Chương 121: Chapter 118: The Most Unexpected Guest.

We raced back through Aelheim, and I could not make the carriage go fast enough. We had only just stepped back through the Farstep Circle. I had taken what little time I dared to send a message ahead to Duke Solair, a short and clumsy thing I would no doubt regret the wording of later, and then we had rushed to the gates, given over our papers, and Travelled home. Now there was nothing to do but sit while the carriage rattled over cobblestones, and burn through minutes I did not have.

"Anias," I said.

"Are you certain you read the letter right? Is there any chance you misread something?" It was a stupid question. I knew even as I'd asked it. Anias did not look up from the window.

"That seems unlikely, My Lady. I have known Estovan for decades. He has never once lied to me, nor exaggerated a single detail. If he says there is a Princess waiting, then there is a Princess waiting." I had known she would say that. I had even suspected it myself. I had simply hoped that, for once, I might be wrong.

"He really expects us to believe there's a gods damned Princess sitting in your house?" Violet had her arms folded across her chest, her warhammer propped between her knees.

"The words were plain enough," Damian said.

"So it must be so." Sere tugged at my sleeve. She held up her notepad, and on it was a drawing. A stick figure, gazing out over a field from the window of a great tower. It looked, I realized, like the cover of a book I had once or twice caught Sere reading. I smiled despite myself and ruffled her hair.

"The Princess is bad enough," I muttered, mostly to myself.

"But if there really is a Princess, then the real problem is why she's here."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Violet asked. I looked at her.

"I thought it was odd that the Crown hadn't done anything. After the parade and after every paper in the Kingdom printed my face on a dragon. I expected something, you know? Maybe a messenger. An envoy. Even a letter to 'feel me out'.." I shook my head.

"I never imagined they'd send a Princess. That means it's more serious than we thought. It means that maybe none of our plans matter at all, if the Crown decides to involve itself this deeply." Nobody said anything to that. Even Violet frowned and looked away, her arms tightening across her chest. I stared out at the streets as they passed. It was good to be home, even though I had not truly been gone long.

The buildings here leaned close together, and the roads were narrow enough that our carriage was the only thing on them. After Myrrheim, where every street ran wide enough for four carriages abreast, I found I did not mind it at all. Maybe there were worse things than narrow roads. I only hoped Duke Solair would not take too much insult from how short my letter had been. I turned away from the window, and I looked at the three of them. At Violet, at Damian, at Sere.

"I'm going to meet her alone." Violet sat up straight.

"What? What the hell? Are you crazy?" Damian shook his head.

"It makes no sense, Esra. To meet the First Princess of the Kingdom, if she truly is who she claims to be, with no one at your side." Sere was already shaking her head so hard her hair fell into her face.

"I'm only going to meet her in the manor," I said.

"I'm not going anywhere. You'll all be close by, in case something goes wrong. But I want to project strength. If the Crown has come to bring its Hero to heel, then it should see that its Hero isn't afraid to stand alone." I looked to Anias.

"Does that make sense?" Anias was quiet for a moment.

"It does, My Lady." She paused for a heartbeat.

"Though I will confess it makes me uneasy all the same." I nodded, and looked to Sere.

"You can be there, though. Like always." I wanted to project strength, but I didn't want to be stupid to do it. Violet grumbled something under her breath, then jabbed a finger at me.

"If you so much as let out a squeak, I'm knocking down a wall. Don't complain about it later." I smiled.

"I didn't expect any different." Estovan was waiting outside the sitting room, and he looked more concerned than I had ever seen him. In the time I had known him, I had seen Estovan do everything from raid a warehouse in the dead of night, to charge a Divine Dragon head on. Through all of it, his expression had never strayed far from its resting state of minor disapproval. Right now, that minor disapproval had turned into great disapproval.

That was what finally convinced me, somehow, that there really was a Princess waiting for me inside that room.

"My Lady," he said.

"I am sorry to have called for you so urgently."

"It's fine," I said.

"It was a matter that required urgency." I looked at the door.

"Well? How is she?" Estovan hesitated, which was itself rare.

"She is… different from what I have heard. It has been many years since I saw her myself, but-" He did not finish. I nodded.

"There's no time to waste, then." I looked back at my friends, then at the door. In my head, I was building an image of what waited on the other side of that door. A Princess. I had read about them, of course. The Arianmere line was well-documented. I imagined someone composed and regal. Someone with elegant posture and a measured voice. Someone just like Cordelia, actually. I straightened my spine, and opened the door. A girl was lying across my sofa with her boots on the armrest. She was eating a pastry.

There was cream on her chin and a smear of something dark -ink, I thought- across two of her fingers. A book lay face-down on her stomach, its spine cracked entirely too far wide for the book's health. Her golden hair was tangled and looked like it had been styled that morning by someone who cared deeply, and then immediately ruined by someone who did not. She was mid-sentence when I entered, talking to one of my servants, a man who stood beside the sofa with perhaps the most rigid posture I had ever seen.

Any more rigid and the man's back might break from the effort.

"-and I told him, Father, if you're going to make me sit there for four hours and listen to all of them, then I am going to just read instead- Oh!" She saw me. The pastry stopped halfway to her mouth. My brain stopped with it. I stood in the doorway. I had rehearsed things to say. Greetings I might use, courtesy I might show. None of them came to me now, because everything I'd thought of had been for the royalty I'd imagined in my head, and that… wasn't this girl.

I would have sooner believed that Violet was the First Princess instead. Vaelin stirred, and then filled my mind whole. My right arm wrenched toward my hip so violently I staggered. The Godblade demanded to be drawn. It was not the cold fury he had shown the void in that crystal ball. This was something close, but not the same. The Godblade was eager to be drawn. Eager to fight something. My fingers were reaching for a hilt that wanted to be let out, and the muscles in my arm were not listening to me. Why?

Why was he acting this way? I grabbed my own wrist with my left hand and held firm, but only just.

"If you draw that blade in this room, you lose your head." The voice came from the wall. A woman stood there. I had not seen her when I entered, had not registered her at all, which was itself remarkable. She was plain, with dark hair cut short, a single streak of white running through her left temple. She had brown eyes and was dressed in dark steel armor, unadorned save for a crest at the shoulder in the shape of the Kingdom's banner. In that moment, I knew, somehow, exactly who she was.

I could feel it on her, with no sense I had ever had save for in this moment. There was a presence on her, faint and yet so obvious I almost thought I might see it if I stared into her shadow. Ser Aziah Storm, the First Sword. The only Hero this Kingdom had. Well, the only other Hero now. I forced my arm still. This would be the stupidest thing you've ever done. The pulling subsided slowly. My arm ached. I realized, distantly, that I was making a terrible first impression. The Princess was already off the sofa.

She crossed the room in three strides and stopped in front of me. She eyed me up and down, as if confirming I was real. I half expected her to try poking me just to be sure. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"That was real!" she said. Her eyes were wide and fixed on my right hand as if it might burst into crimson at any moment.

"That was a pull! Aziah, did you see that?"

"It would be hard not to, Kat." The First Sword's voice was flat.

"It's really- you're really-" Katarina seized my hand and shook it with strength that rattled my teeth.

"Katarina Elise von Arianmere. You can call me Kat. Everyone does. Well, Aziah does. Most people call me Your Highness, but that's boring. You killed a dragon! I read about it. I read everything about it. The article was four pages long and I memorized all of them. It did kind of drag towards the end, but it was a fun read!" She had not paused for breath.

"What was it like up there? Was it cold? I'm sure I saw snow in the pictures, and I mean it is called the Everfrost, but how cold was it?! It never gets cold in the capital, so-" She still had not paused for breath. I opened my mouth to interrupt her. If I didn't, then I might never be able to say anything at all.

"Your High-""Kat."

"…Princess Katarina."

"Close enough!" She beamed.

"You're shorter than I expected. Not in a bad way or anything! In a… you know, the picture made you look taller. You were standing on a dragon, so I suppose that helped. Do you always look this tired? You look exhausted. Have you eaten? I had your kitchen make something. I hope that's alright. It's alright, isn't it?" I stared at her. My brain had stopped working at some point.

"Princess Katarina," I said carefully. I was starting to have a faint and terrible suspicion about all of this. It seemed unlikely that the Crown would send an envoy that was… like this.

"Does your father know you're here?" Guilt flickered across her face. It lasted all of half a second before it was smothered by a smile so wide I could see all of her pristine teeth.

"He knows I travel," she said, which was not an answer. The faint suspicion had turned into a blaring alarm by now.

"Does he know you're in Aelheim?"

"He…will know. Eventually. The important thing is that I'm here, and you're here, and-""Princess Katarina." I kept my voice level.

"You are the First Princess of the Kingdom. You are currently sitting in a city on the edge of the Ashen Wastes, surrounded by political instability, without your father's knowledge or authorization. If anything were to happen to you here, the consequences for every person in this city would be catastrophic." Forget what would happen if another Duke died. Forget what would happen if I carelessly killed Alexander. If anything happened to the First Princess, I could quite literally not even imagine what would happen.

Katarina blinked. She looked at me as if I had said something in a language she didn't speak. Then she shrugged.

"If someone can get past the First Sword," she said, gesturing at Aziah, "then we're all ruined anyway." I looked at Aziah. The First Sword's expression was downright passive, yet I still got the impression that she looked exhausted. Exhausted from dealing with this brat, I suspected. I took a breath and let it out. Then I took another.

"Please," I said, gesturing toward the chairs.

"Sit down. Both of you." Katarina sat. She did not sit the way a Princess was supposed to sit. She folded one leg beneath her, and left the other dangling over the armrest. Aziah did not sit. She returned to the wall and became furniture again. I quickly discovered that having a conversation with Katarina was a challenge and a half. It was like trying to talk to a storm. She talked almost constantly, with barely any breaks at all. I was half convinced her Gift made her not need air.

It was the only logical explanation. She wanted to know everything too. Everything about the expedition, about the dragon, about me, about the Ashen Wastes. Especially the Wastes, for some reason.

"The Fingered Forest," she said, leaning forward in her chair. Her eyes were bright.

"Is it really as eerie as the poets say? I've heard so many songs about it and they all describe it differently. One of them said the trees glow at night. Do they glow? That doesn't even make sense. If they do glow, then what color? And the Everfrost- is it true that the snow never melts? I've always wondered what it would feel like to walk on snow that's been frozen for a hundred years. Is it different from normal snow? It must be, right? Maybe… less crunchy?"

I supposed that this Princess did know better than most. At the very least, she knew that the Ashen Wastes weren't just one thing. That alone put her quite ahead of most people, even in Aelheim. She knew what the Fingered Forest was at all. She'd done her homework, it seemed. Something inside me tightened anyway.

"The trees don't glow," I said.

"They're dead. The entire forest is dead, and the air is poison. If you stop compressing mana for even a few seconds, it starts to burn your lungs. It starts as coughing, and the coughing soon turns into an itch. If it turns into an itch, it will never leave, not unless you see a healer. Even some of the trees there can kill you, if you don't pay attention." Katarina's smile faltered, just the tiniest bit. I kept going. I don't know why.

Something about the way she talked about it just annoyed me, even if I knew she meant nothing bad by it.

"The Everfrost is beautiful from a distance, I suppose. It's all white as far as the eye can see. It's different when you have to actually live there. Up close, it's a wasteland where nothing grows and nothing lives. The sanctuaries in it are held together with scrap metal. There are fewer of them than there used to be, and only some of that was because of the cold." My voice had gotten very cold, very fast.

"We lost almost half of the expedition. Some men died because Shallows cut them in half. Do you know what those are? You don't want to know. I still see them sometimes, when I close my eyes." The sitting room was very quiet. For once, this Princess actually looked like she was considering something properly. Katarina stared at me. The brightness in her eyes had… not dimmed, exactly. It hadn't gotten brighter either. If I had to call it something, I'd say she looked hungrier now than she had before.

"Tell me more," she said. I blinked.

"What?"

"Let's start with the village. It's called Iron Hollow, right? I think that's what it was called. How many people live there? What do they eat? I've always wondered. They don't write that part in the stories." She leaned forward so far she was practically falling out of the chair. She asked more questions before I'd even begun to answer the ones she had already asked.

"Why do you care about that place anyway?" she asked.

"Why? Tell me." I did not know what to do with this girl. After today, I was also too tired to figure it out.

"Because someone has to," I said. Katarina was quiet for three full seconds. That was the longest silence I had heard from her.

"I want to see it," she said. Then she sat up straighter.

"I am going to see it!" This… what? I needed to stop this before we lost our first Princess to frostbite.

"Absolutely not."

"I want to see the orphanage, then. And I wanna see your District too, and oh, there's-""Princess Katarina." I put all the emphasis into the words I possibly could.

"Why do you keep saying it like that? I know my own name pretty well, thank you very much." She grinned. From the wall, I heard Aziah sigh. It was a quiet and resigned sound. I wanted to sigh too. Anias hadn't gone over every noble manner, but I'm sure there had to be something about not sighing in front of a Princess. Finally, there was a lull. Katarina had gotten distracted by a stack of papers on the side table. They were Calloway's proposals, ones that had come in while I'd been away.

Why they were here and not in my office I both did not know and did not want to know. She was skimming them. Whether or not she was actually reading them was anyone's guess. In the quiet, I became aware of a gaze. The First Sword had not moved from her place against the wall. She had barely spoken at all, but she was looking at me now. Though I got the impression she was looking inside me instead. Her brown eyes were steady and unremarkable.

Yet it felt like she was debating something with someone only she could hear. Actually, that… was likely not far off.

"Aziah beat your father in the King's Tournament once," Katarina said from behind the stack of papers.

"It was a really long time ago. My father says it was a fun match, one of the best he's seen." I had known this, of course. Distantly. Hadn't Damian's father mentioned something like this, a lifetime ago? I looked at the First Sword with new eyes. Only a fool would look at her and not see someone dangerous. She still felt more dangerous than that.

"He was strong," Aziah said.

"On another day, the result would have been different." Katarina grinned.

"Come now, you didn't even have a Gift or her yet. Don't be so modest." I did not know what to say to that. Aziah's gaze had not moved from me.

"Was it worth it, Illiana?" she murmured. The words were barely audible, and I only just heard them over the ruffling of the papers. They carried sadness. She looked away. Vaelin stirred in my mind. Gently, this time, almost mournfully. I almost asked her what she meant before Katarina emerged from behind the proposals.

"Your Count Calloway has good handwriting," she announced.

"So," Katarina said, standing. She brushed pastry crumbs from her dress in a gesture that somehow made the dress look worse.

"I'm staying in Aelheim for a while. We've taken rooms at an inn near the Thalos District. I want to see your District!" I opened my mouth to protest.

"And," she continued, as if I had not opened my mouth, "I want to talk more."

"Princess Katarina," I said.

"I have a great deal on my mind at the moment. If I have time, I will think about it." It was the most noncommittal answer I could give. I was not about to chain myself to a runaway Princess. Katarina tilted her head. She somehow looked both genuinely confused and more delighted at the same time.

"I should tell you," she said brightly, "that I'm in the habit of getting what I want."

"So am I," I said. We looked at each other. Katarina grinned.

"I like you." She turned and swept toward the door. Aziah detached herself from the wall and followed. At the threshold, the First Sword paused. She looked back at me, and her gaze held for just a moment.

"Tell your shadow to be more subtle," she said.

"She gives away more than she thinks. A shadow is only useful when one doesn't know it's there." Then she was gone. I blinked. She meant Sere, didn't she? So she had known all along. The sitting room was finally quiet. I sat down in the chair the First Princess had sprawled across. It was still warm. There were crumbs on the cushion. I stared up at just the ceiling. Sere materialized in the room. There had been a slight indent on the cushion she had been sitting on. Was that what the First Sword had meant?

Sere was doodling. No doubt she was doodling the Princess. I almost reached for her before there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," I said. Anias and Estovan entered. They looked at the room, then looked at me.

"My Lady," Estovan said.

"Are you alright?" I picked up the nearest cushion, pressed it against my face, and groaned. Then I hit my forehead against it. Lightly. Then again, slightly less lightly.

"Why," I said into the cushion, "do things keep getting more complicated?" They were both quiet for a moment. I imagined they were deciding whether this was a real question or a rhetorical one.

"Shall I prepare a dossier on the Princess?" Anias asked. I lifted my face from the cushion.

"Yes. And on the First Sword. Everything you can find." Anias nodded. She moved to the side table and began straightening Calloway's proposals with her Gift, the pages lifting and sorting themselves into their proper order.

"She seemed… energetic," Estovan offered. I put my face back into the cushion. For a brief moment, I considered screaming into it.