"Gueth ths commander's orders aren't tho absolute, huh, Miss Alice?" I muttered, biting into the juicy, tender piece of meat.

No response came from Alice, who lay motionless on her bedding on the ground, feigning sleep. I quietly smirked.

My gaze shifted to my newly acquired pair of shoes, sitting in front of my empty bedding, positioned beside hers. A grin tugged at my lips.

"Wife is goot," I whispered, a warm fuzziness filling my chest.

"Is it?" Alice’s voice cut through the quiet.

She lay on her back atop a modest, deep green coverlet. My own bedding, a mere palm's breadth away, remained untouched. The cramped tent held just enough room for the two of us, illuminated by the flicker of a low-burning oil lamp.

I sat cross-legged, picking at the greasy remnants of the chicken, each tear of meat from bone filling the quiet with a soft crackle.

The rich scent of smoke and faint traces of damp earth lingered in the air, mingling with the sharp tang of oil from the lamp.

Alice lay like how one would expect her to, with her cardboard-for-a-personality attitude. Hands resting neatly over her stomach, her neck perfectly centered on her pillow, her clothes for the next day sitting prettily folded on the ground above her head, without a single wrinkle.

She sleeps like she's the corpse at a funeral.

"You are a prisoner of the empire, despised by the kingdom for something as petty as slapping a woman." Alice’s voice was flat, as if reading from a ledger. "Your parents condemned you to rot, your fiancé has likely dissolved your engagement..." Alice trailed off, thinking of more things to list.

And I'll be dead in days. I nearly added.

Alice's words had slightly fractured the bubble of warmth I had allowed myself into.

"I know." I chewed, dropping a bone to the ground beside the chicken’s picked-over carcass. "That doesn't stop me from appweciating this moment."

Idealistic? Perhaps. But the feeling was real enough.

I leaned back, disregarding the heaviness settling over me.

Just a few days ago, I was barefoot and starving.

"That makes one optimist amongst us," Alice said quietly, her tone softening, the words slipping free almost unintentionally.

The tent's light flickered with the dancing of the flames in the oil lamp.

"Tell me, Alice. What appens to you if I were to die?" This was something I always wondered.

Given the fact that Alice was not in the main story, not even as a background character, I had no way of knowing what kind of fate she and her caravan suffered.

"If you were to die, disappear or run away and leave me here, my lady, the knight order will dispose me. For my existence would then become meaningless." The calmness of her tone was eerie as she recited these words, eyes closed.

"Why?"

Someone as skilled as a lady-in-waiting dying pointlessly is no short of a waste.

Alice turned to me, opening her eyes to meet mine.

"A lady-in-waiting's soul is bound to her lady's. My duty is to share your pains and joys, to think of your life more than my own and to put your best interests at value every moment that I live. If you die, I share your pain through death. If we’re separated, I would be executed for failing in my duties.”

I blinked, somewhat impressed by her ability to explain something so grotesque with such composure.

One naturally feels bad for someone in her position, I suppose. Not that there was anything I could do for her.

"The Korpian Records of Yilderen. That's where suth bullthit is cited, wight?"

"... It is preferable that you not insult religious scripture, my lady." For a moment, the ghost of a grin tugged on Alice's lips.

Breaking the rules of the Korpian faith meant death, and I understood her caution. Yilderen, the so-called Kingdom of the Lasting, was where Wholeheartedly Yours took place.

Absolute power was represented by the king, influenced by one thing and one thing alone; Korpian Clergymen.

When the kingdom faced peril - something about dragons, curses and deities; typical exposition bullshit — it was the Korpians who found a worthy candidate to defeat the impending evil and establish new rule.

Their call to glory was answered by the Braveheart household. So now the Braveheart bloodline is royal, and the Korpian faith basically rules on equal footing, hand in hand with the emperor under the pretense that they are simply his majesty's advisors.

The worldbuilding in that book was flat and forgettable. So even as I can unfortunately recite most passages in the book, I have but a faint idea of what the backdrop of the story really was. The book was too busy with Estelle's harem and the descriptions of her immense beauty and cool personality to focus on the world and what it was.

All I know is that magic people are bad, except rich and hot ones.

Temple people are also bad, but most people are religious because it's compulsory, so no one actually cares.

And the king is a wuss who remained neutral too long, till a war broke out between the mages and the clergymen.

The war was probably the most horrible thing the book referenced. But the hopelessness of it was only relevant to highlight how grand a feat Estelle Pureheart managed to pull by stopping the war in the end.

Yes. She singlehandedly stopped a full-fledged war, using the power of love and a half-assed speech about her mixed heritage.

I wonder if my chronic idiocy stems from that book killing my brain cells as a kid...

Oh, and now that I think about it, the War has not started yet. Penelope Ashdown's trial occurred within the first half of the book, a handful of chapters before Estelle and William's (Wholeheartedly Yours' winner male lead) chaotic-ass engagement party. The war starts roughly after that.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Alice had fallen asleep while I was spacing out.

Wiping my hands and mouth, I gathered my hair (a soft blonde mess that's way too long for my liking) into a bun and took out the parchment hidden in my corset. It was a stolen map, with a list of supplies scrawled on the back—written in my own blood, no less, since I’d been too paranoid to ask Alice for ink.

She wasn’t to be trusted, but she could be used. She seemed to prefer that to being dead.

I gave her a long look, wondering if she would tell Blert about my transaction with Truman tomorrow...

I put the folded parchment back into the corset and leaned back.

A soft breeze tickled the tent’s outer walls while I waited. For sleep. For the commander to arrive. For morning.

I stared at my left ring finger, noting the pale line where a ring once sat—a mark of Penelope Ashdown’s past.

Trevor Vielle…

"Quietly leave your tent." A hiss resonated behind me, outside.

I stiffened, my breath catching as I saw the silhouette crouched by the tent’s thin canvas wall.

"Sir Blert?" My eyes flicked nervously to Alice, still asleep. "I'm shackled," I whispered back, pointing to the iron shackle clasped tightly around my ankle.

"No matter. I shall cast the spell from here. Proximity suffices."

The low, rasping voice belonged to Commander Blert. He had promised me this spell, a binding magic that would allow him to know my location at all times. Why it had to be done in the dead of night remained a mystery.

"Fowgive my curiosity, but why can't you do this in daylight, Sir?" I couldn't help but ask, on my knees facing his shadow on the canvas.

"You would do well not to question my choices, girl," he snapped, voice cold and clipped. "Place your hands upon the tent wall, close your eyes, and be silent."

I begrudgingly complied. My hands pressed against his, separated by the tent's canvas, slippery and chilly. A shiver raced up my spine when he spoke a language foreign to me, the words rough and repetitive.

And then, suddenly; "Swear." He demanded, his voice strained.

"Sweaw? On what?"

"Just say it, you daft wench." His teeth were gritted, likely from the pain of casting the spell. "Swear!"

I grinned at the pain I sensed in his trembling touch, waiting just long enough to make him suffer.

When he began to groan and his touch threatened to detach from my palm, I huffed it, concealing my amusement.

"I swear."

Blert groaned, continuing the chant.

“Korpa, hearst thou mine pleas. Chain this woman to mine charge, 'til mind final breath be taketh and mine soul resteth in the land of the perished. Curse her steps with mine shadow and shroud her with mine will, ‘til doom and flame swallow this wretched soul.”

"Amen," I added, once sure he was done.

Blert took his hands off the tent's canvas. "A what?"

I didn't know why I said that. I just hoped flames swallow his soul soon... is all.

"Is it done?" I cleared my throat.

"Aye. You will feel it soon." The amusement in his voice was laughable.

"I feew nothing." I snorted, detaching my hands from his and analyzing the skin and nails' condition—dirty and dehydrated, but okay.

Maybe the ritual failed and my luck struck for once.

"No one shall know of this ritual except your lady-in-waiting. To every other person, you have been spared from cursed shackling by their merciful commander. Keep your lips sealed."

"Alwight." I relaxed my shoulders. "Thankth," I remembered to add, watching Blert's silhouette disappear off the canvas.

And then, it hit.

The fiery ache surged up from my gut, and I leaned forward with a snap, coughing blood onto the dirt floor.

A cacophony of sounds resonated in my mind—words I couldn’t grasp. One, however, cut through the noise like a dagger: death.

The tent, already too tight for two people, suddenly couldn’t hold a single breath of mine.

My lips moved. No sound came out, but the words looped in my mind like a chant I couldn’t silence. No. No. Not again.

I curled into myself, hugging my belly as the air thickened and my vision blurred.

“There, there…” A calm voice broke through the haze, a cool hand steadying me. “You’re not going to die from Sir Blert’s localizing spell, my lady,” Alice said, though it took a moment for her words to register. “The magic is seeping into your body. That is all.”

Even as her disturbingly calm tone pulled me back, I couldn’t stop trembling. The thought wouldn’t leave me. What if that fucker meant to kill me under the guise of helping?

My lips clenched, nails digging into the flesh of my skin, teeth gritted as I suffocated my screams.

“Stop repeating those thoughts, Lady Penelope,” Alice said softly, her fingers firm on my shoulder. “The pain will subside shortly.”

My lips parted, and this time the words escaped before I could stop them, my voice barely audible. “I’m going to kill him.”

A cloaked figure trudged across the mud, the soft squelch of his boots drowned beneath the vastness of the starry night. Caesar’s gaze shifted upward occasionally, scanning the heavens with idle curiosity.

The lands he crossed had once been a joy to traverse, but under the cold blanket of night, the world below him faded into obscurity, leaving the sky as the only point of interest.

If I don't soon relieve her of those insufferably arched brows... Caesar thought, a faint and amused grin spreading across his face at the thought of an eyebrowless Robin.

His sharp black gaze glinted shallowly as he scanned his surroundings.

Another sleepless night. Another endless stretch of road. Yet, it wasn’t all that bad. Walking was nice. He’d grown to like it, even after miles of it.

And really, what else was he supposed to do? Robin had taken his carriage, his assets, and even his sketchbook—that one stung a little. Caesar chuckled at the thought, reminding himself that he deserved this.

As he continued his aimless wandering, Caesar lifted his cap, letting the cool night air play with his dark hair, the breeze tousling it in messy waves. He began to hum, a soft and haunting melody drifting into the stillness of the night, so casually beautiful that it seemed to hold a secret. The dull ache in his legs was but a fleeting annoyance; pain held no true meaning for him.

He scanned the horizon, noting the blind darkness around him, with only distant shadows breaking the emptiness. A grin flickered on his lips. He reached up, gently tapping his eyelids twice as he closed them.

“Release,” he muttered in a soft tone.

When he opened them again, his vision expanded. The world snapped into sharper focus, each detail vivid and distinct.

His now golden eyes gleamed like molten amber, reflecting the starlight with an otherworldly glow, piercing through the darkness with an unsettling intensity. They now saw what his artificially blackened ones could not.

The distant trees, the swaying grasses, even the tiniest insects crawling along the earth—all of it became clearer, more real. And with that clarity came a familiar dread, a weight that only his true eyes could perceive.

To his left, deep within the forest across the meadow, a pitiful whimper pierced the night.

Caesar turned toward it, his eyes slicing through the dense underbrush and towering trees until they landed on the source of the sound.

There, hidden in the shadows, was a small, trembling creature with eyes dark and bewitching—so dark and captivating that even Caesar, for a brief moment, found himself caught in their pull.

He’d always had a weakness for beauty, especially the kind that could get him into trouble.

But that was of no consequence.

His gaze settled on the injured winged fox. A young, fluffy creature, its wings delicate and shimmering in the moonlight. Regal even in its distress, with wide, expressive dark eyes that held a blend of vulnerability and elegant demeanor, it seemed almost as if it were the reflection of a shard of Caesar’s allure.

A soft yet wicked smile curled at his lips, revealing slight dimples on each side of his grin.

As he shifted direction, humming softly and dragging his feet toward his newfound prize, he thought, That kit is mine.