“Do you hate these hands that killed a man?” I asked the two guests in my secret garden.
Madge grasped my fingers, gently caressing my skin. “An [Imperial Prince] can do no wrong.”
I lowered my head, sighing as I brought my other hand to take hers and give it a gentle squeeze. “That’s not correct. I’m a person, fallible as anyone else. I can do plenty wrong. That this society automatically justifies my actions is repulsive.” With my freed hand, I took Mona’s. “Remember this. I know my brothers will one day hurt you to get at me. Do not believe for a moment that it is your fault or that it is righteous. Please use me to shield yourselves from the horrors of this Empire. Promise me. Both of you are precious to me.”
They didn’t reply. We spent a long silent while, feeling each other through our hands. My heart ran erratically as I fought the wish to hug them. Here in this secluded place, they would probably interpret it as something else other than pure untainted affection.
“We don’t hate you,” Madge said.
“I don’t hate your hands!” Mona snickered, challenging me with a stare to ask her opinion about the rest of me.
“Oh, then you won’t hate them when I do this,” I started to tickle her over the dress. She squealed and squirmed, making the lamest effort to escape but melting into my embrace.
I wanted to tell her the truth. Tell her she was my twin sister. I knew I had to keep my lips sealed. She stumbled into me and paused, her face close to mine.
“I might have just a slight dislike for the rest of you,” her breath tickled my chin. She kept her lips parted, inviting me. Her eyes searched mine as her chest struggled to keep her body oxygenated despite the corset. Like a slow chameleon, her face started to get red.
“Sit down. You seem a bit under the weather,” I guided her back to the chair.
“I’m fine! Dammit!” She mumbled as she let her weight down on the seat.
Madge extricated her fingers from mine. “My sister doesn’t hate you, Your Highness. It’s just that you…” she hesitated, then sucked her lips to moisten them. “Never… nevermind,” she too took a seat and fetched a pastry to distract herself and cut the conversation.
I knew what “never” I was guilty of.
The palace maids talked about my lack of libido. In other palaces, it was common that the maids were the [Prince]’s first teachers into the secrets of the female body. And they gave themselves willingly, for the seed of a Royal scion was worth a lot. Should any of them get pregnant with a Royal bastard, they were set for life. Or doomed to a quick death, depending on the prince. That they were willing to gamble with their bodies, their lives, and of their unborn children was disgusting.
But several of them gossiped and even tried to seduce me. A few tried to cross the line and attack these two, who many swore were my exclusive lovers. They should share, the vile vipers hissed in the dark corners of the palace. All they achieved was to convince me a great purge of the palace staff was necessary.
These rumors and gossip reached the girls’ ears. While Marion warned them to never give in to any advances I made and I didn’t intend to make any, the tension lingered in the air. They were healthy ladies with healthy desires and the blooming puberty shifted those desires into more physical needs.
Our escapades into the secret garden were filled with titillating excitement. Away from prying eyes, we could do anything and yet we just resigned ourselves to holding hands, dancing, and feasting on exquisite pastries from a mysterious master [Baker].
The silence and reflection were broken by a snort. “We are nowhere, aren’t we?” Mona asked. “The birds and bugs are fake, the sky is fake. There’s nothing behind this building surrounding us. Where are we?”
Nenandil and Brenna were quite the celebrities here in the Empire. The Mad Empress had commissioned several paintings of the two in captivity. They were all in the Imperial Palace, but their descriptions were repeated across several books. With the {Fairy Goddaughter} Perk, even dormant, they could see through her {Fairy Invisibility}.
M&M stared at the fairy, in a mix of fear and awe. Nenandil giggled and flew next to us, landing on my shoulder.
The two girls curtsied so deep they might as well be kneeling under those dresses. “We are sorry for intruding! We thought...”
“Don’t worry! Those loved by Percival are welcome here.”
I felt oddly self-conscious as I heard Nenandil laugh in my mind. Madge and Mona stared at me and I used {Titan Skin} to blush fiercely. But they were so shocked by the arrival of the fairy that not even the cheeky Mona cracked a joke.
“Do you doubt me, mortals?” Nenandil was enjoying teasing the girls too much.
“No, my Lady fairy. We don’t doubt you at all,” Madge said and nudged her sister.
Mona cracked a smug grin, “I believe you. So, Percival loves us...”
“Did you have any doubts?” The fairy fluttered from my shoulder and hovered in front of the girl.
“No. I just wonder what type of love is it,” she dared me with a glance up.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Let me ask you, what do ...”
We froze as we noticed Madge gasp. My ridiculously sensitive nose caught a whiff of blood. Instinctively, I asserted her with {Appraise}.
> > Level 0 female human [Knight Hospitaler]
She rose a hand over her chest and wheezed, unable to breathe. I closed in and picked her up from the ground, then brought her to lay on a bench. With a thought, I dimmed the sunlight as illusionary clouds covered the blue sky. I moved away from her before the desire to kiss her lips grew too strong.
Madge was still absorbed in her Status screen. It was all new for her.
“Is she okay?” Mona worried. “What happened to her?”
“She got her System access. And Class. And I believe the Perks took.”
“You lie!” She pushed me. Mona raised her sister’s head and sat on the bench, lowering Madge on her lap. “How are you, sister?”
“It’s true. What Percival said was true. The Class, the Perks, everything.”
I took a changing screen from the item box, along with two sets of silk gowns with fresh underwear enchanted to clean itself and never get soiled.
“I’m going away for a while,” I said after I cleared my throat to get their attention. “And I believe Madge will need to change her clothes. I have another set for you here, Mona. Feel free to wear it. Ask Nenandil to call me when you’re done.”
I went to the other side of the garden and crossed the wall, putting them out of my senses. I closed my eyes and focused on my heart, beating desperately. Not even when I fought Bundeus’ reincarnation in the streets of Virturia I felt such fear. Would she hate the gifts I pushed on her? No, that’s nonsense. Anyone in this world would be flattered at the chance of having a [Unique] Class. It automatically sets you on a path to greatness.
----------------------------------------
“This silk feels like a second skin,” Mona gushed as she ran her hands over her new clothes and spun around, not at the same time. “I don’t think Her Majesty has a dress this magnificent.”
Ooops. I had to fix that.
She sucked in a huge lungful. The corset was bundled in their old gowns but the stretchy living silk of the new ones could hold the silhouette without the constrictive slavering piece.
Madge bent over her stomach, probably feeling the cramps. She was about to ask something but then looked at me and changed her mind. I knew what it was, “girl stuff”. If only they knew.
“The undergarments are enchanted to clean themselves and not get soiled,” I said.
“The elder water fairy told us,” Mona sneered. “And it is none of your business, Your Highness the [Prince].”
Yes, I knew that. Mona looked more and more like Rhiannon. I looked like my mother but the male hormones had made my skull heavier, my jaw sharper and the angles of my face less delicate.
“I’m envious!” Mona protested just to fill in the silence. I was absorbed in thought, and Madge was “enjoying” her menarche. “I want to have my System too!”
The fact my identical twin sister’s puberty was taking longer than normal too was a relief to me. Maybe my biology was not that messed up. Oh. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that yet.
“Mona, can I have a vial of your blood?”
She jumped away and stared at me. “What for?”
“To mix with wine and drink in a full moon's night. Madge, can I have a vial of your blood?”
The sick girl raised her hand, “Only if it’s from my wrist.” She left the ‘you can’t have the other one’ unsaid.
“Well, I guess you can heal yourself now. I have the diagram for a simple healing cantrip here. It’s your first Quest. {Learn this spell and heal yourself after I finish collecting blood. You’ll gain 2,000 Exp points and ten Proficiency points in [Spellcaster].}”
Madge stared idly at nothing. Then she stared at me, “You can do that? That’s not normal.”
Mona pounced on her sister, “What? Did Percival grant you a Quest? Damn, I want a Quest too! Why am I the only one without a System?”
“What?”
“What?”
“You can’t fool me, Your Highness! I know you already have the System but you’re fooling everyone somehow.”
She was bluffing. It had to be. I stared at her with my poker face. Mona approached me, dragging her sister along.
“You’re too sweet, Percival. You can’t even lie to me to protect your secrets,” she teased and poked my chest with a finger.
“And what secrets are those? You know nothing,” I teased back. “Give Madge to me. It is my turn to help her.”
I sat with her and collected a vial of blood with a needle in her wrist. I put a silk patch over the puncture and pressed. “Go ahead. Try the spell. You can just trace your finger over the diagram on the paper and it will work.”
“We never trained magic,” Madge remarked. “How can you be so knowledgeable about it?”
“You never studied magic. We never trained magic together. I’ve been practicing in secret.”
“You see, people can’t use magic without the System,” I groaned and glared but she just giggled, smiling like the cat that caught the mouse. “Te-he, I got you.”
I guided Madge as she traced the circle with her finger and activated the spell. The puncture in her arm vanished.
“Your turn now, Miss smartass. Give me your arm, let me take your blood.”
She shifted gears and became sheepish, “Is that an order, Your Highness?” I reached out, grabbed her waist, and pulled her toward me. She ended up sitting on my lap. “Help! I’m being attacked by the [Prince]!” She feigned and waved her legs as if she wanted to escape, but clung to my neck.
Madge glanced upward at her sister. “If you kick me, I’m going to bite you. Ugh,” she groaned as another cramp hit her.
I took a potion from the item box behind Mona’s back and out of Madge’s sight. “Here, drink this. It’s just a bit bitter but will alleviate your cramps.”
I called that potion the “Marisol Pacifier”. Not only cramps, but it also alleviated hangovers, calmed down the nerves, and even healed a little HP. Its ingredients were illegal in the Empire, though. A few of them could be used to concoct deadly poisons.
Madge drank it and melted into my shoulder. “Thank you, Percival. Thank you for all you’ve done for us. But tell me, how can you grant Classes in the Matriarch’s name?”
I threw an arm around her shoulder. Still sitting on my lap, Mona watched with ears perked for the answer. “I wish I could tell you. I have many, many secrets. I was born with a few hidden powers, that’s all I can say. I’m sorry, girls. I don’t want to deceive you and I really wish I could tell you everything. But here in the Empire, we’re not safe. I don’t think we could have a peaceful life even if we fled the Empire. I thought about it, running away, taking you two along with me. We could travel the world, see the wonders of the south. The home-trees of Fulgen, the giant bridges of Cymeria. The lake that once was the cradle of Pekothas. The ancient Abode of War, where the barbarians prove themselves. And then over the seas. So many places. But I can’t leave Rhiannon and Marion behind. My mother wouldn’t leave the Empire.
“I promise I’ll tell you all my secrets one day. But now I must be just a bit selfish. I want to keep you both here with me.”
“Aww,” Madge snuggled her head against my chest.
Then Mona grabbed my cheeks and closed in for a kiss. I saw it coming and I could evade but I knew it would break her heart. So I allowed my twin sister a chaste peck on the lips. She drew back as soon as they touched and she froze, her expression a mix of smugness and embarrassment that made me wonder if she wasn’t Lorna too. She became as stiff as a plank on my lap.
“Te-he, I stole the [Prince]’s first kiss!” She crowed in victory after a while.
Madge felt betrayed. I grabbed her chin and brought my mouth close to hers. She shut her eyes and held her breath as her mouth parted slightly. I touched those plump red lips and felt a shock emanate from there. Warmth filled me and it was as if I’d found what I was looking for. Madge must’ve felt the same because she leaned forward, hungrily seeking to prolong the moment.
“Enough!” Mona parted us. “What are you thinking? If you kiss that long, you’re going to have babies!”
Spellcraft wasn’t the only subject lacking in our secluded education curriculum.