people to criticize the imperial family as one that couldn’t distinguish between rewards and punishments for honest nobles. Not to mention, Bishop Duvernay had also made a silent proposition to my father by bringing the mysterious Mio out to play with an ability that had never been seen before.

“Divine power, it manifests in such funny ways,” I muse to myself and Emma in the evening. The nights out in Belhelm are warm and stuffy, however, due to the events earlier in the day, I’m wrapped up in a heavy cloak and drinking some tea for comfort.

“It can take your vision and make you become the holy priestess. It can be used to attack during battle. It can heal scrapes, cuts, and broken bones to varying degrees.”

“Or heal someone back to new, your highness,” Emma adds, pointing to her smooth arm that I had fixed up.

“Yes,” I reply, thinking of the night and day difference in ability between myself and the imperial physicians. “And today, I learned it can extract the truth from even the most unwilling of mouths. How useful is that? It’s no wonder only the Vernice family will take the fall.”

I don’t feel any disappointment at the thought that my father would rather preserve House Duvernay so he can have access to these newly revealed interrogation tactics. Feeling disappointment implies that I had any hope for another outcome, which I didn’t. It’s all about benefits in the upper echelons of society, morals be damned.

Emma fluffs up my bed and motions for me to get in.

“That Mio, he reminded me of you. So stoic and quiet. Perhaps he can be your paramour?” I giggle. Emma’s face blushes red at the implication.

“I do not wish to find love. I wish to stay by your side, your highness,” Only the slightest bit of embarrassment colors her tone. It’s moments like this that remind me of her young age and technically, my age as well.

For the new, hypervigilant guards posted outside, muffled giggles are audible long into the night. Our laughter is like a bandage over a stab wound, a temporary solution to the underlying problem. But I look forward to the day I can sew the wound shut with my own hands.

———

As a still-growing teenager, the hangover hit Prince Julian like a truck.

Inside his dim tent, the fraction of light peeking through the curtained entrance burned his eyes. He covered his face as if he were a vampire and called for his closest subordinate.

“Felix. Felix!” he croaked from his bed. Drinking had been his vice in his past life, one that doggedly followed to this one. But due to the constraints of youth as well as poor tolerance, he could not imbibe as much as he wanted to.

The manservant quickly shuffled in, carrying a cup of water and a bowl of light porridge. Without any preamble, Julian finished the two within a few minutes, feeling revived as he spooned the last of the porridge into his mouth.

“Today’s schedule?” Julian requested, wiping off his face and hands in a neat, uniform manner.

“There is a meeting at the strategy tent at 7:30, after which Sir Gregory requested your presence for a meeting amongst the higher-ups of the royal guard.”

Julian frowned. “Did he say what for?”

“It’s related to the eruptions, your highness.”

“Got it. Carry on,” he said in a brusque manner. A short servant boy entered and began dressing Julian as Felix went through the day’s events. As leather pads were tied around his arms and his daggers – both visible and hidden – were inserted into their sheaths, Felix finally listed off all the day’s events.

Julian strolled out of his tent abruptly, the early morning light sweltering under the many layers he had to wear. But as a prince, he was not exempt from fighting and found himself on the battlefield many times since he’d arrived. Like his hangover, Prince Julian’s early qualms for blood and arrows piercing the chinks in his armor had long faded. He felt clear-headed and driven in all matters except for one, the matters pertaining to his youngest sister.

“What is Winter doing today?” Prince Julian asked without turning his head.

“The princess? Today I heard that she took the day off from healing.”

“The day off? Is she ill?” Prince Julian nearly stopped walking, but on his face wasn’t a look of concern, but curiosity. The Princess Winter he was still getting to know was not one to be deterred by a mere illness. In fact, she would most likely take advantage of it to brush up her image “for PR”.

“I-I’m not sure, sire,” Felix stammered.

“Then find out and report to me after this meeting.” Prince Julian disappeared into the strategy tent, rubbing his head at what he knew would be another frustrating day of trying to figure out what to do about the eruptions.

Several hours later, a headache had taken full bloom in Julian’s head. He rubbed at his short gold curls, his golden eyes flashing in irritation.

“I’ve already told you, a surveillance operation into the Sarsavalian camp will not work. We have absolutely no intelligence on the appearance of the weaponsmith constructing the eruptions, whether there are any traps, and whether the weaponsmith is truly the only individual with the knowledge of how to construct an eruption. It would simply be a waste of manpower!” Julian thundered out.

Prince Augustus, the brother who reminded him of his nephew in his past life, nodded in affirmation of Julian’s words. Emperor Helio, with his head leaned against his hand, said nothing. But Prince Julian truly did not expect him to.

Being the secondborn prince with a powerful mother, Prince Julian had understood many things about this new world ever since he woke up with one of his many royal nannies waving a mother of pearl rattle in his face:

His new father hated his new mother. His new brother was the only sibling who his father would ever not dislike, as he wasn’t sure if Emperor Helio could love anything other than his throne. And that Emperor Helio would kill him if he ever dared to covet Prince Augustus’ crown prince position.

So when Emperor Helio didn’t praise or acknowledge him, Prince Julian was actually relieved. He too had once clawed his way to the very top in his past life and all he’d found there was solitude and misery. Thus, Prince Julian had been more than happy to spend his entire life pretending to go along with his mother’s goals of him becoming the next emperor while actually enjoying his life for a change. However, if things were so simple and easy, Julian would not have found himself in a war tent discussing how to combat bombs with swords and magic tricks.

As yet another general began to propose another way to infiltrate the Sarsavalians, this time to assassinate the irritating, runaway baron who had started the entire war affair, Prince Julian noticed his father’s closest steward enter the tent. The man walked up to Emperor Helio and murmured a few words in his father’s ear, to which Emperor Helio nodded and waved him away.

“This topic is adjourned. We shall now hold trial for an attempted assassination,” Emperor Helio said in a tone that brokered no argument.

It was as if a bomb had gone off in the tent. All the generals widened their eyes, quickly doing the math on who could’ve been assassinated. Since the princes and the emperor were all within the tent, then there was only one remaining figure who could be at risk. Prince Julian jumped out of his chair with shock as he reached the same name in everyone else’s mind.

In a rare moment of fluster for the teenaged prince, he blurted out, “Is Winter alright?”

Emperor Helio threw a careless glance in Julian’s direction, while Harold informed the room that, “The assassin was revived and shall be brought in shortly.”

And indeed in a few short minutes, Princess Winter walked in along with a struggling Sarsavalian fighting futilely against the guards who hauled him in. Winter was petite, even for an 8-year-old, her ghostly white hair pleated into two braids. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had cried, but she put on a brave face as if she was determined to appear strong before the generals.

Without needing to look at the response, Julian could tell that the army’s impression of Princess Winter, which had already risen dramatically due to her healing abilities, just went up a few more points. It seemed that within a couple of years, his little sister had finetuned her strengths from a blunt sword to a fine rapier.

When she sat down in her chair after greeting their father with a cheerful face and dead eyes, Winter carefully looked over the assembled group. Meanwhile, Prince Julian looked at Winter and saw... nothing. No fear, no anguish, no irritation. Even when the paper-thin dagger had been inches from cutting her little throat. Or if those emotions were present, they were buried so deeply that even the most skilled eye could not pick it out.

It reminded Julian an awful lot of the emperor. But whether that was good or bad, only time would tell.