With everyone else sleeping, David and Harlan were the only ones left to talk, and now that both of them weren’t worried about killing the mood, they could speak seriously.

“Alright, so tell me plainly. You and Adina, you think you’re ready to be parents?”

“I’ve never been more scared in my life, but honestly, my parents were younger than us even, and they didn’t have a group of great people to help them, and look how my sisters turned out. I think as long as I don’t try to do everything myself.”

“Fair point. I think you’ll be fine, but… just stay alive, I can’t imagine that kid growing up right with just Adina and your family. Losing a parent when you’re young, it’s… just stay alive.”

“How was May? Everyone talks about her like the ground at her feet would blossom into fields of flowers.”

“They might as well have. She never gave up on anyone, she never let anything go. But she wasn’t vindictive, don’t think of it like that. She remembers everyone she ever met, she never forgot a detail, and she always did everything she could to help everyone she met to be better. It’s what got her killed.”

David brought his legs to his chest.

“If you were there, you and her would’ve been friends, I’m sure of it. She made a lot of enemies by doing the right thing. And eventually, it caught up with her. Officially her death was ruled as being part of a Reinoan skirmish, it became a black mark against us that she failed to defend a town. But…”

He put up a veil around the two of them.

“I think the kingdom killed her.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t like the king, so many of his policies were blunt, harsh. He was so worried about protecting his power as king that some people who shouldn’t have gotten caught up in his new policies did, and they died for it. My mom, she was an outspoken critic, she wanted him to hand power back to the nobility on a case by case basis, and there was even a lot of backing behind her, because for every enemy she made, it seemed like she made two friends.”

David smiled just for a moment, and his tone seemed lighter.

Then his expression went dark.

“There was talk of revolt, she didn’t want to be queen, but she wanted things to not go out of control in the other way because the Yggdra before him had been a piece of shit who gave away too much power to the nobles. Late one night the army gate mages brought her to a town that the Reinoans were targeting, and in the morning we got the visit telling us she was dead.

They wouldn’t show us the body, they made us bury an empty coffin. All of her talk about change was gone, just like that, a few more people died suddenly that night or the days after, and dad was never really the same after that. I think they threatened him to stay quiet, and he did, and it’s been eating at him ever since.”

He looked up at Harlan.

“Are you crying?”

Harlan wiped his eyes and sniffled.

“How could I not? We’re friends, and you’ve been hurting and back then I brought up your mother and I didn’t know and I hurt you then.”

“It was forever again, don’t worry about it.”

Harlan’s eyes slit, and David could see the violence in him building.

“I’m going to find the truth.”

“What?”

“Even if it wasn’t Rosewell’s fault, even if it can’t be said publicly, I’m going to find out what happened, and I’m going to get an apology.”

“You really shouldn’t do that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s the past, Yggdra is dead, Rosewell is queen now.”

“Can you remember her face?”

“What?”

“Can you remember your mother’s face?”

“Shut the hell up. I’m serious, just fucking drop it.”

“It’s bullshit. You should know, you need to know.”

“FUCKING LEAVE IT ALONE.”

You deserve to David shouted so loud that the veil crumbled.

“There is nothing good that is going to come from digging up the past. Knowing for sure won’t change anything.”

“But you…”

Harlan saw how upset David was.

“I’m sorry, I won’t mention it again.”

David went to his tent and grabbed another bottle of wine.

“Come on, let’s keep going.”

“What?”

“How many times are we going to get the chance to bond over this bullshit? So come on, bring out your next question.”

Harlan was shocked into silence until David tossed an empty bottle at him, only for it to shatter harmlessly against his skin.

“Fucking bastard, can’t even hurt you.”

Harlan put up another veil.

“Fine. I met your fiance, what’s the problem between you two?”

“Veronica, that’s the name of the devil I’ve been assigned to put a baby into. She can’t stand Shelly, thinks I’m sleeping with her. Every single time I’m around her she can’t help but badmouth her to her friends and then if I say anything against it she blows up at me and I get talked down to by my father.

He’s just completely given up, he thinks he can forget mom by climbing the political ladder, rubbing shoulders with the scum that she despised. As soon as I become count I’m going to burn down everything he’s built, divorce Veronica, and build a cabin in the middle of nowhere, only leaving for things I can’t make myself.”

“Why not just disown yourself? Leave it behind.”

“It’s not enough. Every bit of gold my father is making, that’s letting him get so much acclaim so quickly, it’s built on bullshit that she would’ve hated, and I want to tear all of it down on my way out. He’ll never admit it to me, but I think he trades in black market goods. Sometimes I’ll hear him shouting about ‘that fucking bastard shade thinks he can steal from me?’ but I’ve looked over our papers, nothing on any official ledger is ever reported as stolen.”

“The Shade?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

“Or her. Nobody knows really, a bunch of people claim to be them, and I heard their enterprises stretch across most of the kingdom though.”

David raised his bottle to the sky.

“To The Shade then. Long may he fuck over my father.”

David was always uptight, Harlan assumed that he was just like that from being a noble, but with drink in him, it sounded more like David compared people to his mother, and everyone fell short.

“So Parnell, what is his problem with his fiance?”

“Marsha, sweet girl.”

He swirled his wine in the bottle.

“I tried to get him to stop being such a whiner about her, but he wants to drink and sleep around, so he considers her an obstacle for his journey of self-destruction.”

“Why’s he like that anyway? I think I heard something about his dad being that way too.”

“It’s going to sound crazy, their name being Pearl is just a cover, his granddad got their noble title because they are from a line of powerful blood mages. He’s drunk so often because their bloodline lets them convert the alcohol into mana.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Really?”

“He told me once when he was too drunk to lie, or at least I think he was. For all I know, it really was a lie, but I believe it anyway. You know what else? I heard his grandfather is still alive, and that he’s a vampire.”

“Now that I could probably check out, the Nightwatchers love me.”

David laid down, supporting himself with his elbow as he took another drink.

“HA, that I’d like to know.”

His face took a sour turn, David was half a bottle of wine down after all the rest he drank already, and he wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

“Are you really loyal to the royals?”

“If there is a single centralized power, it is possible for terrible abuse, but with Rosewell at the helm?

I think things are going to be just fine. But if someone else was on that chair? I don’t know.

Fleeing might be possible, but just about everyone is either afraid of me or they hate me. I don’t want to be a king, I don’t really like being a noble that much either. Just like I’ve said before, I stay because there is nowhere better to go.”

“Heh, chair.”

“A throne is just a nice chair.”

“I think that’s enough for the night. It’s been…”

“Yeah, it really has.”

David passed out, so Harlan dragged him out of the spring air and into his tent.

Harlan just sat there by the fire for a while, ignoring what David was really asking him, trying to forget the look in his eyes as he asked him about his loyalty.

He was fishing, but he was too drunk to be subtle like he had before when complaining about the arranged marriages of Ragne.

Eventually he had to get up and figure out who had been watching them all night.

The man in the tree saw Harlan go to his tent to sleep and didn’t think for a second that a gate was going to open behind him and a blade would be pressed to his throat.

“You are going to have a very good reason to be watching me and my friends, or I’m going to skin you alive to find out why you are here.”

“May I reach into my coat and show you my badge?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m an Unseen.”

“Alright, go for it.”

Harlan ran a jolt of energy through the blade and into the man.

“The Unseen aren’t an official branch of the Ragne military, even if everyone knows about them and they’ve got uniforms, they don’t have badges, and haven’t for some time.”

When the man woke up, he was bound and surrounded by the group.

Adina kept trying to look past Harlan, but he kept moving in her way to shield her from any possible threat.

“You’ve cut off his hands, I’m not going to get hurt. QUIT TREATING ME LIKE…” Adina took a deep breath and tried to understand if she was angry, or if it was just the baby making her overreact.

The man looked down and panicked, struggling against the rope that tied him to the tree.

“That isn’t the point, we have no idea who this is or what they can do.”

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD, I’LL-”

Harlan lightly slapped him, though relative to his full strength, it was enough to knock out several teeth.

“I’M GONNA CUT THAT BABY OUT OF YOUR WHORE YOU HALF-BREED PIECE OF-”

Adina backhanded the man this time, not knowing what her full strength really was.

The man’s brains splattered over David.

She stepped back, bringing her hands to her mouth in shock, only to feel the blood and then panic again, an eyeball was wrapped around her ring finger by its optical nerve..

“Shit shit shit shit, I didn’t, I, FUCK.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?”

“I know he wasn’t an Unseen, since he lied about it. So I don’t think it is going to be an issue.”

“THAT ISN’T THE POINT.”

Her voice became so loud that the others had to cover their ears, but Harlan stayed perfectly calm.

“I’ll call Dahlia, she’ll figure out anything she can, deal with the body.”

“I’ve never done that before. I don’t…”

“Adina, you need to calm down, it’s just a dead body.”

“NO, NO IT ISN’T, I DIDN’T MEAN TO KILL HIM. THIS IS WHAT YOU DO, I DON’T SPLATTER PEOPLE.”

Harlan closed his eyes and heavily exhaled.

“It’s your first time, so I’m sure it’s stressful, but it isn’t like you’ve never killed anyone before.”

Adina fell to the ground in tears, and Harlan picked her up with a hug.

She buried her head in his chest as he brushed her hair.

“It’s alright, everything is fine.”

“What if it was someone else, what if one of the other students said something bad and I hit them.”

“This is actually a good thing.”

She looked up at him with questioning eyes.

“You killed an enemy by accident, but it was an accident, and he was an enemy. Now you know what I go through, you know that the world is delicate for people like me, like us. I didn’t have a lot of people who really understood that, but you have me, and we’ll work through this.”

David looked on with a grimace on his face, picking teeth and brain matter from his clothes while Shelly picked it from his hair.

Dahlia arrived, but clearly she was tired.

She looked at the body and asked Harlan without a word.

“I restrained him and removed his hands for our safety. I started to question him, but he threatened Adina and…”

She examined the chunk of his face that was missing, his upper jaw to his forehead had been violently ripped off by a single powerful strike. What was left of his brain, loose in the skull, had fallen down to the man’s mouth, only remaining barely attached.

She saw Harlan’s hands, they were dirty, but they weren't bloody.

The look on Adina’s face and how shaken she was told her the actual story.

“Did you get anything from him?”

“No, other than him posing as an Unseen.”

“And how do you know that?”

“The jacket is old, pre-soulsmithing, he lacks invisibility which is required for Unseen, and he tried to pull out a badge.”

“Anything else?”

“He called me a half-breed. It’s not that nobody should know that I’m only partly Fomorian, but it's not something I’ve told many people due to the implications of having a human parent and most people don’t care anyway, I’ll always just be Fomorian to them.”

“My people will reconstruct his face and see if anyone knows him, but I’m going to look into who all would know or spread that you are only Half-Fomorian. And for future reference, don’t lie to me next time about who killed him. You, maintain your composure, we don’t get to lose control.

All of you, clear out, this is now a crime scene.”

Adina spoke up.

“I’m I in trouble?”

“We will see, but it's not likely, an enemy spy made a credible threat against you and Harlan killed him.

That is what the report is going to say. You will never contradict the official report, am I clear?”

“I’m sorry.”

Harlan opened a gate to the mansion, but Dahlia stopped David.

“We need your clothes, they are covered in his blood and matter.”

When they were back, Sheron greeted them.

“Welcome bac- What’s wrong?”

Unseen made their way past her and into the house.

The last of them gave a notice of inspection, effectively a paper saying they can do whatever they want in the process of finding an issue of non-specific nature.

Sheron ran forward.

“Shelly, Shelly, are you alright? Are you alright?”

She checked her face and shook her, barely giving time for an answer.

“A spy snuck onto the property. Harlan caught him, and he died during interrogation.”

Sheron pushed past her daughter and pointed at Harlan as she did.

“You, you brought you mess into my land, PUT MY DAUGHTER IN-”

Shelly covered her mother’s mouth.

“You have no idea why they were there, for all we know that was an assassin and Harlan saved my life.

I AM NOT GOING TO LET YOU BERATE HIM AGAIN.”

She pushed her mother back and stood between them.

Her mother held back a sneer, actually being proud of her daughter finally coming out of her shell.

“Your fiance is here.”

“Oh fuck me.”

Harlan whistled as he walked past them all, telling them to come along.

When they all caught up he spoke.

“You never brought up that you were engaged.”

“It’s not exactly something I’m excited for. But he’s fine, boring, not abusive or jealous or anything, he just happens to be related to someone who my mother decided I should be with.”

“So, your house is going away?”

“No. I mentioned I have a brother, right?”

“Maybe, but I don’t remember.”

“He’s a bit older than me. So the Mayford name lives on through him. I’m just… the leftovers.”

“If someone calls you that, I’ll break their nose.”

“Not worth it.”

Harlan felt Adina’s grip as he pulled her forward, she had barely any strength in her hands.

“I need to go.”

“Sorry, please, go. Adina, I’m sorry that things turned out this way, but it was great having you here, so come again.”

Shelly hugged her, but Adina was afraid to hug back.

It was hard for him to see how she looked at herself, Adina hadn’t done anything nearly as bad as Harlan, yet she thought she had become a monster, fear flooded her mind.

What if I’m holding the baby and I mess up?

What if I hug Zella too tight?

What if the baby is like this and they lose control?

What if, what if… what if?

His mind ran with those same questions before, and they didn’t bother him anymore.

Yet another fear now rose to the surface.

How does she really look at me?

Did she just push aside the questions about what he had done?

Has this changed the way she sees me now?

She confided her fears in him, but he remained quiet about his for now.