“Wow, I never thought I’d be watching the games in a place like this,” Alix said in wonder as she and Elise walked down the extraordinarily well-appointed hallway toward their private box.

“This place caters to a specific crowd, so they have to decorate accordingly,” Elise said, to which Alix nodded in understanding.

“Makes sense if they want to get ready for someone like you showing up,” Alix replied. “They’re certainly not getting all fancy for my common ass.”

“Really?” Elise asked with a teasing smile. “Are you certain about that, Dame Alix?”

To that, Alix had no answer, so the two continued with only Elise’s light laughter ringing in their ears.

The two quickly arrived at their destination, a relatively spacious box with half a dozen extraordinarily comfortable seats within. Alix almost screamed in delight as she rushed around the box, taking everything in. The box itself was temperature controlled, there was a long rectangular container along one of the walls filled with snacks, and in case that wasn’t enough, there was an attendant waiting just outside the door ready to fetch whatever the ladies wanted.

“This place is amazing!” Alix said, her voice almost dripping with joy.

“Have you never been to the games before?” Elise asked as she elegantly walked across the room and took a seat.

“No,” Alix replied as she sat down next to Elise. She then glanced at the other seats and asked, “Will there be other people joining us?”

“Yes, two of my friends, Valeria and Asiya,” Elise answered.

“I can’t wait!” Alix said with a radiant smile. The prospect of watching the games had put her into a decidedly friend-making mood.

“So, how have things been over the past week?” Elise asked.

“Boring as all the hells,” Alix replied. “Nothing but paperwork, and paperwork, and more paperwork! Practically everything that Prince Trajan does has to have a stack of papers to record and verify it. I don’t think His Highness can even piss without half a dozen notarized records… if you’ll pardon my language…”

“That sounds incredibly tedious,” Elise said in a sympathetic tone. She, as the daughter of the Tower Lord, was no stranger to paperwork. “And don’t worry, I’m no stranger to harsh words.”

“With all that said, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have been assigned to Dame Minerva,” Alix continued. “She’s made sure that my training hasn’t dropped in intensity, and she’s been having me accompany her as one of her assistants, so that I can learn what her job entails.”

“I daresay you’re being groomed for higher ranks,” Elise observed.

Alix didn’t agree out loud, but her smile of pride told Elise all that she needed to know.

At that moment, the door was practically flung off its hinges to reveal a beautiful young woman with bronze skin, dark brown hair, and loose bright yellow clothes.

“Asiya!” Elise said in a surprised greeting. “I hope you didn’t break the door!”

Rather than laugh about her entrance or shooting a sarcastic barb back at Elise, Asiya just smiled at her friend and looked around the room. Her gaze lingered on Alix for a moment but didn’t otherwise acknowledge her presence.

“No Leon?” Asiya asked.

“He had to sit with Prince Trajan,” Elise explained.

Asiya clearly wasn’t expecting that answer, and she almost reeled from the shock of Leon being invited to the Royal box. However, she recovered in an instant and then hesitantly asked, “No other boys are going to be here, right?”

“Not unless you’re bringing them,” Elise said with a smile.

Asiya smiled back, said, “Good, I wasn’t looking forward to kicking him out…” then ducked back out of the box to wave into the hallway behind her. She then stood to the side of the door and slightly lowered her back into a short bow.

Walking in an instant later was a tall woman with wavy light brown hair, a robust fifth-tier aura—though it was utterly lost on Elise and Alix—and a dull green dress trimmed with gold. She was, in a word, gorgeous, with sparkling brown eyes, full lips that were curved in an almost perpetual smile, and a perfectly oval face. Her hair was done up in a loose ponytail, tied back with a bright green flower with dozens of small, tightly packed petals.

“Your Highness!” Elise exclaimed in surprise as she stood up, for the visitor was none other than Princess Stefania, King Julius’ eldest daughter.

“Please, don’t rise on my account,” Stefania said with a smile that seemed to brighten the entire room. “I’m not going to stay, I just wanted to escort a certain someone to this box…”

From behind Stefania emerged another young woman, much shorter than the First Princess but dressed in much the same attire. She was exceptionally cute, with much rounder facial features than Stefania’s sharp, defined, regal face. Her shiny hair was as black as the night sky, and her eyes, hesitantly sweeping around the room, were a soft, light brown.

“Princess Cristina!” Elise cried as she rushed forward to greet the young Princess.

For her part, Alix had all-but frozen in her seat. She wasn’t expecting the Kingdom’s two Princesses to suddenly walk into the box, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to handle it. Fortunately, she had the experience of spending time around Trajan, so she quickly overcame her shock and managed to rise and make a short bow.

“Please, no need for that, we’re all friends here, aren’t we?” Stefania asked when she saw Alix bending a knee in a sharp genuflection.

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Alix wanted to say that they weren’t as she had never met either Princess before, but she at least recognized that this wouldn’t be the brightest of moves.

“How did you get out of the harem?” Elise asked as she wrapped her arms around Cristina’s shoulders and pulled the young Princess into a tight hug.

“My sister helped to smuggle me out,” Cristina said with a gigantic grin on her face, any anxiety she may have felt gone now that she and Stefania had reached their destination.

“It wasn’t easy, those knights that my father has guarding the harem are very serious about their jobs,” Stefania stated with a sigh.

“That was nothing more than a challenge,” came a third voice from the doorway. Elise looked up and saw Valeria standing in the door, waiting for everyone to clear out so she could enter as well. “Her Highness wanted to come and watch the games, and we weren’t going to stop her from doing that. As her guards, all we could do was to make it as safe and painless as possible.”

“Is that why the attendant that’s supposed to be outside is gone?” Elise asked with a knowing smile. “And why the knights you two have been assigned to aren’t here as well?”

“I… encouraged the attendant to find somewhere else to be for a while…” Asiya responded, sending a wink Elise’s way.

“And I did something similar to the knights,” Stefania said as she smiled at Cristina. “My little sister has been cooped up in that place for too long, I had to get her out for a while.”

“Do any of the Princes know about Princess Cristina being here?” Elise asked.

“My brothers and uncle would likely not allow this, my little sister has yet to be officially presented to the Royal Court, after all,” Stefania said, letting her warm smile slide into a proud and excited grin to match Cristina’s. “We decided it was best not to tell them, better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that.”

“Well I’m glad you came here,” Elise said as she steered Cristina toward the seats. She then turned around and said, “And Stefania, please feel free to stay here for a while, you don’t have to go to the Royal box right now, do you?”

Stefania looked around at the private box, briefly making eye contact with Alix, Asiya, and Valeria, and she saw no hostility in any of their gazes. However, it was Cristina’s entreating gaze that convinced Stefania to stay.

“I suppose I could stay for a little while, but I did tell my uncle that I would stop by the Royal box, so I can’t stay for the entire time…” Stefania said as she looked out at the Royal box to their left. The glass covering it could be retracted, but it hadn’t been yet, so it was still impossible to see within. Their private box had no cover for it, but in the sea of people that was the arena, there was little chance that anyone in the box would be noticed unless they were actively being sought.

“Sooo, who’s this?” Asiya asked Elise, looking at Alix. Since it was Elise’s friend who was here, it fell to Elise to make formal introductions.

“This is Dame Alix, she’s a knight in the service of Prince Trajan. She’s currently working directly under Dame Minerva, one of Prince Trajan’s most trusted knights,” Elise said.

She then turned to Alix and began to introduce everyone else, but she went slow so that Alix could have a few moments to process the names and associate them with their faces.

“This is Princess Stefania of House Taurus, the First Princess of the Bull Kingdom. This is Princess Cristina of House Taurus, the Second Princess of the Bull Kingdom. She is Asiya of House Samarid, a squire serving a knight guarding the Royal Harem, and Valeria of House Isynos is a squire serving a knight in the same unit. They went to the Knight Academy together at the same time as Leon.”

“Oh? You know Leon Ursus?” Asiya asked as she took a seat at one end of the row of six chairs. Valeria took the seat at the other end, while the two Princesses sat down in the center. Alix sat between Asiya and Cristina, while Elise sat between Stefania and Valeria.

“Alix squired for Leon while they were at the Bull’s Horns,” Elise said. Her tone was light and without emphasis, so it took a moment for what she said to completely register with her friends.

“Oh, that’s amazing,” Asiya said automatically. Once what Elise said fully clicked in her mind, though, her head whipped around to stare at her red-headed friend and she almost shouted, “Wait, Leon was knighted?!”

“He was…” Elise said with a proud smile. She also happened to notice Valeria subtly start at the mention of Leon’s name. She already suspected that Valeria had a bit of a crush on Leon, though she had never confronted her friend about it.

‘Hmm, maybe something to keep in mind…’ Elise thought as she smiled and shot her silver-haired friend a look out of the corner of her eye. It seemed Valeria didn’t notice, though, as the shock of what Elise said resounded through her mind.

She and Alix then began to take turns explaining everything that happened after Leon left the Knight Academy, though not in great detail. The two especially left out the part where Leon was almost killed on the galley as he was heading toward the fort where he met Alix.

By the end of their story, Asiya and Valeria were both speechless. In a little more than a year and a half, Leon had ascended to the fifth-tier, been knighted by the Consul of the North, accepted into Trajan’s retinue, and fought in two large conflicts.

Valeria frowned, feeling slightly inadequate with her own achievement of reaching the fourth-tier by the time she was eighteen. Slowly, though, her face began to warp into the wicked grin of someone supremely confident in their skills presented with a great challenge. And it was one that she intended to win.

‘I can’t slack, now!’ she thought to herself. ‘When I get home, I’m going to undergo some hellish training to catch up!’ After getting over her shock, she could feel her heart beating like it was trying to escape her chest.

Cristina stared at Valeria’s strange expression. “Val…?” the Princess nervously asked.

“Don’t worry about her, Your Highness,” Asiya said. “She’s a training freak, I’m sure she’s just fantasizing about how to catch up to and surpass Leon Ursus. Or, Sir Leon Ursus, now… Whatever, Val’s fine, no need to worry.”

“If you say so…” Cristina said as she turned away from Valeria, leaving the silver-haired lady to her own fantasies.

“Still, though, I don’t blame her for zoning out like that,” Stefania whispered. “How old did you say this boy was? Nineteen?”

“Eighteen, he won’t be nineteen for a couple weeks, yet,” Elise said.

“Eighteen… That’s quite the accomplishment for someone so young. I didn’t even reach the fifth-tier until I’d reached thirty!” Stefania mumbled in thought. “I must admit, my curiosity is piqued about this young man. Even more so because he’s caught your eye, Lady Elise. I hope to meet him, someday.”

Elise felt her face almost split in half from her smile of pride. “I will find some time to do so, Your Highness, though I must warn you that he’s not that social of a person…”

“Don’t forget that I have two brothers who are hardly social, I have plenty of experience dealing with these kinds of people…” Stefania confidently stated, her deep chocolate brown eyes glistening in anticipation.

“Should I be worried about your tone?” Elise asked with a playful smile.

“No, I have enough husbands,” Stefania replied, laughing at the hidden look of concern in Elise’s eyes that only she could see.

“And how are they doing?” Elise asked, moving the conversation along.

As they were chatting, a number of arena workers were running around getting the tracks ready for the opening races. As with most of the triumphal games, the opening ceremony would begin with chariot races, followed by whatever the client wants, and then ending with gladiator matches. In this case, the schedule for the opening ceremony had the races and gladiator fights separated with a naval spectacle.

“Hear me, citizens of the Bull Kingdom and people of the capital!” came a booming voice from a small stage on the northern side of the arena. An announcer was standing there with a long metal pole that had a large pearl on the end, powering the enchantment that allowed his voice to be heard throughout the entire arena despite more than a hundred thousand people filling the seats.

Everyone quieted down as the announcer began to speak, and the crowds rippled as the people took their seats.

“It is time for the games to begin!” the announcer cried, and the crowd almost exploded, screaming in excitement loudly enough to shake the entire arena.