Of all the stuck-up assholes in this castle... Alexa’s eyes gzed over as she stared bnkly at the man across the table from her, only blinking when he smmed his hand against the table to emphasize his point… a point she had missed.

  A shiver ran down her spine as their eyes met, a cocky smile on his face while he swept his arms out dramatically and she thought for a moment he would be dumb enough to address her. Is he actually stupid enough to think I, of all people, would agree with him after what happened?

  Sure, both of their families oversee a border territory giving them the title of Marquess; but unlike her family, the Silvercrest family had been opposed to the war from the get-go, and Alen Silvercrest has been exceptionally vocal about it.

  Even putting aside her personal retion with Alen Silvercrest, the man currently wasting all of their time with his posturing, there was no way he was so dense to think anyone in her family would ever agree with anything he says…

  She smirked as mana pulsed off of her, Alen finally looking away as he flinched back slightly, Alexa’s second mind did a sweep of the area.

  It was still strange to suddenly just know that nothing was out of pce around her… she “remembered” doing the scan, pushing her mana out like a sonar and parsing through all the information as her power bounced off her surroundings; but despite having the memory of it, she wasn’t the one who did the spell...

  Deja vu? One of her other minds helpfully provided the feeling, reacting to her discomfort as the other her focused back on the conversation at the table.

  Alen, composing himself, seemed to think better of trying to include her in his self-indulgent tangent as he pressed on; even with three minds sharing the burden Alexa quickly lost interest and slumped in her seat.

  Did we ever actually find him attractive? She asked herself only to receive a resounding… “meh” in reply.

  Alen had been a… mistake, pin and simple. One that will clearly haunt her for a while longer given he has been stationed in the capital as his family ambassador. He had been charming back then, if a little full of himself, and, well… he was the first person we ran into when Hecatolite bsted her aura though the castle. She groaned internally as she shook her head.

  How was she supposed to know that he was so damn persistent? After their one night stand, that she had tried to make very clear was a pse in judgment, Alen became… pushy.

  Apparently, his family holds a far more traditional view on things like sex, and the cocky prick all but demanded her hand in marriage; he had even talked to her mother about it back then. Even now, years ter, every time the two of them are in a room together he looks at her like she owes him something.

  Thankfully he quickly learned to keep his mouth shut after she retaliated for him spreading rumors about her though the castle back then. After all, he can call her a loose woman all he wants to the noblemen; but the servants were more than happy to tell anyone who would listen just how “disappointing” he was.

  It had only taken a day for him to back down and rethink his little shame tactic, though it never did stop him from pursuing her. She has been able to easily avoid him since returning to the castle, after all she was a busy woman. She taught at the academy in her free time, between being her family representative in the court not to mention her shared duty with Saffron as the protector of Crown; a job her entire family is supposed to be doing but somehow fell only to the two of them.

  He finally stopped talking, his eyes locking with hers again as he sat smugly in his chair. we could freeze him to his chair. One of her chimed as the spell to do just that was pushed to the forefront of her mind.

  For a brief moment, she considered it, if only to put an end to this pointless meeting.

  The queen would be angry, she sighed; the st time she had frozen someone on a wall she had been kindly, but firmly, asked not to decorate the castle. Besides, with our luck the moron would likely think it’s some twisted form of endearment.

  She grimaced as he actually winked at her, if we think about it, this is all Hecatolite’s fault. She told herself and she agreed.

  If not for her sister, Alexa never would have slept with Alen; and if Hecatolite could have talked to her wife, or controlled herself, Saffron wouldn’t have locked herself in her room today and she would be here in this meeting. It was Saffron’s day to shadow the queen after all; but here she is, on her day off, cleaning up after Hecatolite… again.

  That’s not fair, it isn’t all her fault after all. She thought, gncing at the queen who sat at the head of the table, looking just as bored as Alexa was.

  To anyone else, Queen Irithal likely looked just as elegantly poised as ever, her intricately carved crown shining in the light as she shifted her head ever so slightly, nodding in acknowledgement to the next person waiting to speak as her hazy white eyes scanned the room. Her presence alone kept the nobles around the room in line as they all reported one by one about the state of her nds in this useless exercise.

  They all likely thought this was just routine, after all there was a looming meeting with the elves ter today so it didn’t seem out of pce that the queen would want to check in personally. But Alexa knew better at this point.

  Queen Tari Irithal was an amazing ruler if you asked Alexa, she excelled at keeping her nds running smoothly and keeping the nobility in check. For a long time, Alexa had wondered just how she did it, to run an entire nation with the ease and grace that Irithal always projected; and over the st few months of working side by side with the queen she had finally figured out the secret.

  To put it simply, Tari Irithal… didn’t “run” her nation. Yes, she was the queen and held the final word on anything happening in her nds. During court, she was the only voice in the room that mattered as she silenced the bickering nobility and focused them all on the things that mattered… but out of court, during the day to day tasks that really kept the nation together, she didn’t do much of anything.

  That was an unfair simplification, and Alexa knew it; but she had been almost disappointed the first time she had shadowed the queen in her role as “protector”. She would never admit it out loud, but she’ll never forget seeing the queen “working” for the first time.

  There she was, the Queen of the Empire of Crown, the woman whom bards sang about in the streets. The unmoving queen who sat bare atop her throne while the heavens themselves were torn asunder. To her people, Irithal was a modern-day legend on par with the dragon syer; but unlike Alistar, no one questioned the stories about the Queen.

  The people idolized her, looked up to her as a pilr of guidance… And she had just been sitting behind a desk, overflowing with papers and reports as advisors and servants rushed around her in a blur. Almost zily she picked up a report, skimmed it, then sighed before simply holding it out. She muttered a name, and the report was whisked away… that was it, she moved on to the next report and repeated the process. Every so often someone would present her with a “completed” report, and she would read it before nodding and stamping her seal onto it or sending it back with a few muttered words.

  It had been almost embarrassing how long it took Alexa to realize the truth behind it all. She is only one person. A human, just like the rest of us.

  And once she could see that a lot of things suddenly became clear once she could look past the crown. The Queen had spent years gathering people, surrounding herself with trusted advisors from all walks of life; it was one of the reasons she had pursued her mother after all. And she utilizes them to their fullest, delegating tasks to those she believes best suited to handle them.

  And she is good, no, she is great at pairing the right person to each task; to the point where she doesn’t have to intervene anymore. Alexa had thought it zy when she first saw it for the first time, but now it's… amazing. With a single word ws can be overturned, and rewritten; the Queen decided to go to war and before the sun had even set her team had drawn up a “battle pn” for the next two years. She had crafted a finely tuned machine, running her nation from her desk while all the carefully aligned cogs moved around her.

  When Saffron had announced to the court that Hecatolite and Amethyst wanted to act as intermediaries for a meeting with the elves, no one believed there was enough time to prepare for such a thing. But, by that night, when Hecatolite was so kind as to announce her mating habits to the world again, her advisors had already drawn up a pn for the meeting. They even had contingency pns based on the sparse information they had.

  It did help that the message outlining the pn came from her mother, who had taken it on herself to consolidate all of the information she had gathered from the twins about their time in Felnnor.

  When the Queen had seen that message… It was one of the few times over the st few months that Alexa could see it. Her shoulders slumping ever so slightly as her eyes suddenly unfocused, and she stared bnkly at the parchment for a moment too long before passing it off without a word.

  Most people would never see it, she was the queen, the pilr of her people. She didn’t falter… but Alexa was starting to see more and more of it, the truth behind the mask.

  It was subtle, so much so that she never would have noticed it if not for her position. Given the state of the world a representative from every noble family has taken up residence in the castle, weekly reports are given to Queen and her advisors when “court” is held at the end of every week. And if it was just that, she wouldn’t have seen it. The weight of it all on the queen’s shoulders, and the cracks that had appeared over the st few months since the twins vanished.

  But given her family’s position as “protectors of the crown” it falls to them to be an… added yer of protection for the queen and her daughter (who has officially started her training as the crown princess and now attends meetings and court with her mother). What that means in practice is someone from her family is almost always at the Queen's side, alternating between Saffron and Alexa every few days and that’s when it really started.

  It was… strange the first time Alexa found herself alone with the queen, sitting in this very room after a meeting far more productive than this one, that she saw the first crack. Irithal had slumped ever so slightly, her hazy white eyes drifting to Alexa as she opened her mouth. It was as if she wanted to ask a question at the time but… never did. She had simply shaken her head and returned to her work.

  Saffron noticed it too, once telling Alexa during their near nightly meet ups now, that she was worried about the Queen. Neither of them could really expin it, the distant look she sometimes gave them; like she wanted to reach out but didn’t know how to.

  How was it that this woman, who ran one of the rgest nations in the world, who could strip someone’s mind bare with nary a thought, could look… so lost. Irithal never used her magic on them either, not once since coming to the castle has the queen attempted to read Alexa’s mind, or not that she noticed at least.

  And then the other day it all made sense. After receiving the message about the meeting, and the following panic from Hecatolite being herself, Alexa had pnned on going to Saffron’s room. She had finally found the stash of dwarven whisky everyone else had been raiding, and her sister-in-w needed a pick me up… but she never made it to Saffron's room.

  That night, standing in the hallway Alexa found her. The woman before her that night wasn’t the unshakable queen; no, that was Tari, just her. Standing silently in the hallway staring bnkly up at a painting of herself sitting on the throne… a painting her mother had made and gifted to her.

  The Queen hasn’t slept since she found out Taaffeite was coming to the capital for the first time since the twins vanished. Alexa knew that for a fact, one bonus of having three minds is it’s pretty easy to just set part of her brain to track someone she’s familiar with. There are only so many high-powered mages in the castle after all, and Tari is the only soul mage in the capital. At this point Alexa could probably pick her out across the whole city, so spotting her standing in the hallway during the night was child’s py.

  Not for the first time she wondered if Hecatolite knew the amount of chaos she causes for everyone else. Why had she insisted that mom come here to cast the spell, Saffron could easily cast it given everyone felt the wave of mana from her bedroom an hour ago.

  Then she quickly spun one her mind’s off to think about it before giving up. Hecatolite likely stumbled into a problem, and being the little ball of chaos she is, tried to solve it in the fast way with no consideration for the world around her.

  And that all brings us to today… she drummed her fingers against her leg as she stared at the Queen. Taking in her nearly perfect appearance, her unblemished olive skin and hazy white eyes framed by her dark hair held back by her crown.

  Those bags under her eyes are getting pretty bad. She thought idly as the queen met her eyes, the makeup hiding the dark circles would be barely noticeable from across the room, but from where Alexa sat one could just faintly see the slight change in color of the Queen’s skin.

  They stared at one another for a long moment, long enough for someone to clear their throat and only then did she realize the Queen was staring at her because it was her turn to share the state of her family’s territory.

  Without looking away from the queen, Alexa stood. She knew it was an insult to stare down the monarch like this, and the other nobles in the room were starting to stir but she was tired. Today was supposed to be her day off, she had even told the academy she wouldn’t be in today to teach so she could greet her parents… instead she was here, in this useless meeting. If she really wanted a proper report, she would have gathered her advisors and called a court. Instead…

  The moment someone had even whispered about a ball of fire streaking across the sky, Irithal had cracked. Everyone noticed the sudden change, her jaw tensing as her eyes narrowed. The woman who stared down the moon as it cracked in the sky, flinched and only one person in the entire world could be the cause. Not god, devil, deity, nor man…

  Mom…

  Irithal had panicked. It was the most composed panic Alexa had ever seen, but it was obvious what it was. She had sat back in her chair, nodded and called this impromptu meeting sending messengers scattering to drag all the noble representatives to her office.

  So here Alexa was, challenging the queen in her own castle. Before she even spoke Alexa sent out another mana pulse, a much rger one this time; one that wouldn’t just map out her immediate area or even the next few rooms. No, she pushed her mana out, sending it across the city and she felt it in reply.

  When someone pushes their mana out in a pulse it works like sonar, giving someone a very vague feeling of the world around them and letting them feel unmasked mana signatures in the area. It’s a crude detection, one that will alert everyone with any amount of mana sense around to your presence and could be tricked if someone practiced hiding themselves… not that any of that mattered as everyone in the castle felt two mana pulses responding to hers.

  Alexa felt bad as Queen Irithal… winced when she felt the returning mana. For the first time since the twins vanished, Alexa felt someone gently press against her mind. The Queen's magic skimmed her senses, barely brushing against Alexa’s surface thoughts.

  She could resist, even as bad as Alexa was at soul magic she was an archimage, and a god seed. Could she keep the Queen from reading her mind? Maybe. The queen wasn’t a push over, and unlike Alexa, Irithal was a very specialized mage. If the queen threw herself at Alexa with all of her power… She wasn’t sure she could win, even with three minds and all her power, she probably couldn't keep Irithal from cracking into her mind without attacking her… none of that mattered though as she rexed, pulling her own mana back and allowing the queen into her mind, not bothering to hide any of her thoughts as spoke.

  “I could bore you all with the same report I gave st week on my family’s nds,” Alexa started, still not blinking as she felt the queen probe her mind again. “But given my parents are about to arrive, I believe it would be best to allow them to report in my stead.” I can’t believe you let them all bicker for so long without saying anything. She watched as the Queen’s eyebrow twitched ever so slightly. “They will have a much more up to date account of their nds.” Alexa sat down, the person to her left, realizing she was done, quickly stood up.

  How long are you going to let this go on, my Queen? If you pnned on hiding in your office all day to avoid them you could have done better than this. Alexa sighed in her mind as they all heard arms bells sound in the distance.

  There was no mistaking her father’s entrance, his power washing over the castle as everyone heard the dull thud that sent several people into a panic.

  Everyone had been informed that her parents were arriving today, though it was supposed to be ter in the day… they probably made up a lot of time from that bump of power Hecatolite gave us all… she couldn’t bme everyone for panicking, after all no one expected a fireball to nd in the courtyard of the royal pace; she was just thankful Alistar was carrying her mother. If he had been alone, he probably would have just crashed through a window…

  Irithal sighed, sagging in her chair as she finally spoke. “Someone go tell them to turn off that bell.” She sounded tired as everyone stared at her. “Do not make me repeat myself,” she hissed, raising her head she gred across the table and several people tripped over themselves to be the first out of the room.

  The young noble beside Alexa shivered, clutching a paper in her hands as she looked around with wide eyes. “I…” Alexa thought the girl would faint as Irithal looked at her.

  You’re scaring her. She thought ftly and Irithal jerked, her gre softening as she composed herself.

  Clearing her throat, Irithal addressed the young girl. “Lady Seyfair, as you can tell something very important just came up…” she gred as Alexa snickered in her mind. “I will make time ter to hear your report, or better yet.” She held out her hand taking the paper from the girl who handed it over with shaky hands.

  Irithal skimmed the paper before nodding, Alexa was certain she hadn’t even read it before she said. “Have Alexa here help you organize this for the next court in a few days.” Alexa quickly stopped ughing in her head as she was handed the paper, the faintest hint of a smirk appeared on the Queen's lips. “It shouldn't be too difficult for you.”

  Alexa looked at the mess of barely legible words on the paper, she was positive that whatever this was… it was not a territory report, there weren't even any numbers on it she could see…

  She was about to retort when the door burst open, the remaining people in the office dove for cover as the heavy wood door smmed against the stone wall; the air ringing for a moment only to be drowned out by bellowing ughter.

  Stepping through the door, Alistar grinned as he spoke. “I hope we aren’t interrupting?” He ughed as a guard hung from his waist in a futile attempt to stop him, smoke still wafting off his hair and skin as he strode into the room without a care in the world.

  Tibbit