Dinner passed by without event, for King Blayney was more interested in the journey and events of Arwen’s escapade itself rather than details of Alaru’s strange attacks. Between mouthfuls of turkey- which exploded in a cascade of juicy flavour at each bite- Arwen regaled the woes of travelling. Her complaints invoked an amused expression from her parents, but little sympathy was offered for her suffering, much to the Princess’s frustration. “What of the Light Gem?” father had asked. “Do you still have it?”

She had left it in her bedroom, trusting that none of the servants would dare lay a finger on her possessions. “I hate it,” she held nothing back. “I don’t want it.”

Doubtlessly, the thing was useful, but the toll it demanded of Arwen’s mind each use was costly, especially for one who felt like empathising with others was a waste of time unless she were pretending to for diplomacy. That it forced her to feel the unchecked emotions of others made every interaction with it a risk of sending her into an emotional state. The only reason, outside of frivolous curiosity and fact-finding, she could think of using it on someone was to help manipulate them, but she found herself shying away from that line of use.

Her father sighed and rubbed at his face, and it was then that Arwen realised just how tired he looked. Wrinkles covered the skin underneath his eyes and King Blayney appeared to have visibly aged a good year or two since she last saw him. “Your use of it as an information-gathering tool was smart,” he commended, but the complement dejected Arwen. She kept quiet that it wasn’t her idea to use it for Alaru in the first place, “and shows your control over it. I therefore must insist you keep it, Arwen.”

Her control? A flash of rage darted up her body before she was able to suppress it. Her father had no idea of how much she felt like it controlled her, not the other way around. “You gave Arwen the Light Gem?” mother seemed unhappy. “I feel as though its use for your politics is much better suited to its abilities.”

“I have my lightning for that,” father shrugged and forked a thin strip of food from his plate. “Besides, Arwen needs practise with it, should she take the throne when I go.”

“What about King Fiske?” mother asked dubiously. “I highly doubt you can use any sort of magic in that room without covering your eyes.”

“I’ve already used the artifact on Helvetia’s King, remember? I cannot use it on the same target twice, no matter how much time passes.”

Arwen interjected before an argument could form. “Do you… want to hear about Alaru?”

“Oh, no,” King Blayney shook his head. “Give me your report tomorrow, dear.”

Okay then, Arwen’s mood worsened. Her father’s lack of interest felt hard on her, but she supposed he was just tired… right? She ate her food, listening somewhat to their parents’ conversation, before bidding them a goodnight and getting her head down, too fatigued from travelling to consider staying awake any deeper into the night.

The next morning, Arwen left her room dressed in her favourite black dress when she swung open her door and blurted out to the awaiting maid. “Don’t wait around, go now.”

She stopped short, however, when she saw that the maid had apparently transformed into Cai. “Hi, Arwen.”

“Cai? What are you doing here?”

The knight pushed himself upright from his leaned position on the wall and flashed a smirk. “Your father asked for a report this morning. I told Gwyn and Owen to just do their thing, since I doubt they’ll have anything to add, but figured I’d stop by to pick you up along the way. The vampire was nowhere to be seen, so I ceased to bother to look for him.”

Unimpressed, Arwen raised a brow as her mind latched on a part of his small speech. “You’ve come to pick me up? Like I’m some package or object?”

“Figure of speech,” Cai breezily deflected, but then cocked his head. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been acting really sensitive lately,” Cai explained warily, “… are you unhappy?”

Arwen tried to play dumb. “Sensitive? No? Do I look sensitive?”

Cai wasn’t about to let her go, however. “And what was with yesterday? The way you left was… odd, to say the least.”

“Are you mad about that?” Arwen couldn’t tell why the knight would be so offended. “We’re not friends, so there was no reason to hang around and chat. I wanted to see my family.”

“I get wanting to see your family,” Cai leaned in with a frown. “But saying we’re not friends? After all we went through? Spending all those days together as a team?”

“That’s irrelevant, you merely were, and will continue to, act as my retainers. If you consider me a friend, then you are mistaken.” Arwen brushed past the radiant knight like a breeze, her long black hair wafting behind her and leaving the scent of lilac shampoo behind. “Shall we see the King?”

Cai half-jogged to catch up to her, though unlike the last time they were in the castle, he walked alongside the Princess. He turned to her whilst walking. “You really know how to hurt someone’s feelings.”

“Poor you.”

Cai laughed, though the sound was humourless. “I can’t believe you… it’s as though you’re a completely different person here.”

When they reached the audience chamber, King Sion Blayney awaited sat in his usual gold-framed throne. As Arwen approached with Cai, the King’s neutral expression twisted somewhat into a frown. “I thought I would be receiving the two of you separately.”

Arwen shrugged as she came to a stop at a respectable distance from the King. “Cai wanted to do this with me.”

The frown remained, but the King relented. “Very well, then.”

Arwen glanced at Cai next to her, who had knelt before the King, and rolled her eyes. She then launched into the troubles at Alaru and their conclusions, detailing how they had managed to gather the information and piece it together. She opted to leave out the drama with her retainers along the journey, sticking instead solely to the facts of the matter at hand. When she was finished, King Blayney rubbed his chin in thought. “Anything to add, Cai?”

Cai prostrated even deeper, which Arwen had thought was impossible. “No, Teyrn.”

King Blayney took a moment to consider. “I agree with your desire to inform the Church. I will send missive later on today. For now, you may continue your lives as they were until I see fit to deploy you again. I trust you will inform the others of this, Cai?”

“Yes, Teyrn.”

“Then you may leave.”

Arwen also turned to go, but her father stopped her with a significant look, so she waited as Cai extricated himself from the audience chamber.

Once the knight had left, King Blayney appraised his daughter momentarily. “King Fiske is due to arrive in three days, and I will meet him in this very room. I would ask of you to attend and meet him for me, for fluid relations with Helvetia will doubtlessly be your top priority in the coming years.”

Arwen had never met Helvetian royalty, even before wartime with Cyfoeth. Their system of establishing monarchs was… odd, to say the least, with many rules and stipulations affecting who can be ruler and why. The Helvetians, rather than rely on royal families to supply heirs, favour those who display great military prowess for their King, meaning should the current King Fiske die, any old general or military member important enough to qualify can compete for the throne. It was a completely wild system to Arwen; however, it was one backed up by centuries of tradition since Helvetia split off from the Church, while Cyfoeth’s favoured its more modern system of familial heirs.

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The Blayney family, therefore, have been in power since Cyfoeth’s establishment just under four-hundred years ago, which many argue belittles its standing due to its history as Helvetia’s puppet state, however, Arwen holds the opinion that Geraint Blayney- a hero to many Cyfoethians for his establishment of the Kingdom’s independency- outshines those dubious origins of the Blayneys. While Helvetia operates under a fluid system of Kings, some of which can be truly… weird, Cyfoeth enjoys a stable monarchy that does not plunge the Kingdom into uncertainty whenever the ruling King or Queen falls. Thankfully, King Fiske wasn’t one of the weird, or mad, or rather devious rulers that Helvetia have sometimes had to endure. “W-will I speak to him directly?”

“Yes,” King Blayney confirmed. “Though not under any official capacity. The negotiations will be up to me, for allowing my inexperienced daughter to do so will undermine me and insult King Fiske. Instead, your job will be to flatter. If our talks get heated, you can be a cooling presence to help smooth things over should Helvetia’s King grow agitated.”

So, Arwen was to somehow help relations between her father and the Helvetian King? Did father even know her capabilities? “You know people aren’t my strong suite,” Arwen appealed to her father. “I can’t do this…”

“You can, Arwen. I believe in you. Your diplomacy lessons will guide you,” King Blayney countered in the tone of a lecturing father. “I have seen you first-hand. You are perfectly capable of being polite and respectable when need be.”

“But you want me to make friends with the King,” she protested. “Do you see the crowd of girls and boys waiting for me outside the audience hall, just begging to see their good friend Arwen?”

“You have Cai, Gwyn, Eryk, even Owen I imagine, who would all jump at the chance to engage with you,” King Blayney spread his hands in a ‘what are you talking about?’ gesture.

Arwen shook her head. “They’re not my friends.” She even suspected they all hated her in secret.

“Well, then consider this an opportunity to master the art of making friends, a skill you will need when you rule over Cyfoeth in the future. No ruler can rule alone, Arwen,” her father suddenly ran his hands down his face with a sigh. “Must you argue with everything I say...?”

Practise friend-making with the King of Helvetia?! Arwen’s protested died as she snapped her mouth shut. She was being selfish, but she felt… trapped again. Arwen just wanted to be left alone. She instead took a moment to slowly inhale and then exhale, before opening her mouth again. “I will try, father, but please do not expect much from me…”

“Trying is all I ask,” King Blayney was obviously tired of the conversation. “Now, go about your day and worry not for the time being. Prepare for the arrival of the Helvetian King. I will see you at dinner, Arwen, but for now I must attend to other matters. Just remember, you are doing a great job out there. I am satisfied at your level of progress.”

Because he doesn’t know the full picture, Arwen thought. He wasn’t there. But she simply curtsied and left her father. Thankfully, Cai had not bothered to wait for her after his dismissal, which saved the Princess from having to fob him off somehow. She decided to make for her room, snapping her fingers at the first servant she saw and demanding breakfast to be brought. Once there, she found herself staring at herself in the mirror. The same old Arwen as ever stood before her, no changes brought on by the journey to and from Alaru, no additional weight onto her shoulders. Just her.

So why did she feel so different?

After breakfast, Arwen made her way almost unconsciously to a small little meadow hidden within a recess of the tall and stony castle walls. The dull, thigh-height green grass, colourful weeds and lone tree growing directly in the centre of the square plot would’ve been a sad sight outdoors, but contrasted to the artificial and repetitive texture of the man-made surrounding walls, it projected a rather pleasant and happy sight to stone-sore eyes. It was the Princess’s training grounds, one she suspected only she knew about, for she had discovered it as a child exploring the nooks and crannies of her home and had never once spotted another soul while here. Indeed, to reach the meadow, one had to traverse through some run-down sections of the castle interior, making their way through winding corridors and various dusty storerooms before encountering a sad, rotten wooden door hidden in the midst of the damp darkness, which young Arwen had felt lead to another dimension when it led opened up into bright sunlight and fresh air.

The meadow had never been maintained, and Arwen certainly wasn’t about to perform any sort of manual labour to spiffy the place up, but she felt it suited her this way. As a child barely a decade old, she used to enjoy laying among the grass, swallowing her whole world up in its stretching blades as she gazed up at the slice of blue sky visible in the looking glass-shape of the four walls. As she grew older, however, and matured out of her disregard for hygiene, she instead stopped visiting the secluded meadow for enjoyment and begun to use it as a quiet place to train her lightning magic, where the lack of noise and distractions helped her focus on complex exercises.

In anyplace other than her favourite meadow, the straw-like feeling of the grass blades snaking up her bare legs under her dress would’ve elicited a disgusted shudder from the Princess, however Arwen didn’t mind the sensation at all here. Instead, she focused her mind, cleared all thoughts, and begun her training.

The extra training she was doing here wasn’t needed, for she had scheduled magic training with a dark mage later on in the day, but she felt oddly insecure after her foray with that buffed up deer on two legs. The Hopys had scared her, and while she stood numbly in fear, the boys had rallied together and faced the animal without hesitation. It made her later realise that she direly needed ranged options with her magic. Of course, she now had her dagger, which she could throw with a reliable accuracy, but should she miss or the dagger be deflected by a deft opponent, she was near-useless.

The first part of training for range was to spread her right hand’s fingers as far as possible from each other before channelling a small jolt of lightning up to her pinkie finger. Next, she would project it outwards, where it would naturally jump to her ring finger, then she would repeat the same mental task to incite another jump to her middle finger, and so on and so forth until it reached her thumb. This was the initial step a lightning mage needed to take in order to extend her range, since the exercise was effectively an incredibly short-ranged lightning jolt from one finger to another, however it was deceptively difficult for she had to both focus on subverting the lightning’s desire to escape down her feet into the ground below, as well as fortifying her magic around her fingers to prevent her own magic harming her. Incidental suicide by lightning magic was a real possibility, a humiliation that none in the Blayney line have ever experienced, and Arwen did not intend to be the first. She had heard gruesome stories, however, when the rarest and most powerful form of magic typically secluded to the Cyfoethian royal family, had happened to manifest in random commoners around Loel, who would then proceed to stop their own heart in their struggle to command the wild and volatile element.

Arwen let loose a grunt as she put all of her effort into forcing her small jolt of lightning out of the tip of her finger to strike the tree in the centre around five metres ahead of her. At first, the magic wouldn’t budge in its insistent desire to travel the opposite way down her body and into the ground, but with a great deal of effort she managed to push it out of her finger, wherein she immediately lost control and the thin bolt dived into the grass-covered soil with a low pop. The Princess hissed in frustration. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t control the bolt’s instincts to drop into the ground as soon as it left the conduit of her body. Unbidden by her, a small voice rose from the back of her head, speaking in a small whisper… you’re not enough.

She tried again, this time with a lot more power. Her hand cackled with whirs and pops of lightning, causing the hair on her head to lift ever so slightly before she ejected it again. This time, a buzzing sound accosted her ears as the thicker bolt slammed itself into the soil before the second it left her finger, leaving a brief impression of white in the air before fading into nothingness. This time, Arwen stamped her feet and yelled in frustration. How could she be so bad?! Her hands ran ragged through her hair, as if pulling at it could unlock some secret technique to help. The demeaning voice caressed her head once more, promising she would only fail should she continue. “Shut up!” she yelled to herself. Such erratic behaviour would be unthinkable in the castle, but her secret meadow allowed her to let herself go. She could be herself, alone, as she preferred.

Arwen never quite liked people. Her father and mother were tolerated out of daughterly love, but outside of them, Bran was the only person whose company she truly enjoyed. Her isolation of the kids her age came after she had manifested her magic, though no tears were shed at the loss of the company. They always called her a freak, and she used to enjoy the name, for it made sure she was left alone. But in this moment she found it hurtful and cruel.

The Princess interrupted her own musings to muster up another thick bolt of lightning. When it left her finger, instead of directly diving into the ground as the last one did, it contacted with her dress and seared its way down her leg and into the ground. Arwen cried out in pain and half-fell as her leg buckled, sending waves of prickling pain down her knee in complement to the pins-and-needles sensation in her feet. Her heart raced and she felt robbed of breath, but she quickly began to steel herself and calm her heartrate. Such was the price to pay for messing with techniques poorly practised, she thought. Thankfully the jolt wasn’t enough to do any lasting harm, she would never train with that much magic, but it still packed quite a punch.

She decided to give up for now, and the imaginary voice rejoiced at her. Typically, her forays to the secret meadow left her happier, but this time she left in an even darker mood. She sulkily ate lunch in her room and then changed into her casual black blouse and trousers. Her daily magic training with the dark mage, George, was about to begin and the aged man hated tardiness. She just hoped he wouldn’t push her too hard today.