Dominion Intelligence had long pinned the Fourth Princess as one of the major power players of the Silver Throne. Hardly ever seen outside the walls of the Imperial Palace and with any appearance guaranteed with extreme avoidance of social activities, some of the High Court’s best spymasters came forth with the same conclusion:

Someone was spinning the dark web of the Ensolian Imperium’s subterfuge, and only one architect close to the throne could ever have the time or maintain the secrecy to do it.

Even before the Princess’ coming of age they were seeing the patterns: how the brazen daytime assassination of a growing populist leader in the Moshiri State tied into a sudden market crash in the Amorian Republic; how an accidental fire upon a grain silo in the Imperium’s southern provinces could keep the price of potatoes just high enough for that sub-industry to remain marginally profitable. If one looked long enough, hard enough; the facts were clear.

Someone had a finger — a razor thin blade to the throat of a vast empire; cutting and pruning through the thick foliage of bureaucracy to keep the subtle balance needed for any nation of this size running. Someone was living in the dark, amongst the shadows cast by the uncountable figures of the body politic. Someone was playing the game, and they were playing it better than anyone who has ever come before them. And like a fly already trapped in a spider web, Dominion Intelligence could only watch as the sticky silk threads of Princess Sophia Elise descended upon them.

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Prince Zai now knew everything, his own instincts finishing his narrative of the past week.

He knew now that the Imperium’s Fourth Princess had all so carefully orchestrated their “encounter.” To play off of him so perfectly, teasing him towards her like a butcher to an unwilling swine. How she tailored her words to begin this process of compromising him, to subtly inject these awful thoughts into his mind.

A part of him wondered how vast was her study of him before their ‘first meeting,’ of how many psychological reports and interrogated facts were brought from Imperial Spies and into her chambers. He wondered if she, this foreign princess, knew him even better than he knew himself.

Well, it was all a moot point anyways. Like some master igo player she had him completely trapped before he even realized what was happening.

When he first learned of this engagement from his father (the first they'd spoken formally in over seven months), Zai broke. For the first time in his entire life, he stood in front of the wall built around his heart. And he watched, with every poisoned word and insult he spewed at that old man, his father yielded no reaction.

No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.

The Lord of the Dominion knew what he had done, and as Zai read the entire treaty he watched his son come to the realization of what he had traded him for: