I S O L A T I O N

Chapter Three

Maybe a hundred years ago, a princess was gentle, compassionate, and public-spirited. She was the example set to all the nobles and the knights and the generals on how to behave— how to treat their people. Her crown was a gift by the people, not a right, and she knew this, and she took the honor as her life. A princess was a symbol as much as the tiara on her head.

These days, that princess is gone, but she's in the tresses of a future wind that crawls passed the dour castle bricks. The thing about good things, new and beautiful things, is that they tend to grow out of the ashes of the old and decrepit. She cannot come again, and she will not come again, unless the errors of the past have been burned into black, fertile soot.

So, yes. Maybe in these days a princess is a coward tucked in the sharp metal bosom of wealth, power, and puppetry, but know that there will come a day when the tiara will gleam with jewels of wisdom, courage, honor, and tenacity. Endure these times, for they are the fertile soil from which she will grow.

"What's this?" Jeuls asked, glossing over a scroll marked with penmanship to the amount of a toddler playing with his mother's quill and ink.

The lightly armored man stood at his position beside the princess's desk, and said princess simply laid on her side atop the desk with eyes fixated on the space between her mind and otherwise. She had handed him the simple scroll, but she said nothing about it, and Jeuls was left clueless as to what she meant by the words.

Not that it was anything new between them. The girl was an enigma at best, an airhead at worst. She didn't talk much. Whether that was because she didn't have much to say or simply chose to convey herself in other ways, he wasn't sure yet. It was difficult to tell if she was shy or just plain uninterested, as she was always so distant, and often he couldn't even tell if she was paying attention to the world around her. This protruding, queer brick in the wall that they called a princess was a code he could not decipher— but an enemy's or an ally's?

There were many things that he didn't know about her as there were many things that he vacillated between deciding on, but there were certain truths that he knew. Princess Asher the Unblooded. It was the name that her people gave her when she was unearthed from both the confines she was kept in and the darkest trenches of the royal family's covered mouths. She had been locked up in secret for 19 years, and, had the royal family not been slaughtered and diminished to but her, then in that tiny cubby deep within the castle was where she would have remained forever.

But she was indeed the final member of the royal family, and that was why they stood in that room, the Monarch's Nap, where he had stood beside her father, her mother, and her sister in the last five years. Princess Asher wasn't the first crown that he had served, and he was sure that she wouldn't be the last, but if there was one thing that she had over anybody else in her blood it was her peculiarity.

The Proudbanner family, from Emperor Vi back when the four corners were one empire down to the late Princess Denza, was known for more than just their wealth. Pride. It was in their name, and the family took it very seriously. Princess Denza and Asher's father, His Royal Highness, Most Honorable Protector of Felv, The King Rossca the Greater was infamous for his obnoxious displays of power. The only thing bigger than his ego and title was his army, and they marched throughout his kingdom like an overseer over slaves.

Princess Denza, of course, liked to show her hand in other, more tasteful ways. A small twitch escaped his brow as he recalled all the times he had to pause his actual responsibilities as the captain of the guard to play ballroom designer for one of her lavish parties with all the other nobles throughout the four corners. It was her way of showing her material value, her grace and dignity, but it achieved the same goal: respect.

But Asher? Even for having lived in solitude with minimal contact all her life, she was odd. It had been three weeks since the girl was discovered and named crown of Felv, yet in all the time and in all the turbulence since he had yet to see her show any emotion. She was a blank. She didn't have those Proudbanner eyes, either, the kind that lurked and prodded and deceived; hers were  her own lost jewels. They were broken compasses. Fluttering butterflies.

This girl was definitely very different from her kin, and it wasn't just because of her curse.

"Did you copy this from somewhere...? Do you want me to do something with it...?" Jeuls asked. Asher looked down at the floor for a moment as she lied on the desk, then, glancing back up through the shadow of quiet lids, she opened her rosen lips.

"No," she muttered. Jeuls raised a brow and gave a defeated sigh. It had never been so difficult for him to be told what to do before. All he could do was set the note on the chair that evidently wasn't for sitting.

There really was no point in fighting the minds at the top. They were from a different reality than everyone else— that he had learned over the last fifteen years he'd spent as the guard captain. He was only 39; if he exhausted himself over every member of the family he would be worn out by his next birthday. The best course of action was just to let it fall from his shoulders. His eyes trailed over to the grand open window whose curtains swayed in the breeze.

There were other ways out, of course...

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and Jeuls's attention found the mahogany threshold with his hand twitching at the sword hanging from his belt; Asher hardly flinched. The door creaked open, as Jeuls watched with iron eyes glinting with the steel of his blade, and a man in a navy cloak stepped into the room. The captain relaxed his shoulders.

Despite the furtive wardrobe, and the hood that hid his face, Jeuls knew this man. Half of all the residents in Felv's graveyards knew this man. It was... Well, in times such as then it was probably better not to even think about the identity of a cloaked ally working in the shadows— least dark magics hear and seek to unmask them. No, he simply turned his head then and gazed back out at the city that surrounded the castle, the sky red with the barrier that engulfed it.

It was routine then, wasn't it? He saw nothing. Said nothing. His job was to guard the new princess, not to arrest political terrorists or shadowy assassins. What the cloak had in mind had to do with the Invader from the desert. That guy wasn't exactly royalty. As far as he was concerned, he could walk right out with his head. Or the other way around. They called the guy a hero, but that was neither here nor there. As long as he had a job and his people weren't getting picked off like insects then it didn't really matter who was paying him.

He was a simple man.

The cloaked man ghosted across the room like a phantom in the day, grabbing something from a dresser in the corner before turning back to the desk where he stopped. Most of the time that the captain spotted him, it was in brief passing that he was sneaking around, but there were times, such as now, that his lack of intervention was strained. It was when the princess was near, and cloak would glare at her with eyes that burned even through the shadow of his hood. Jeuls didn't like it. At all.

Once the contact between the man and the oblivious girl he locked eyes on became too overstayed, Jeuls cleared his throat, side-eyeing the man with his blade in his hand. The cloak turned his head, and he left without a word. The captain rubbed his shoulder with a wrinkle of his nose.

Whatever his agenda was, as long as it didn't involve Asher, he was fine with being left out.