"Here we are. The square we were trampled at. Feels like years ago, Lumina." Aidan offered the princess his elbow. She gracefully took it.

"Indeed, Lord Aidan. I can't even think what fate awaited me were not for you heroic intervention. You have my eternal gratitude."

Lumina smiled at Aidan and tapped his arm. The crowd watching the staged scene was collectively swooning.

"Driver, stay here and wait for us with our luggage," Aidan ordered around. "Guards, nobody is to touch either the carriage or anything inside. On the princess' orders." He glanced at Lumina and she nodded.

"Understood, milord." The knights and the driver bowed.

Aidan addressed the rest of his party.

"Cythrel and Sora, please follow us. Gurf you protect Her Royal Highness Pearl. Deb and Lola, please go ahead and get us new academy uniforms from the quartermaster's office. Skippy, go ahead and deliver my note to the headmaster."

The dragon took wing, gaining the sky and disappearing over the walls of the academy compound. The two maids left ahead in a hurry, leaving Aidan and the rest behind.

And he took a step forward, Dawn on one side and Pearl on the other, slightly away. They crossed the gates to the walled compound and found dozens of academy students crowding the windows, all of them either cheering or booing.

Yes, booing. Apparently, Aidan's newfound closeness with the princess was too much of a sour taste for some of their fellow students to overcome even protocol. For him that was the butt monkey of all bullying jokes in the academy, it was a normal day, much welcome after all the stress of the last months.

But Pearl was having none of that. She walked a bit further so nobody was near her and straightened her back. She changed her bearing slightly, creased just a bit of her brow and narrowed her eyes. Suddenly her entire being screamed 'I'm annoyed'.

"Sir Gurf, please announce me." She asked with a soft voice.

The former knight was a big man towering over two meters. He looked like a rocky cliff behind the tiny girl. He took a deep breath and shouted.

"Her Royal Highness Pearl of House Juvela, Crown Princess of Gohar."

The cheers stopped. The jeering followed right after when the buffoons shouting realized the silence. A visiting noble from another country was a big deal. A visiting royal and an heir to the throne? All eyes fell on Pearl and she just increased her annoyed level. Scanning those at ground level, she found some adults that seemed like academy staff or faculty and locked her gaze on them.

Aidan was impressed at how that small girl could draw attention like that. It seemed like even her jewelry was catching more light. Her body language, her posture had a grace, a composure that gave her an exquisite air.

The academy staff and faculty singled out were afraid of coming out, but protocol demanded that the visiting royal was properly received and greeted. They pushed one another forward and two elder teachers decided to step forward.

"Your Royal Highness, it is a pleasant day to have you grace us at the Royal Academy." The teachers bowed. One of them, the senior spoke, his words echoed over the silence despite the big number of people watching.

"Is it so? I find it hard to believe." She answered with annoyance and a bit of anger in her voice. At the end of the sentence, she trailed off, baiting the other party to ask the follow-up question.

"Why is it so, your Royal Highness?"

"Indeed? Why? Would it be because just right now half your student body was crying in derision at my person?"

Her words were spoken loud enough to be heard by everyone at the windows. Aidan noticed that the usual suspects, the jokesters of the academy were quietly slipping away.

"Your High..."

"I am not done yet." She cut off the teacher and moved one step forward at the same time. Aidan only remembered the saying 'if looks could kill'. Pearl continued: "And don't try to dismiss it unless the healers here are unable to cure healing ailments. This great me walked into your academy to, in your own words, grace you with my presence and I am received with heckles? Is that it?"

"Prince..."

"Lumina, my dearest friend." Pearl cut him off again. The teacher slumped his shoulders, clearly defeated. Pearl was controlling the momentum of the entire conversation like a master juggler with a dozen fiery batons. "Is this the esteemed higher learning facility you so highly spoke of to me during our travels? Because I must be frank here and I beg your forgiveness but I've seen slums orphanages more disciplined than... that." And she pointed at the students at the windows.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Sora discreetly slapped Cythrel. The elf was almost bursting out in laughter.

"Oh, Pearl. I am so sorry you had to lay your eyes on such disgrace!" Dawn batted her eyelids at her accomplice. "It is as the saying goes, every orchard has a few rotten apples. Blame not the fruit or the tree for they are just vegetation but the gardener for not pruning correctly. It seems that in the year and a half I've been away the standards descended quite a lot."

She stared so hard at the teachers when she said the word 'gardener' that they shrunk a good three or four fingers in height. Dawn did not relinquish the floor and kept speaking.

"Do you have anything to say about that, teacher?"

"It is as student Lumina says, your Royal Highness. They have just returned from winter vacation and are unrulier than usual. But your Highnesses can rest assured that I will... prune out these bad apples myself."

He bowed. The other teacher that was silent until now decided to speak too.

"Would your Highness care for a tour of our facilities? I am sure you will find our magic practice arena top notch."

Pearl dismissed with a wave of her hand. Dawn was the one to answer.

"That will have to be scheduled at a further date. We are here on urgent business with the headmaster. Please take us there immediately."

The teachers departed ahead and talked to some of their peers that rushed in all directions. Aidan would later learn they went to get the usual bullies and delivered them a harsh punishment. Extra work, some even on latrine cleanup. They led the group through the corridors silently watched by a throng of curious students. The two princesses were walking ahead side-by-side with Aidan behind Dawn and Gurf behind Pearl. Cythrel and Sora were after Aidan.

Before they reached the final corridor leading to the headmaster's office, Aidan felt that Skippy was really pleased. They turned around a bend in the corridor and found the doors to his office already open. On the floor the little dragon was merrily chewing on some crystal bone. Skippy looked at them and clutched around the bone telling everyone he was not sharing.

The bearded and gray-haired figure of the old archmage appeared from behind a bookshelf as they neared the open door. Astromelicus smiled and opened his arms wide as if to give the returning students and visitors a big warm hug.

"Come in, come in. Schmidt and Weber, thank you for escorting the princesses to my office. Now I believe you two have more pressing matters than to listen to this old man's drivel. You are dismissed. Please, come in."

They stepped inside the headmaster's office and the doors quietly shut themselves. A faint hum of magic and the wards on the corners of the room came alive.

----------------------------------------

"Two princesses in my office, what a joyous moment. Or maybe three?" Astromelicus joked and looked at Sora.

"I'm no royalty, headmaster. I've told you so."

"Good, good. And young Aidan, finally recoverred. Surrounded by flowers, I see."

Aidan just gave a bashful smile and shrunk a bit on the armchair he was sitting on.

"Well, what brings you youngsters here?"

Aidan responded. "We need our spellbooks back. And access to the restricted library. While we are almost entirely healed, there are still have some issues to solve. Headmaster, remember the last conversation we had at the hospital?"

"I don't think we ever talked with one another at the hospital, Aidan. You were unconscious all the time."

"But we did. Except I didn't use this mouth of mine." Aidan pointed at himself and then moved the same finger to Dawn. She completed the thought. "I used this one. Didn't we talk, headmaster?"

Pearl was surprised that Aidan decided to reveal his big secret at once just like that. She looked at Gurf but the big man just shrugged with a 'I don't care, this is above my pay grade (not that he was being paid) so I'll take a rain check' look.

The headmaster scratched his beard in reminiscence. "Soul magic and tethers. You and Aidan."

"Yes. Have you figured out what happened?" Dawn asked.

"Maybe. But you did. Didn't you?"

Aidan was afraid. Very afraid. Of being caught, of being accused. He stole the princess soul after all. Intentions are damned. It showed in both bodies he controlled. He wanted to run away. Somewhere far away where there were no princesses, no kings, no summoned heroes. Where he could start over with Sora and...

"I... headmaster, please keep in mind that I just wanted to get us both out of there alive. Give me paper and pen, please."

Astromelicus waved his hand and an inkwell, sheets of paper and a goose pen glided through the air and landed in front of the scared boy on the verge of tears.

He started to draw several magic diagrams. Aidan saw them only once, only for a few moments, but these diagrams were carved into his nightmares. The soul tracker. The tracking spell. He drew and drew.

"This spell was embedded on Lumina's soul. So long this marker was there, the assassins could send any creature after her. I believe they could also track her whereabouts. And as you can see, the trigger to remove it was..."

"Death." The headmaster completed his thoughts.

"Not exactly death, but the departure of the soul from the body. I couldn't dispel it as it was engraved upon her soul and I had no spell strong enough to remove this kind of curse. I couldn't also dispel the tracking on the rhinorses because they were also soul-engraved. There was only one thing I could do."

"Take Lumina's soul out of her body." The headmaster was looking straight at Aidan's eyes.

"But then her body would die. I split my soul and grafted half of it in her body, filling the void left after her soul. After I swapped them, I used an 'Undying Resilience' spell to keep both bodies from dying."

"Spontaneous magic. Of this level?" Aidan nodded at Astromelicus' question. "A risky gamble but I can understand you two were at death's door."

"I was going to hold the spell only until someone healed our bodies beoynd a dying level and then undo the swap. I had a pain nullify spell running to keep me conscious, but someone dispelled it and I lost consciousness. It kept running for an entire year. That is why we survived the attack and why it took so long to heal our wounds."

"Undying Resilience... The consequences of holding that spell for so long are too dire. I'd say it was impossible if I didn't believe you. Which I do, by the way." The headmaster declared.

"Now it took too long, and the swap is not reversible anymore. And the toll from a year of undying resilience was too big."

"That is why you were so desperate to make that soul recovery ritual." Pearl concluded.

Astromelicus looked at Aidan and he had to ask. "Lumina's soul, what happened to her?"

And now the moment of truth. Aidan measured his words carefully. He needed Astromelicus' help but the archmage had the power to make his life miserable if he wanted. Aidan wouldn't put it beneath him to just rip the princess off of him and restore her on his own.