Twenty three| Old friends and tempting fate.

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Something was very wrong.


Izana realized that as the week went on. At first he was adamant on confronting you on the observations he's had. But as the day went on, he decided to watch it play out a little more before he stepped in.


Why?

Because someone was causing this new reaction from you. You were more alert now, your shoulders stiff and the occasional shaking of your hands. As if you were scared. The first thoughts that came to Izana is that someone of a higher power in the castle had tried intimidate you. But he immediately decided against it.


You don't get intimidated that easily, and especially not by government power. Not when you had him to protect you. Unless it was an order from the king himself—and even then Izana would have a decent amount of influence— Izana was the only one who could somewhat intimidate you with his status. And lord help any councilman or duke who dares to disrespect his royal guard. Personal favoritism aside, Izana is very good to his employees as he is to his citizens.


But someone had scared you. And not the scared that he could easily fix. It wasn't until he called you by your real name and you had the most unnatural reaction—you were startled, as if your name was sensitive— did he realize that this had to be someone who knew your name. Your real name. And the prince was sure he was the only one in Clarines who knew your name. And he was careful, more than anything to make sure he only calls you that occasionally. In complete privacy.


Next was the fact that you rarely left his side, not to even wander around like you usually would. These days you took longer to finish a chapter from the books you took out from the library because you would zone out staring at the pages.


To anyone else, Izana might have been seen as over analyzing. And maybe he was, the prince knew he had favored you far too much. He hadn't even realized that he'd long been hypersensitive to you. And the fact that this change was so abrupt hit him like a fan.


By the third day he had concluded that someone in the castle knew of your identity, what they were going to do with that information was beyond the prince. But he couldn't intervene, not unless you asked him to. And if you did, he'd make sure that the person would never have the pleasure to see you ever again.


All you had to do was say the word... and he was willing to wait.


For how long, the prince wasn't sure.


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It had been three days since you'd last seen Obi, Izana and Zen were still bickering like the annoying siblings they were. They even had a fake sword fight, where you got to see the true extent of Izana's expertise.

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