At sundown, the door to Aleyah's home opened, and a woman in a thin black trench coat walked in. The woman had ash-brown hair that stopped at the middle of her neck and was cut into bangs on the front.

"Cade?" Someone poked her head out of the kitchen.

Cade took her shoes off before turning her head to the right and nodding. "Aleyah, good to see you."

"You've grown your hair!"

Cade rubbed some of the lower parts of her hair. "Think it looks fine?"

"It looks great. How did you grow it so fast?"

"Have you checked your calendar? It's been three months."

"You've been gone for that long?" Aleyah scratched her head. "Seems I've been drowning in my work." She waved her hand. "Well, don't just stand there. I'll make some tea."

Cade took her trench coat off and laid it on the railing beside the stairs before entering the kitchen, where Aleyah lit a few candles.

"How long do you plan on growing your hair?"

"Is that all you have to ask after three months?"

Aleyah looked at Cade with her mouth open as if insulted to her core. "I'm making small talk. What do you want me to ask? 'Hey, Cade, how's the killin'?' 'You done a lot of killin' lately?'" Aleyah demonstrated a few serious questions with a deep voice.

"Ha ha," Cade said monotonously as she sat down with an exasperated sigh. "You know my personality is more than just killing, right?"

Aleyah put a spoon in her mouth while she worked on the tea. "Is it now? News to me."

"Tch." Cade shook her head. "I'm not going to grow my hair, just so you know. I'm cutting it when Aurelius gets back."

Aleyah put a spoonful of something into the teapot and froze. "Cade," she said, turning to Cade while seemingly on the verge of ripping her eyes out, "you're going to be single forever."

Cade sighed. "So be it. I can't fight with long hair. It limits my vision and will probably get me killed."

"At least you won't die a virgin," Aleyah said with a shrug. "All I'm saying."

"Yeah, well, fuck it."

"Oh, come on." Aleyah took a seat at the table. "I know you want that sexy golden lion."

Cade inhaled deeply before a light-blue dagger appeared in her hand. She then spun it in her fingers like the greatest circus performer in history before pointing it at Aleyah. "I know we're best friends and all, but I will carve out your vocal cords if the words 'sexy golden lion' even slip out of that hole in your face ever again."

Aleyah burst into a fit of laughter, almost falling from her chair. "I'm sorry. I went too far. But you do like him, right?"

Cade continued fiddling with the knife in her hand. "He's three years younger than me. Doesn't know really anything about really anything and has the linguistic skills of a 7-year-old."

"And he killed the enhancer-boosted head guard of the Boerlow family by shoving his hand through him... at 16."

"He's just obsessed with essence. That's really the only redeeming quality he has when it comes to living in this world of ours."

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"But you'd like for him to be obsessed with—"

Cade pointed the knife at Aleyah and she quieted down. For a while.

"So what do you know about him? You talked a lot while traveling together, right?"

"As I said, he's obsessed with essence. When we talked, it was about motionless magic, materialization, and really nothing else."

"Geez, must've been fun." Aleyah seemed to remember something and put up a finger. "Oh, but he must've freaked out after finding out you were a girl all along, right?"

Cade pursed her lips and sighed. "Not really, no. He just wanted to talk about essence," Cade explained.

Aleyah's mouth went wide before she burst into laughter. She laughed and laughed and looked at Cade's serious expression before laughing some more. "Just your luck."

Eventually, Cade just shrugged. "Still, it was more fun than with the mercenaries, for sure. Having to watch those animals, knowing I shouldn't kill them yet, was probably the least fun I've had during my entire life."

"Why did you go undercover, then? I told you it was stupid. You should've just gone and established your dominance," Aleyah said, puffing out her chest with a comical expression.

"Doesn't work. Not on mercenaries, at least. I could kill the entire troop, and the last one alive still wouldn't admit to being inferior to a woman," Cade said with a light laugh. "The prehistoric days without essence seem to be ingrained so deeply into their brains that it has become a permanent part of their personalities. Can't believe some women actually consented to produce more people into this world with the ancestors of those people."

Aleyah cast his gaze down. "Probably didn't."

Cade exhaled through her nose. "Right, well, those people are gone now."

"Good," Aleyah said and went to check the tea. "But do you really not know anything about that companion of yours?"

Cade scratched her head. "Well, Balgair said something about him being a royal. But Aurelius denied that."

Aleyah took a few mugs out of a cabinet and started pouring the tea. "Oh, I've heard something similar. Apparently, in the Great Zalfarian Empire, everyone in the royal family has golden hair and isn't able to grow facial hair. And that goes for everyone with the same blood. Like the genes are so dominant that no matter who your other parent is, you'll have golden hair and blue eyes. A bunch of bullshit if you ask me," she said, bringing two cups of tea to the table.

Cade let the knife disappear and grasped the handle of her mug. "Huh? Why does everybody suddenly know so much about Zalfari? I literally didn't even know about the whole country for most of my life."

"Probably because of the war," Aleyah answered as she sipped her tea. "You know, Zalfari was the first country that managed to stop the Conqueror of the West. And Zalfari is smaller than Lundkirk. Do you know how insane that is? The Conqueror of the West is the greatest general in history, and Zalfari managed to negotiate a temporary truce."

Cade sipped her tea and asked, "But wasn't it because of internal issues?"

Really, all she knew about Zalfari was that it was on the other side of the ocean, and they were about to lose a war against the Conqueror of the West.

"Well, kind of. But that was only after ten thousand of the best soldiers in Lundkirk were slaughtered."

"What?"

"Yeah, they all died in some battle, and Lundkirk's military took a massive hit that caused all kinds of problems. There were attempted revolutions and stuff, so the Conqueror of the West had to stop the war for a while."

"How did they die?"

"They say the God of War came down from the heavens to fight for Zalfari."

Cade's upper lip curled. "You're joking, right?"

"No, no, that's actually what they say."

"A god came down from the heavens? That's your explanation?"

"Well, the more realistic explanation is that some soldier named Ares killed all of them, and because he died, the Zalfarians couldn't attack Lundkirk."

"One man killed ten thousand?" You expect me to believe that?"

"More believable than the God of War story, in my opinion."

Cade swallowed a mouthful of tea and burped. "Do Zalfarian's have anything else than myths?"

"Probably not. Also, guess what? Rumor has it, that Ares, the soldier, not the mythological god, was the son of the Emperor and the greatest female soldier in Zalfari. What's next? The Conqueror of the West is the son of the best board game strategist in the world?"

Aleyah laughed at her own poor jokes as Cade's mind swirled with thoughts.

'Golden-haired. Zalfarian royal. Son of the Emperor. Extremely talented. Had a capable teacher in the Thropes. "Who is the strongest person in history, you know?" Aurelius asked. Balgair joined immediately after hearing about his story. "You'd find out something interesting if you read a book," Balgair said.'

Cade's hand went loose, and her mug dropped. It clanked against the table before jumping onto the floor and shattering into a million pieces, letting the remaining tea flow all over the ground.

Cade buried her face in her hands. 'I'm an idiot.'

"Cade, what's wrong?" Aleyah asked, startled by the mug shattering.

"Aurelius," Cade said as she exasperatedly sat up straight and put her gaze on the roof, "he's the son of Ares."