“Oh? And what is this that I ‘need never hear of,’ my love?”

To say that Ástríðr was peeved was a lie. To say that she was angry, equally so. To say that she was genuinely shocked that her surroundings didn’t simply spontaneously combust with the force of her fury was far closer to the truth, though still quite an impressive understatement. The only reason her sister’s head was still attached to her shoulders, if she was being honest with herself, was Katsumi’s proximity to the target and the fact that Ástríðr could not guarantee to herself that her lover would not come to incidental harm while she was in the grips of her rage.

Katsumi leapt to her feet and backed away from Sonja as though proximity to Ástríðr’s sister’s body was forbidden, which, in light of recent events, the elf supposed was likely the case. She really didn’t care to speculate beyond that. The world was awash in scarlet. There was no room in her mind for such considerations, only murder. “How much of that did you hear?!”

“I’ve been here since the beginning,” Ástríðr replied passively. Her mind was occupied with considering the course of the rest of her day in light of the new information.

First things first.

“Aunt Yuriya,” she called out, pointedly ignoring how ashen Katsumi’s face had become. “I seem to recall you are as accomplished a white mage as you are a swordswoman. Is that accurate information?”

“It is.”

“Good. I want you to heal my sister fully, and get her to her feet. Then I want you to stay around for a little while. I make no promises about Sonja surviving this, and I don’t want to listen to Mom lecturing at me for hours. She’s not worth it. I have better things to do with my time,” Ástríðr instructed in a tone that brooked no argument. She really wasn’t in the mood.

Katsumi’s eyes rivalled saucers. “Ástríðr, I… She was just…”

“I did not give you permission to speak,” she snapped. “But since you saw fit to remind me that you’re here, you’re forbidden from leaving the area. I don’t want you out of my sight. Don’t worry, though. I’ll deal with you next.”

Katsumi nodded, her posture crumbling into demure submission and resignation. It would have bothered Ástríðr were she not already overwhelmingly awash with such unyielding wrath, to the point where it was starting to give her a splitting headache. Deal with that later. Sonja is right here, and she’s my priority right now.

She turned her attention to her sister as she got to her feet, the last luminous green motes of Yuriya’s Cura spell disappearing into the air in the process. “Sister…”

The next thing Ástríðr felt was her sister’s blood splashing onto her cheek, her fist buried so deeply into Sonja’s chest that she could feel the freshly-burst lung against her knuckles. She had been worried before, when she left herself behind and was thrown into the grip of her anger, but now it was an embrace she had thrown herself into, a welcome and overdue release of emotion. It felt right in a way it almost never had before, as she became fully attuned to the slumbering desire within her to rip and tear and gouge.

“I believe I was very clear on what would happen to you should Katsumi come to harm even incidentally, Sonja,” she said, and the anger edged her words with fulminating frost. She twisted her fist, further grinding the shattered ribs into the idiot’s body, a breathless whine of agony escaping from her. Her knee shot up and buried itself into Sonja’s groin, and it came away wet with blood as the dull jolt shot through the elf’s body. “To be honest, the only reason I’m not peeling you apart one limb and organ at a time and reducing you to a state beyond even our aunt’s ability to repair right now is because, in spite of your efforts, she remains unharmed. But your failure does not erase the attempt, the simple, irrefutable, unacceptable fact that you tried to take from me what was mine. And you should know by now, Sonja, that that’s not something I take kindly to. Shouldn’t you?”

Ástríðr changed her hand position, grabbing Sonja and throwing her into the street, where what remained of Sonja’s ribs seemed to menace her other lung. “Aunt Yuriya?”

A Curaga settled upon Sonja with motes of almost blindingly brilliant green, but Ástríðr was already moving, lifting a foot and stomping on Sonja’s sternum, causing a jolt to go through the elf’s body that sent yet another red geyser from her mouth. “It seems you’ve forgotten, Sonja, just which of us is the top dog here. You might be a higher level, but I’m sure you’re aware that the only reason you’re still alive is because of my charity, as conditional as it is. I have no idea how you’ve forgotten the lessons of our childhood, but it seems I will have to teach them to you anew. But that’s fine, you see, because despite this little lapse in judgement, this momentary madness that must have inspired you—I mean, I’ve always known you were a malicious, spiteful little shitstain, but this was rather remarkably stupid of you—we’re still family. The bonds of shared blood aren’t so easily shattered. And in acknowledgement of that, I am all too willing to spend the time and effort to carve those lessons into your miserable carcass, one by one.”

She then took her foot out of Sonja’s chest and waved her aunt over again, who was already part of the way through casting another Curaga. Sonja sucked in air with a harsh gasp, her lungs reinflating painfully as she coughed, turning over onto all fours to hack up bits of pink lung tissue. Ástríðr did not squander the opening, planting a firm foot into her abdomen with a powerful kick that sent Sonja flying up and into her grasp. She raised her twin in the air and said, “And now, with this, I trust the lesson has been learned!”

She brought Sonja’s body down and brought her knee up, slamming her sister’s spine into the raised surface with a sickening snap—Sonja’s pathetic scream of pain shredding the air—and then releasing, letting her tumble off of her knee and to the ground, jostling the injury.

Yuriya sighed and started casting again, but Ástríðr paid her aunt, who was now firmly back in her good books, no mind; her attention turned now to her lover, who looked away, guilt plain in her eyes and unease obvious in her face and bearing. The day before, the elf would have assumed that the girl was unnerved by Ástríðr’s show of force, but she knew better now, knew that the girl she loved was an idiot who likely believed her existence was at fault for driving a wedge between the siblings or some stupid shit like that. It fell, then, to Ástríðr to thoroughly disavow her of that fool notion, as she knew Katsumi was incapable of doing so herself.

It was almost too easy, shoving her and thus sending her reeling into a far wall with a small oof of expelled air. Ástríðr followed, of course; she couldn’t very well let Katsumi escape with such stupid ideas running through her head as she found some way to blame herself for Sonja’s crowning moment of idiocy. An arm slamming into the wall just above Katsumi’s head sent the correct message, that there was no out for her. In such a fashion, eyes wide and breath heavy, back against the wall and hemmed in by Ástríðr’s form, the girl was temptation made flesh. And knowing what she knew now, the elf did not hesitate to claim the forbidden fruit.

The small squeak of surprise anointed her as she claimed Katsumi’s lips, looking for all the world as though she meant to devour her lover and all that she was. She found she cared not for how it looked to anyone else, however; this girl, this vision, was hers; she could belong to no other, Ástríðr would not allow it, would rather set the world to flame and ash and ruin than ever seriously contemplate the possibility.

It was her lungs that managed to betray her first. Their coercive pleas for air forced her to break the kiss, and like every other time where Katsumi was concerned, her hunger for this girl was stoked and mounting anew. The idea that Sonja had been willing to take that from her… But no. No, despite wholeheartedly agreeing with the impulse that insisted that no amount of punishment could ever suffice for the magnitude of this betrayal her sister had attempted, to the point of lying about Katsumi’s last words, she knew that the prince would be quite put out were her favoured toy to be broken beyond repair, and not even the hatred she felt for Mercédès Charlotte Lucerne could cause her to forget that she was not someone to be crossed.

Not to mention, Mercédès was her best friend, and she wasn’t about to jeopardise that on account of Sonja, of all people.

Her lover leaned her head against the wall, her cheeks flushed, her eyes lidded and hazy, her pouty lips parted in an ever-so-erotic fashion, her breath fogging with each laboured exhale as she visibly fought the impulse to follow Ástríðr as the elf pulled away. Then the amethysts snapped back to startling awareness, the blushing glow in her cheeks intensifying as she snapped her jaw and mouth shut, averting her eyes to the ground.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Ástríðr remarked. “I don’t know what I’d do if Sonja had succeeded back there.”

“…”

“I’m sorry?”

“…”

“Speak up, love.”

“I said I wasn’t about to leave you!” Katsumi burst out, glaring ineffectually. Then she pouted. “Idiot…”

Ástríðr smirked. “That’s good. Because I wasn’t about to let you.”

The girl’s eyes widened, and her cheeks began to inflame to shades of red that Ástríðr didn’t know that complexion could make. “Don’t just say things like that! What are you, stupid?! What if someone overhears?!”

Ástríðr shrugged. “Let them hear. Let them gather around and listen. You’re mine. I will never be made to feel ashamed for that, and I don’t want you to, either.”

“I… I… I don’t…” Katsumi closed her eyes, carefully composing herself so that she could speak clearly. “We’re expected. I’d like to get going before I say something incriminating. Well…more incriminating, I guess… And…thank you. It’s…nice…to see that you care.”

Ástríðr chuckled, shaking her head. This girl was truly a beautiful little fool. It would be irritating if it wasn’t so consistently, insufferably adorable. She pressed a kiss to the crown scale pattern on her forehead. But I love that about her… “We’d best get going, then.”

“What do you mean, ‘we?’”

“I mean I’m coming with you, seeing as my moron of a sister has demonstrated herself as being unable to be trusted with the task of guarding you. If you think I’m leaving anything about this to chance after what transpired mere minutes ago, you’re addled.” Ástríðr locked eyes with her lover, doing her best to impress how deathly serious she was right then. “When I said I don’t want you out of my sight, I meant it. And I don’t know if you’ve happened to notice, but as a general matter, what I want, I get. I’m coming with you to the Silvern Basilica, and I’m going to be with you when you talk to Mercédès. Non-negotiable. Is that understood?”

Katsumi nodded eagerly and silently.

Ástríðr relaxed. “I’m glad we’re on the same page, then. Don’t worry. The Basilica itself might be invitation-only, but Mercédès and I go way back. In fact, I’d go so far as to say we’re each other’s best friends.”

“…Then why did you think she was going to hurt me? Wasn’t that why you nearly killed that squire earlier? Estinien, I think his name was?”

“Oh, because we hate each other, Mercédès and I,” Ástríðr replied, lost as to how her beloved could get confused over such a simple concept. “We always have, for as long as we’ve known each other.”

“But I thought you said you were best friends…?”

“We are.”

“And yet, you hate each other…?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I…see…” Katsumi replied, in a tone that made it abundantly clear that she was even more lost now than when she started.

“No, you don’t,” Ástríðr corrected, gently but firmly. “And that’s alright. You don’t have to. I know you’re plenty clever, love, but no one knows everything. Let’s just say that people like Her Grace and I form…rather unique bonds with others like us.”

“…That’s not terribly specific,” Katsumi noted.

Ástríðr laughed. “Well then, I guess it’ll be easier to just show you.”

The Silvern Basilica was a gleaming structure, made from some mixture of stone and crystal that lent the walls of the palace a metallic lustre, hence the name. It was the first truly alien structure Katsumi had seen in this new life of hers, and the first true seat of power she’d ever actually visited in memory. Yet, its exterior, despite all of its crenellations and confounding buttresses, its empyrean spires and sweeping artifice, was of no consequence when juxtaposed against the majestic grandeur of the interior, the arches and arcades supporting ceilings of rooms larger than any she had ever occupied. Frescoes and paintings and tapestries adorned the walls between imposing stained-glass windows, each with an artistry that Katsumi would have hazarded to say was beyond mortal means.

Magic, once again.

The throne in the audience chamber looked for all the world to be carved from one single, massive pearl, uninterrupted and bereft of the irregularities one would always find in stone of a similar hue, and sat upon it in what appeared to be utmost comfort was the prince herself.

The audience chamber was packed with petitioners, each waiting their turn to present their case for arbitration to their sovereign, who was hiding her irritation and boredom well, but not perfectly. No one who was not explicitly looking for it would find it.

When her eyes caught sight of Katsumi, however, everyone in the audience chamber, even the long-winded petitioner currently basking in his fifteen minutes of fame, noticed how her gaze sharpened and glinted, her entire reclined posture perking up slightly.

“Lady Katsumi! I must admit, you certainly know how to keep a girl in suspense,” Prince Mercédès interrupted, silencing the petitioner as the sovereign addressed the drahn directly. “I had wondered when you would make your entrance—I had not thought you the sort to hold to the idea that tardiness can ever be fashionable.”

“…My apologies, Your Grace,” Katsumi replied, bowing at the waist. “I was delayed by matters beyond my control.”

“‘Twas but a jest, my friend,” the prince replied, waving her hand with an expression of mirth somewhere between a giggle and a chuckle. “Your commitment to decorum is unnecessary, endearing though it may be.”

“Your Grace…” protested the petitioner.

“We believe you have made your point, Baron Fortinbras. It shall be presented to the council, where we shall consider it,” Mercédès interjected, polite but firm. “Now, Maman, would you do the honours? I would prefer to have this meeting beyond the sight of prying eyes, and out of overeager earshot, so bent to catch state secrets.”

Dame Rienna stepped out of an alcove to the side of the pearl throne, and nodded to the robed and armoured people, soldiers, Katsumi supposed, that she only just now managed to notice. Each of them bore at their wrists a bracelet, each of which suspended the same five-limbed cross that the knight-captain had on her belt buckle. Their garb was uniformly white, some with black and some with gold, which Katsumi supposed was an indication of rank, though there were no signs as to which colour outranked the other. Upon closer inspection, however, the robes themselves were not robes at all, but instead almost fully identical to kyūdōgi, the only divergence being in the extra ornamentation, made of a material that she wanted to call metal, but couldn’t, given its matte finish.

They nodded in unison in return, stepping forth to begin filing the petitioners out of the audience chamber, which took several minutes, a far shorter time than Katsumi had expected that to take given it being not only on short notice, but also in such a large room. The last of the petitioners exited and the doors that Katsumi hadn’t noticed swung closed, leaving the strange sentinels to return silently to their posts around the room.

“By your delay, I am to infer that my concubine has learned her place? I must admit, my love, I had not expected you to deliver her to me in one piece. Or rather…I had thought you more than equal to such a task,” said the prince, and her smile was not a knife, but a garrote wire, dripping with subtle poison. “Ah, well. I don’t suppose you’ve come here to make amends… Katsumi, my dear, you look rather lost. Where, exactly, did my words cease to make sense, pray tell?”

“…No, it’s just… I had not supposed that what you wanted from me could be taken from my corpse, Your Grace,” Katsumi replied with another bow. The calm settled over her again, her mind working to take account of the room’s features and to assess just how much danger she was in here. “I apologise; I’m afraid I lack the head to appreciate such subtleties.”

The prince was silent for a split moment, and in her state of hyper-awareness, Katsumi’s attention artificially dilated that instant, catching how Mercédès’s eyes were inarticulably, almost imperceptibly wrong for the span between one blink and the next. Her garrote smile morphed fully into a smirk.

The world flickered for half a beat.

“The fuck!” cried Ástríðr, and Sonja let out an accompanying grunt from beside and behind Katsumi. She knew without looking that yet more of these sentinels had appeared and grabbed both of them from behind—the air reeked of something between ozone and iron, evoking the image of an antlion in its burrow.

“I bid you calm yourself, good-sister,” said Mercédès, her tone too overdone to be conciliatory, and thus mocking. “I’m only sending you off to the dungeons until my conversation with your beloved is through. I’m sure you can beat your record in that time, no?”

“I see no reason why they must be restrained. I’m certain one of your magnanimous stature has more appropriate amenities for them to wait in,” Katsumi interjected.

“There is no arrangement more fitting for dearest Sonja, and it simply wouldn’t be fair to give one more prestigious treatment than the other. Or did you wish to place a wedge between them? It seems awfully aggrandising.”

Katsumi’s tongue was suddenly too large for her throat, and her voice betrayed her. She glared at the floor impotently, but nodded all the same. “Do as you will, then.”

“It’s adorable that you ever thought I wouldn’t, truly.” With those prim words and an unseen cue, the sentinels began to escort the pair from the room.

It was only when the door slammed shut like the lid on a sarcophagus that Katsumi exhaled heavily. “Now you have me alone, isolated, the weak link separated from her protectors. An enviable position in which to find prey as far as any predator is concerned, to be certain. And yet I find myself still wondering one thing. What do you wish of me?”

Peals of laughter so light and innocent that in context it sounded like nothing short of mockery echoed about the vaulted chamber. “Were you not the property of my dearest friend Ástríðr, I might have played along with your naïveté and at least ordered you to strip. But, alas, you’d likely take me seriously and then Father only knows how many compromising positions we’d end up in.”

“It never ceases to fascinate me how one can use so many words and yet say nothing,” Katsumi replied with an affectation of faux-affability.

“Nope,” she said, and a blacksmith’s shop would have stocked fewer sharp objects than her expression at that moment—stilettos this time instead of garrotes. “I’m not here to play that game. I say more than you know, Katsumi. I cannot be held responsible for your inability to hear what is being spoken plainly. For instance, I have, to my knowledge, clearly stated that you are important to me only in that you are connected to my concubine and, more pressingly, her sister, Ástríðr. I suspect that will change with time. You are, after all, quite the big player in this game we call life—even if you don’t know it yet.”

“I have been made painfully aware of that fact, I’m afraid,” Katsumi replied, forcing down her irritation as she reached down to her satchel, almost unconsciously, and placed her hand against the place where the seed rested. Its warmth and gentle pulsing was pronounced even through the leather of the bag and the thin leather of her glove, bringing a strange vital stillness into her slight form. “Thrice have I been visited by those who spoke much the same. Riddles and esoterica seem their stock and trade; yet, you lack their air. There is but one I was said to await, and thus, I somehow doubt you are the one they call ‘Loki.’ And so I must wonder as to your designs, as I do theirs, together with how, specifically, they concern me and mine.”

“…Your blade,” the prince said at length. “I would see it. Not today, of course, but there will be ample time for such things in the future. You will, after all… I cannot think of a way to end that sentence in a way that you could hope to decipher… What I mean to say is that you and I are further connected than you think and that bond… Well, you happen to remind me of someone that I once knew. It is… Odd that you would stand before me. That you would look at me with those eyes. I feel almost comfortable—if only in memory.”

“You are not unique in that. With respect, Your Grace, it becomes tiresome to be constantly confronted with those who seem to know more about me than I do,” replied Katsumi. “It is as though my arrival to this land was an event of some note, that those in such high office take note of it in such a manner. Regardless of the accuracy of such a claim, I must admit, I was not informed.”

It weighs more now than it does in battle, doesn’t it? The moment you saw me… I felt it.”

“I am ignorant as to the nature of your insinuation, Your Grace, and I must protest if it is nefarious. I divulge such things to you because…” Katsumi stopped. Why did she divulge such things to this woman?

The seed pulsed once, much more strongly, and the words came with an easy smile. “I suppose it’s because I remember that at times, a girl trips and falls in the course of official business, only to be caught by a dreamer with more ambition than sense; and while at the time it might seem innocuous, looking back upon it, the veil of predetermination settles quickly.”

Katsumi was somewhat amazed at how such simple words rendered one who had up until this point been a consummate politician so thoroughly speechless that her jaw hung open. “You appear unduly astonished. Have I said anything improper?”

“Ástríðr… What have you brought me…” The prince muttered under her breath. When she finally seemed to find herself again, she said, “Strip.”

There was a certain familiarity that suffused Katsumi such that she gave heed to the prince’s command; she did so, shedding her garments one by one that she then stood before the throne, barefoot and naked save for the sarashi that held her breasts, modest though they might have been, in place. Her tail swished back and forth to acclimate to the new balance her nudity afforded, and before she stood properly before the prince, her mind nagged her to kneel and draw from the now discarded satchel the warm seed that even now glimmered and emitted a low, umbral chorale in her hand.

She looked up only to be stopped dead, seeing that the prince was now in a similar state of undress—a quick once-over determined that she was indeed an elf, and as such, equipped as she had learned Ástríðr to be over the past two days.

The other, far less pleasant, matter she noticed was the fact that there was only slightly less scar tissue than unmarred flesh on the prince’s body.

Katsumi’s attention was drawn to the single finger the prince brought to bear upon an unmarred patch on her inner arm, drawing it down sharply as though smudging a line on her skin. The flesh opened, and on Katsumi’s arm, a pain so intense it was existential shot through the limb.

Katsumi grasped the seed in her injured arm, and took her other hand, instead of to the pain on her arm as the wound opened, to her mouth. Her teeth felt sharper, firmer than usual, but she could not bring herself to remark upon it as she closed her jaw on her finger without hesitation, breaking the skin and bringing hot blood to her lips. There was danger there, some part of her knew, but perhaps not quite so much danger with the prince as there would have been with others; the wounded finger she brought to the prince as it dripped blood that steamed as it hit the floor, hissing almost like an acid. Using her hand high she motioned for the prince to take her blood in turn.

Mercédès’s brow furrowed in confusion, but whatever she saw in Katsumi’s eyes at that moment informed her of what was to happen, and she took three drops of the drahn’s blood into her mouth, swallowing it. Three drops, no more, and Katsumi drew her hand away into her own mouth, licking the puncture as it sealed.

“Normally, this is where I would say that the pain will pass but the blessing will not. Today, however, I think I needed to hear those words more than you did.” There was an almost melancholy edge to her smile this time, and it brought a smile to Katsumi’s own.

“A blessing for a curse. A blood oath rewritten. A covenant renewed,” the drahn replied. “It was never going to be pleasant, I’d venture.”

“Yes, indeed,” Mercédès said, although her eyes told Katsumi that she was more used to granting than to being granted. Katsumi felt the Beast within roil in rebellion, a foreign thing entering her soul, but in moments, the creature surged, and found more defined form; instead of a reptilian, serpentine thing scraping along the insides of her skin, she felt something of a body akin to her own surging through her limbs. The Darkside whispered in agitation, but she could puzzle out its tidings later; and besides, some part of her was certain that Mercédès was in a similar state, her composure aside. “Should Ástríðr permit it, I would advise you to return home in such a state of undress. That which I have bestowed has rendered you vulnerable for a time, and as the sun is now your ally, I think it wise to make its acquaintance more so than you have been, given your complexion.”

“Understood,” Katsumi said, nodding. Then a thought occurred. “Also, I should warn you that you should clear out a few days. What I gave you is going to start smarting soon.”

Sonja believed she had had better days. She was having trouble remembering any due to how terrible this day in particular was, but she was certain she had once been happy and content with her lot in life. Once being freed from her prince’s dungeon, however, those happier times fell away. That thrice-damned stupid, bitchy, irresponsible, hateful, horrific drahn! Sonja hated her. Sonja hated her sister for loving her. She hated her prince for indulging her. She hated herself for losing to her. She hated her. The moment Sonja figured out how to dispose of her, there would be no place in the world to which that damned monster would be able to escape her.

Several hours had passed since she and her sister were incarcerated in the dungeon, and they now stood outside of the audience chamber to receive the prince’s judgement. After several minutes spent waiting outside, denied entry by the Star Knights, the prince’s personal guard, Sonja was ready to concede that this day could not get any worse; then the double doors swung open, and she stood, dumbstruck, as her prince stood on what appeared to be shaky knees, holding herself up by way of slinging her arm over that fucking drahn’s shoulder. That fucking drahn, by the way, who was holding herself up by way of leaning on her prince. Before Sonja had a chance to explode at them, however, she noticed something that made her heart sink. There was a scar on the drahn’s arm. A matching scar had been engraved into her prince’s arm. Before a single thought had a chance to run through her mind, Sonja found herself charging the duo, screaming, “What the fuck have you done to her?!”

The prince turned to Sonja, and the smile she flashed was equal parts keen and wicked. “Well, I’m naked. She’s naked. We’ve been alone for about three hours. You tell me?”

Under just about any other circumstances, had it been anyone but the drahn, the insinuation would have made Sonja weak in the knees. But given the persons involved… To say that it further stoked the flames of her fury would have been a falsehood by way of insufficient degrees of severity. In short, it would be a gross understatement.

With no consideration for anything, Sonja sprinted up towards the drahn to punch her in the face. The punch never connected, though. Sonja found herself frozen in place, her own scar burning hotter than it ever had before. Her prince had paralized her for the moment. Feelings of betrayal began to seep into her soul as she felt tears of impotent rage rolling down her cheeks. The fact that her prince was taking the blight on her life’s side over her own made her uncomfortably aroused did nothing to make the situation better.

The monster placed her face in her hand and sighed in exasperation. “I counseled against it, but Her Grace was most insistent upon the jest. I apologise in her stead since she will not, and bid you rest assured we have done nothing of what she is implying.

Ástríðr’s hand came down on her shoulder and Sonja heard her sister say, “I mean, we still can do all of that, as long as I’m included.”

“I suppose we could, at that,” Her Grace speculated thoughtfully.

“No. We can’t,” the drahn snapped most rudely, her face flushed, no doubt one of the ways in which she lured in those like her prince and her sister, and warped into a mask of mortified belligerence.

Ástríðr laughed uproariously. “It’s cute that you think you have a choice.”

“I’ll take first go at the mouth?” Mercédès proposed with a wry grin, a lascivious glint in her eyes.

“Sure, but the ass is off-limits for now.”

“Really? Ugh. Fair enough, I guess.”

“I really hope this is what passes for verbal sparring between you two…” the drahn whined.

Both of the most important people in Sonja’s life shrugged. “Maybe we are.”

“Maybe we aren’t.”

Then they finished in unison. “Either way, it doesn’t concern you.”

“Don’t we all have things to do? I’d like to get back to all those things we need to get done today. I like getting things done, especially when it doesn’t mean getting things in my things for several hours when we’ve already burned so much daylight.”

How dare this scum not only do all that she’d done, but then get Sonja’s hopes up, make her confused about them, and leave her stewing in her confusion as they came crashing down!

“Gotcha. Rain check?” Ástríðr inquired.

“Rain check,” Mercédès replied with a grin.

“Good to see you two are getting along…” the drahn muttered. “Still haven’t seen you two hating each other yet, though…”

“That’s on you,” Mercédès sniped.

“She’s right. You don’t get to turn down a three-way and then complain about not getting a three-way,” Ástríðr added.

“So…the enmity you spoke about is sexual in nature?”

“Pretty much,” Ástríðr replied.

“Always has been,” Mercédès confirmed.

“Well, at least it’s not because one of you jilted the other. Take the victories I can get…”

“She’s cute when she’s trying not to be jealous,” Mercédès noted.

“She really is,” Ástríðr nodded.

“Somehow I feel like a sack of rice has more agency than I do right now…”

Yuriya believed it was safe to say she had had her fill of stimulation for the day; for the first time since she had known her sister-in-law, since she had first met the formidable woman her little brother had fallen head-over-heels for, she considered reporting the day’s findings to her to be preferable to the alternative course of action—namely, dealing with what was apparently the return of her lady liege of eld, the woman who had had far and away the most significant impact on the life she lived, unassisted.

To this end, upon her niece thankfully defusing the situation and causing them to part ways, the fabled Sword Saint had beat a hasty retreat, taking the most expeditious route from her hunting grounds back to the Drunken Whore. She had never quite been able to discern why her brother and his wife had chosen to open a bordello in the Rouge to raise their children; upon the dissolution of their adventuring company, the Laughing Tree, immediately following the Great War, all five of them—Tsuyu, Yuriya, Rienna, Tandem, and Sebastian—had had sufficient means to buy out the Free Cities if they so desired. Of them, Rienna alone had made good use of such means, while Yuriya and Sebastian preferred to wander, but even Sebastian had settled down once he found a man he wanted to raise a family with, making good use of their resources. So why a whorehouse?

It was then that Yuriya realised just how off-balanced seeing the image of her lady liege before her had made her, that she had such extraneous thoughts floating unabated through her mind. She was keenly aware of how unlike her such an occurrence was, and such knowledge only served to compound her already profound unease.

Sweeping into the establishment, and moving past beloved Kagura and her sister opening packs for the children’s card game ‘Heroes’ (Yuriya having given each a box from the game’s newest set, ‘World of Ruin,’ fresh from Rosenfaire and Sophia’s contacts, the day before), Yuriya made a beeline to Tsuyu, who seemed to understand the urgency of her tidings. Tsuyu was always dangerously observant, and she had never appreciated that faculty of hers more than she did at that moment, when she jerked her head into the kitchen, beneath which was the magically cooled cellar for alcohol and perishables.

Nodding, Yuriya watched Tsuyu begin to make her way there, following hot on her tail. Maelnaulde was meteorologically capricious to say the least, temperate only until the sunset brought the icy winds knifing through the streets, and so the kitchen’s oven being able to double as a furnace to route gentle heat through the establishment while keeping the night’s toothy maw out was an ingenious investment, which more than offset the cost not only of such a device, but also the size of kitchen it necessitated. The cellar was accessed through an alcove in the kitchen, easily missed, within which was nestled away a stairwell into the subterranean storeroom.

Into this alcove and down into the cellar they went, and wreathed as it was with magical characters of various interlocking languages and systems for the sole purpose of regulating the temperature throughout specific sections of the chamber without the need for physical walls, the area was significantly colder than the tavern area over their heads; it was also, as a consequence of the enchantments, soundproofed, to the point of it being the most private area in the bordello.

“So then, Yuriya. You wished to discuss something with me? Something of an urgent and presumably sensitive nature?” Tsuyu prompted without preamble as she whirled about to face the Sword Saint.

“I’m assuming you’re aware that your daughter made her move to eliminate the girl—the drahn, the new one whose name I don’t know—once they were out of earshot,” Yuriya began.

“I was aware that it was eventually going to happen. I’m unsurprised that she chose that particular opportunity to strike, though I must confess my disappointment in her and her judgement all the same,” Tsuyu replied. “However, I sincerely doubt that you of all people would consider that information in any way urgent or sensitive.”

“Your daughter didn’t succeed in her task,” the Sword Saint continued. “And her failure was not due to any outside interference, or indeed, her own inadequacy. Vast though it is in truth, her idiocy was not the cause of her downfall. Not this time.”

Tsuyu didn’t deign to respond to that verbally, taking a long draw from the smouldering embers of kizami in her kiseru and making a supercilious gesture to prompt the elf to continue.

Yuriya was well-aware that she was stalling, and that it was as contrary to the rest of her baseline self as the conflict that writhed startlingly within her, overridden though that conflict was with that peculiar mix of anxiety and tension her former mentor always somehow managed to draw from her. I didn’t expect to see her again, not in a form like that, and certainly not so soon… Blast it…

The image of those eyes, icy and glacial and inhuman, set in an unnaturally fair, pale face framed with long, wavy silver-white hair, flashed into view once more.

“You disappoint me, little one. As you are, you’ll never know what it is to live… And a flower stagnant in the bud, never to blossom or bloom, is one of the few true tragedies.”

Yuriya let out a frustrated exhale. Damn that woman, unnaturally immaculate and infuriatingly perfect as she was, and damn her spectre that even now had its fine, elegant fingers burrowed deep into the familiar corridors and trenches of her embattled mind. “She’s returned. I’m certain of it.”

“To whom are you referring, Yuriya dearest?” asked Tsuyu, her immaculate black brow furrowed ever so slightly.

This is it. Do or die. “I’m referring to the only one I’ve ever feared. The Promised Blade.”

Tsuyu’s eyes widened in shock for a moment, and then she suddenly couldn’t contain her mirth. When the next words left her plum-hued lips, they were somewhere between bemused and incredulous, spoken between fits of laughter that visibly shook her glamourous frame. “Is that… Is that all?”

Now it was Yuriya’s turn to be nonplussed. “Is that… Wait… You knew this was going to happen? Did you plan this?!”

“In order: yes, no,” replied Tsuyu, glib in the way only she could be. “In no way did I intend for your old teacher to show up on my doorstep, but if you think I didn’t immediately recognise the girl who came to us that day, then I am left with no choice but to believe you’ve taken leave of your senses, dear.”

“So, you knew the girl was the return of the Promised Blade, and you chose to leave me ignorant of that?”

“Two things,” said Tsuyu, holding up a finger on her free hand before releasing a steady plume of opaque white smoke. “First, you were likely to figure it out on your own eventually, and if you didn’t figure it out, it would be a non-issue. And second, had I told you that dear Katsumi was the Promised Blade in a new form, can you honestly tell me you would have waited long enough for such traits to emerge on their own?”

To that, Yuriya had no answer.

“Age has made you distrustful, sister. I must ask you to have faith in me once more, as you did so long ago, and I swear to you that all of us shall emerge from the other side of the approaching series of events intact. Well…” Tsuyu smirked around the pipe of her kiseru. “…at least, in a manner of speaking.”

“…Fine. I’ll be sharpening my sword. I trust you have the necessary tools handy?”

“Tandem’s the one to ask if you want them brought to you. With regards to method, you still follow the sashikomi nugui school, yes?”

“Onimaru is temperamental,” said the Sword Saint with a shrug.

“Very good. I’ll have them to you anon.”

Yuriya nodded, and turned to ascend the stairs. Then, halfway to the ground floor, she stopped. “See that you keep that oath, Tsuyu. Kagura is important to me. I will not stand to see her come to harm unduly.”

With that, she made her exit, missing the twist to Tsuyu’s lips.

Tsuyu chuckled. “The Yuriya of a century ago would never have said such things about anyone. But then, I suppose love makes fools of us all in the end, doesn’t it, dear sister?”