Chapter 2: The Assault on Fort Nazant

We met up with Alan’s troops at a certain town within the royal domain. It wasn’t surrounded by any sort of rampart, so our throng of over 10,000 soldiers was camping out just outside the city limits.

Upon arriving at the entrance to the town, we found Alan and Isaac there waiting for us.

“Any luck?” Alan asked.

Reggie nodded. “You could say that. But first, I’d like to hear how things have gone on your end.”

“Very well. I saved us a spot in the mayor’s manor, so let’s take this conversation there. I’ve secured enough empty rooms for the rest of you lot to stay in, too.”

Amid their conversation, I had Cain help me down from our horse onto the ground.

Curiosity in his voice, Isaac asked, “I always see you sharing a horse with that knight of yours. What, don’t know how to ride one?”

“I do! Just... if something happened, it wouldn’t be safe for—”

“Riding a horse makes it harder for her to concentrate on her spells, so I’m here to assist her,” Cain said, taking over the explanation.

Given that he was technically speaking to a king, Cain kept his tone respectful, but he was definitely giving off vibes of If you’ve got something to say, say it to me. Considering the man had nearly killed him once, Cain was understandably wary of Isaac.

Isaac, on the other hand, seemed unperturbed. “Then I assume there’s no issue if I give her a lift whenever we’re traveling together. Hey, Kiara! Ride with me next time.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I replied bluntly. “Aren’t you a king? You can’t just go wherever I direct you.”

“Sure I can,” he replied.

Uh, you are a king, aren’t you? I’m pretty sure he’s just joking, but still... What do I need to say to make him back off?

Mikhail was the one to help me out of my dilemma. “That’s quite enough, Your Majesty. That sort of thing calls for a relationship built on trust. Besides, I’m sure that knight has acquired a decent enough understanding of magic to know exactly what’s needed of him.”

“Hmm. Do you truly have that much faith in him?” Isaac asked me point-blank.

I nodded. “He’s like an older brother to me.”

“You’re his little sister, you say? Hmm... Very well. Henceforth, I shall be a brother to you, too. That means you can ride with me now, right? While we’re at it, why don’t you come live with your big bro in Salekhard somewhere down the line? We get plenty of snow, and it’s always a delight to play in,” he proposed with a smile.

Mikhail, who was standing a step behind him, looked exasperated. Alan looked weary, and Reggie and Cain were giving off icy vibes.

This is bad, I thought to myself.

I was pretty sure he was joking around. He knew that even if I hadn’t already picked Reggie, I’d never take him up on his invitation. At the rate this conversation was going, however, I knew Reggie was going to end up mighty pissed.

That was when Master Horace suddenly burst out cackling. “Listen here, Salekhardian youngster! If you want to be Kiara’s brother, that means you’d better start calling me ‘Father’ from now on. Eeeheehee!”

“Excuse me?!” The look on Isaac’s face screamed, What the hell are you talking about?

Having realized that my mentor was throwing me a lifeline here, I chimed in with, “You’ve got a point there!”

Master Horace began spinning a web of lies with great gusto. “That’s what Kiara’s self-professed brother over there usually calls me. The prince always asks my permission before doing anything with her, too. Y’know, like... ‘Father dearest, may I kindly request your daughter’s company?’”

Isaac looked more than a little dubious, but Reggie let himself in on the joke. “Father dearest, I’d like to invite your daughter to eat with me in a bit. Do you mind?”

“Eeeheehee! You have my blessing.”

Master Horace was delighted to see the prince sucking up to him, while I felt a tingle in my heart. I’d never expected there to be an opportunity for Reggie to ask my father for permission to take me to dinner. I was an orphan, after all.

Even Cain joined in. “Pardon me, Father. Speaking as her older brother, I’m not sure about letting her go out for dinner with another man.”

“Heeheehee! Every daughter becomes a bride one day. Going out for a bite to eat is a good warm-up for the main event. And if they stay out past curfew, well, we’ll just have to go drag her home.”

“Are you lot serious?” Isaac was dumbfounded.

“What else would you expect?” came Cain’s nonchalant reply. “Miss Kiara has always loved Sir Horace like a father.”

“Err, yes, that’s true,” I agreed.

Though he knew I cared deeply for Master Horace, Isaac probably hadn’t realized I actually thought of him as a parent.

“Her father is a clay doll, hm?”

The look of pity he ultimately cast my way was a bitter pill to swallow. Eventually, Isaac just shrugged his shoulders and gave up on teasing me.

After that, we headed into the mayor’s residence. It wasn’t particularly big for a manor. It was three stories tall, and with about thirty or so rooms, it was essentially just a souped-up version of a wealthy merchant’s home. There was only enough room to house the VIPs of the army. Half of the generals were staying in inns, with only Alan, Emmeline, former baron Henry Delphion, Isaac, and their respective knights spending the night here.

We used one of the parlors as our meeting room. What I heard there was that the Évrard troops led by Lady Évrard had successfully taken Kilrea. Based on the report, they had just entered the royal domain. We had also heard word from our spies in Lord Patriciél’s territory that his troops had moved into Sestina.

“Does that mean the count abandoned his own territory?” Reggie pondered aloud.

Alan’s lips pulled down into a frown. It seemed Lord Patriciél was so hellbent on defending the gates of the royal capital that he was willing to sacrifice his own land to do it. Even I had to wonder why he would go that far.

“Adding Patriciél’s troops to the Llewynian forces in Sestina would bring them to about... twenty thousand men? Even assuming they pick up a few stragglers from the territories we seized, it couldn’t be much more than that.”

We had cut off Llewyne’s soldier supply line when we captured Trisphede and forced Salekhard into surrender. Alan claimed that we wouldn’t have to worry about them bolstering their forces any further.

“Is that why they plan to end this in Sestina? Since we’re planning to join up with the troops that crossed through Kilrea, our numbers should easily exceed twenty thousand.” Something about this didn’t seem to add up for Reggie. “Come to think of it, were there any Llewynian soldiers to be found in the royal domain outside the one fort?”

“No. Excluding the lakeside fort and the border with Kilrea, there were no Llewynian soldiers stationed in this province. I’m sure the margravine will take care of the latter group,” Alan surmised.

Reggie nodded. “We can leave the border for her to deal with.”

“One more thing. I received a report from some spies I sent into Sestina,” Isaac said. Said report involved the whereabouts of a person of interest. “Llewyne’s female spellcaster was spotted near Fort Nazant. I assume she headed to Sestina from there.”

“Miss Ada, you mean?”

Did she plan to keep on fighting? She never had made an appearance in Eirlain, though. If she had shown up to the battle, there was a good chance we might have lost, too.

If Ada was going to participate in the coming battle, that meant I would have to fight her. I didn’t want to do that. Though naturally, I wasn’t about to let our side lose either.

“Having a spellcaster join the fray will make things a lot more difficult,” said Reggie. “We’d best come up with a plan to deal with her.”

While I was still stuck on that, everyone else moved on to the next topic. If we kept heading west toward the royal capital, the province of Patriciél was going to present our next problem. We would have to remain on high alert, lest the Llewynian soldiers left behind in the forts attack us from the rear.

Reggie unceremoniously requested that the problem be dealt with. “We’ll leave that for you to handle, Lord Isaac.”

Isaac, who was sitting on the sofa opposite him, made a face. “Without any assistance?”

Reggie’s smile didn’t falter. “I don’t want to drag this out until winter and enter a stalemate as a result. I doubt you could afford to accompany us all the way through next spring, either. Besides, I could hardly imagine you’d disgrace yourself by losing to the dregs of Llewyne.”

To sum it up, he was saying, What, are you too chicken to take on the tiny number of enemies that got left behind? Isaac seemed to pick up on what Reggie was getting at, judging by the twitch in his face.

“No matter how serene you may look, I see you’re quick to pick a fight.”

“I don’t recall doing anything of the sort. You provoked me first, and I merely rose to the bait. I’ll capture Fort Sestina before you can catch up to us. After that, we’ll join up with you and Évrard’s troops to defeat the Llewynians in Sestina.”

“I suppose that’s the most reasonable plan there is, if you want to settle this quickly.”

“I am grateful for Salekhard’s efforts. You’re the reason we kept our losses in the royal domain to a minimum.”

Isaac snorted. “Well, I suppose one measly battle wouldn’t be enough to make up for our occupation of Trisphede. Fine, we’ll capture the fort north of Patriciél. Just keep in mind that we left some of our own men in Trisphede, and we can’t afford to call for them now. I’ll need you to lend me about two thousand more men.”

Reggie whispered something to Alan. With that, it was determined that Alan’s knight, Lyle, would join the Salekhardian troops alongside 2,000 other soldiers.

Isaac left the room to make preparations for his departure.

Now that all the urgent business was taken care of, we decided to break for food. Alan had already eaten, and unless we were camping, Cain never took meals with us.

“Why don’t I make good on my invitation? I already got your father’s permission, after all.” Reggie grabbed me by the wrist, and together we went to go eat in the dining hall.

The mayor’s wife and her servants set out a meal for us. Reggie dismissed the servants who had stayed behind to wait on us, insisting that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Of course, that didn’t mean we were alone together, exactly. Master Horace was still there. “I’m keeping an eye on you, mister. Eeeheehee!”

I placed my cackling doll atop the table, then started picking at my food.

“Considering how many unannounced visitors have descended upon their town, it’s amazing how much effort they’re putting into the food. I suppose we have Alan to thank for leaving them with a favorable impression of us,” Reggie said, cutting his meatloaf with a knife.

I’d always thought as much, but Reggie really had a knack for handling utensils. Given that I’d been using forks and knives for years, I obviously knew the basics myself, but I never could manage to eat as elegantly as he did.

In other words, I was a slob.

I wanted to get better, though. Once we’d taken our country back, if Reggie still wanted to be... with me, there would be plenty of chances to put my table etiquette to the test. And on those occasions, I’d be compared to everyone else around me. I had a sinking feeling people were going to whisper things like Goodness, doesn’t that girl know the proper way to eat? behind my back.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that my meat slipped off my fork. I hastily scooped it back up, but I was starting to get nervous now. There was nothing more daunting than messing up in front of the epitome of perfection. I was starting to worry that I’d turn him off, at this rate.

Thinking about it, aside from our trip to Évrard Castle and the stops in between, I’d never been around Reggie over a stretch of several days before. We were still kids back then, so I hadn’t given it too much thought, but now that I was grown-up, I was a lot more worried about how other people saw me.

My nerves had me eating pretty slowly, it seemed.

“What, too tired to eat?” Master Horace asked as he watched from beside me, which snapped me out of my reverie. When I saw that Reggie was almost done with his meal, I started shoveling food into my mouth as fast as I could.

Right as I finished up my meal out of a determination not to keep Reggie waiting, he asked, “Do you want any tea?”

I was about to decline the offer, but Reggie came by my side anyway, pouring tea into my cup.

“Come on, it’s wrong to have a prince wait on me like this!”

Seriously, shouldn’t I be the one doing that?! My lack of manners couldn’t be more obvious now, and it was enough to bum me out.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. If I asked someone else to wait on us, I wouldn’t get to sit next to you. Everyone would tell me it’s not proper for a prince,” he said, declaring that as his reason for sending the servants away. “So, are you full?”

“Uh, yeah.”

When I glanced down at the tea Reggie had poured for me, I couldn’t have felt more stuffed.

“Then how about you help quench my thirst, Kiara?” he said, twirling a lock of my hair around his finger. With every brush of hair against my skin, a shiver crawled up the back of my neck. After combing and toying with it for a bit, Reggie sunk his teeth into the tress.

“Whoa, Reggie?!”

I jolted, wondering what had possessed him to munch on my hair. Reggie pulled back, allowing the lock to slip from his fingers.

“You promised to indulge me, remember?”

“Yes, but I was just riding a horse! I’m all dirty!”

“I don’t mind.”

Reggie’s gaze softened, and he wrapped me up in his arms, nuzzling his face against my neck. With a giggle, he pressed his lips just beneath my ear for a fleeting moment.

“Eep!”

I let out a squeak as a ticklish sensation ran up my spine.

“Oh, come on,” Master Horace griped, exasperated.

Reggie firmly ignored him. “I want to get you used to touching me. Frankly speaking, I’d like to reach the point where you can ask me to hold you close, and I want you to want to kiss me,” he said, wrapping both of his hands around my neck and lifting my face to look up at him. “But for now, I’ll just make do with this.”

What does he mean, “for now”? Before I could ask, he sealed my lips with a kiss.

I could hear Master Horace sighing, but I wasn’t in the state of my mind to care about that when it was taking all I had just to breathe.

Reggie stopped his “indulging” there. “We shouldn’t monopolize this place for too long. I doubt either you or my brother would be too happy about that. Until next time, then.” With that, he finally let me leave.

“The future is starting to look grim,” Master Horace muttered, still flabbergasted. He kept moaning and groaning to himself, and the comedy of it made the fact that he’d been watching us a little less embarrassing.

“Will I ever get used to this?” Thinking back on what Reggie had said and done, I had my doubts.

As soon as I snapped out of my daze, I came to a dead stop in the middle of the corridor. I promptly beat my head against the wall a couple times in an attempt to pull myself together.

Unfortunately, Alan was there to witness it. “Have you finally lost it, Kiara?” he asked, staring at me with pity in his eyes.

No! It’s not like that!

But no matter how hard I objected, Alan wouldn’t believe me.

◇◇◇

Isaac set out the next morning. The day after that, the Farzian army followed suit. Our destination was Fort Nazant, located in the northwestern part of Sestina.

We crept west along the high road in one giant body of over ten thousand men. We sent scouts ahead of us and took frequent stops to let our soldiers rest, so it took us a good bit of time to reach our destination. There were carriages available, so I spent the journey riding in one with Reggie, Cain, and Alan.

When I’d first heard about Fort Nazant, I had started to wonder about something: though I’d participated in several fort battles by now, I had no idea how to actually go about capturing one.

I asked Cain about it, and he replied, “The first step is to send a messenger and call for their surrender. If they refuse, the next move is either to lay siege to the stronghold and break down the gates, or else send people inside to infiltrate the fort. Failing that, the only option is to hold out and wait for the enemy to shrivel away.”

“Uh, shrivel away?”

“Or if the lord is overly stubborn, his own men might revolt against him before hitting the brink of starvation.”

“Oh, wow...”

Just imagining it sent a chill down my spine. I prayed I would never experience that level of hunger for myself.

“There’s also the option to use poison, just as His Highness did in Cassia.”

Right. Thinking back on it, nearly all of the Llewynian soldiers in Cassia Castle were downed with poison.

“Our forces greatly outnumber the enemy’s this time around, so perhaps we should try calling for their surrender,” said Reggie. “I doubt they would have entertained the notion back at Clonfert, but that’s because calling for reinforcements was all they needed to do to tip the scales in their favor.”

Not to mention that at Clonfert, Llewyne had sent out their troops the moment they saw us coming, so there hadn’t been the option to discuss surrender in the first place.

“Miss Kiara was able to overpower them almost instantly, too. Still... I fear that going this route may be harder on her conscience in the long run.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

I gave a puzzled tilt of my head. Why did he think I was going to take it so hard?

Reggie was the one to explain. “In the event that negotiations break down, or if the enemy simply wants to give us a clear sign of their refusal, the messenger’s head may roll.”

I shuddered, and my hand flew to my own neck on instinct. “C-Can’t they just say ‘no’ like a normal person?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll fix our message to an arrow instead. It wouldn’t do to leave our most valuable warrior too upset to function. Let’s set a deadline and give them until then.” Seeing how frightened I was, Reggie gave me a pat on the head.

“How does three days from now sound?” Cain suggested.

“That sounds like the ideal amount of time on our end, but I have a feeling it will take them at least a week to come to a decision. If we don’t leave them enough time to stew, they won’t be ready to give up. Though I do wish we could finish this sooner.” Reggie then muttered, “Winter is coming, after all.”

It was getting chillier and chillier as of late. We were already set to spend a full week traveling to Sestina. Once the impending battle was over, it was likely going to take us yet another week to get the royal capital. If we wanted to waste as little time as possible, it would be in our best interest to get Llewyne to raise the white flag the moment we demanded their surrender.

That gave me an idea.

“Wait, what if I sent my golem their way?”

“Hm?” Cain glanced over at me, his eyes wide.

◇◇◇

Sometime after that discussion, we wound our way through the mountain paths of the royal domain and made it to Sestina. The road through the border had technically been guarded by Llewynian soldiers; fortunately, they ran for the hills when faced with a force of ten thousand men and a golem leading the charge, allowing us to pass through at our leisure.

It wasn’t long after that that we arrived at Fort Nazant. The stronghold was on the smaller side. Based on the estimates of our scouts, there couldn’t have been more than three thousand men inside.

Should Farzian troops draw close enough, the role of the soldiers stationed in the fort was twofold: to inform Sestina Castle of our magnitude, and to stop our forces in their tracks.

We had the option to just pass over this fort on our journey, but that would only leave them the opportunity to attack us from the rear. We feared that a surprise assault could end up costing us dearly.

And so, we chose to go on the offensive.

Reggie approved of my idea for a messenger. Once we’d laid siege to the fort in a by-the-book manner, I brought my envoys to life.

“Hahaha!” The moment he laid eyes on my creations, Reggie broke out into his first bout of laughter in quite a while. Groul’s face was twitching.

“Seriously?” Alan muttered, looking downright haggard.

Emmeline, meanwhile, had sparkles in her eyes. “Amazing, Miss Kiara! I was hoping you’d come up with something like this!”

I was glad to see someone appreciated it.

Leaving those dubious faces and a mass of startled soldiers in their wake, Messenger Golems No. 1 and No. 2 began their march toward the fort. Reggie and I sat atop the second one’s shoulder. Lila had perched herself on its opposite shoulder, now less than half the size she had been at her peak.

“An emissary, you say?!” shouted the soldiers atop the fort walls.

The reason they had figured it out before I could even say anything was because I had carved I am an emissary here to request your surrender in giant letters across Golem No. 1’s chest. Seeing as I’d used the word “emissary,” the Llewynians seemed lost as to whether or not they ought to attack.

Golem No. 1 held out a hand, and the soldiers gave a shriek. One of the knights, however, noticed that a letter had dropped from its palm and skittishly reached to pick it up.

Said letter noted that they should send their reply as soon as possible.

Hanging back a little ways behind Golem No. 1, I impatiently awaited their answer. Unfortunately, what they sent back several minutes later was a rain of arrows. We had seen this coming, so I wasn’t terribly surprised.

While Lila kept the arrows at bay with a snowstorm, I pulled Golem No. 2 back and had Golem No. 1 begin grinding down the fort walls with its hands.

“It’s breaking! It’s breaking!”

“The arrows aren’t doing anything!”

The soldiers on the wall were shooting for dear life, but it was going to take more than a measly arrow to bring my golem down.

The stones of the wall crumbled away before our very eyes. It wasn’t long before the soldiers were making a run for it. One brave knight thrust his sword at my earthen titan—but unfortunately for him, the bigger it was, the more HP the golem was bound to have. It didn’t so much as flinch.

I was hoping they would be feeling a little more amenable to surrender by now, but the enemy made a surprising move.

“D-Don’t you care what happens to our hostage?!”

Just as I’d whittled the wall almost all the way down to the gates, Llewynian soldiers dragged another man over to an untouched portion of the wall. He had clearly been imprisoned for a while; his beard was growing wild and his hair was an unruly mess. He was wearing nothing but a plain, neutral shirt and pants, and there were no shoes on his feet.

I asked Reggie, “Do you know who that is?”

“It’s hard to tell from a distance, but I assume he’s a knight who was stationed in the fort. Hmm... I’ll need to get a closer look at him before I can determine whether he’s a VIP. May I request your assistance on that front?”

“Sure.”

Reggie got to his feet alongside my golem’s head, and I reached out to touch his shoulder. The moment he pointed his sword toward the fort, I let my power flow into him. Now that I’d passed along my mana, it was up to him to wield it. Lightning flew from the tip of his blade, striking down the knights who held the hostage in their grip. As they screamed and released their hold, Golem No. 1 paused its destruction of the fort to snatch up the stunned prisoner.

Despite the loss of their hostage, the Llewynians continued to haltingly fire off arrows; however, the moment Golem No. 1 kicked down the gates, they finally raised the white flag.

Something occurred to me then: perhaps we had never needed an envoy in the first place.

That marked the successful capture of Fort Nazant, but the clean-up process took significantly longer. We herded the Llewynians who had given themselves up outside the fort, but there was no telling if there were more of them lurking inside. A handful of soldiers were sent inside to check the place out. With the help of Gina and Girsch, who brought Reynard and Sara along with them, it took only three or so hours to complete the task.

We moved into the fort after that. Though the place had only just been in the hands of the enemy, if we wanted to fortify our defenses, we were safer inside of it than out.

While I holed up in my room with Lila, who had shrunk several sizes by now, Reggie and the troops kept up their work. There were plenty of pesky tasks to take care of, such as disarming the Llewynian soldiers and shipping them back to Évrard as prisoners. The captured enemies were rounded up in several pits I’d dug with my magic, so at the very least, standing guard over them wasn’t too much of a chore.

The next day, I went up to the fort wall with Cain to do some repair work on those pits. From there, I could get a bird’s-eye view of the holes I’d had my golem dig the day before. The reason I’d gone to check on them now was because I’d heard we were going to hand the POWs over to Lady Évrard the moment we joined up with her troops.

I couldn’t let them go anywhere until that process was over and done with, so I had to dig a moat in preparation for a potential rainstorm. Otherwise, the pits would end up totally flooded; some of the men would float to their escape, while the ones who weren’t lucky enough to know how to swim would drown.

While we were up there, Cain shared some information about the hostage from the previous day.

“He was the captain of the Farzian royal guard?”

“Yes, to His Maje—ah, His Highness’s uncle. I’d seen his face several times before, so I’m quite sure of it.”

“I’d figured he was just a knight who had been holed up inside the fort, like Reggie had suggested.”

“As did I. His hair and beard had grown out when we saw him yesterday. As soon as he’d cleaned himself up a bit, I knew it was him.”

There was no such thing as plastic surgery in this world, so unless someone’s face was badly burned enough to be unidentifiable, there was no way to pass themselves off as another person. Thus, getting the man cleaned up worked toward confirming his identity, too.

That just left me with one question. “What was the captain of the royal guard doing here?”

“He claimed that he fled after our army’s defeat in Sestina, and only managed to make it this far before he was captured.”

There was a pretty heavy emphasis on the word “claimed.” Cain probably had his misgivings too. Considering that he hadn’t outright called it fishy, however, the explanation clearly wasn’t anything outside the realm of possibility.

I asked him just to be sure. “Is the captain of the royal guard allowed to leave the king’s side and head to the front?”

“Yes. Knights can even step in to lead the troops when their lord is indisposed.”

“Good to know. Still, it looks like you have your suspicions.”

I climbed down from the fort wall with Cain, having gathered my thoughts on how I wanted to build the moat. We headed down the stairs inside the tower and emerged into the courtyard.

“I’m not sure what Llewyne had to gain from keeping him around. If we go by his story, he asserted that he was the captain of the royal guard when he was pleading for his life, using his personal ties to His Highness to emphasize his value as a hostage. Still, one would think it would be less trouble to kill him than to keep him prisoner.”

With a sigh, Cain let his eyes slide toward the base of the main tower. When I followed his gaze, I saw a man chasing after Reggie just as he had come out into the courtyard.

“Please take me into battle with you, Your Highness!” he pleaded.

“You’ve been imprisoned for quite a while now. I’m sure that’s taken a physical toll on you, so you’re better off recuperating here in the fort. Oh, though you’re free to go home, if you’d prefer.”

“Your Highness?!”

Wow, okay. Those two definitely aren’t close.

Reggie was very openly giving him the cold shoulder, which made me realize something.

“Say, Sir Cain. How long has that man been captain of the royal guard?”

“Over ten years by now.”

That answer settled it for me; Reggie was never going to trust him. He’d probably done something to earn the prince’s animosity during the latter’s childhood years.

I must have been staring at them a little too long; the man in question noticed me looking and came running over. Cain casually stepped out in front of me. Thanks to his intervention, I was spared an up-close-and-personal encounter with the captain. The knight took one look at Cain, then stopped in his tracks a short distance away.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re the Lady Spellcaster, I assume? I have a favor to—”

“I can’t help you.” I turned him down before he could even ask.

“Pardon?”

The captain sounded like I’d taken the wind right out of his sails. Picking up on what I was thinking, Cain shot him down more decisively. “His Highness isn’t the type to take back what he’s said, even at the spellcaster’s request. In fact, if he learns that you’ve been making trouble for the Lady Spellcaster, he’ll likely have you thrown out of the fort. Rather than resorting to these roundabout methods, you’d be better off continuing to appeal to him directly. Good day to you, sir.”

Having said his piece, Cain hid me from the captain’s view and shuffled us both away. When I glanced back over my shoulder at the man, I saw he was frozen in place, stunned. I almost felt sorry for him, but while I may have had the standing to give my input on hiring mercenaries, I was in no place to comment on which knights should be appointed as officers.

Moreover, I wasn’t interested in going out of my way to interact with him. If he was captain of the royal guard ten years ago, that meant he’d known Reggie since he was a little boy. If Reggie didn’t want anything to do with him, it meant he’d given the prince a reason to hate him. Most likely, he’d spent Reggie’s childhood treating him just as coldly as the king. The blatant opportunism in his about-face was enough to make me sick.

As far as I was concerned, that had wrapped up the whole captain incident... but two days later, I learned that it had escalated into a much bigger issue. I heard about it in a conversation with Gina and Girsch over dinner.

“You know that captain of the royal guard?” Gina said. “Uh, what was his name, again?”

“Virgil, I believe,” Girsch interjected. “He’s been spreading nasty rumors among the troops, from the sound of it.”

“Like what?” I asked, pausing just as I was about to break my bread.

Gina frowned. “That His Highness is being callous toward him or some such. He’s trying to get everyone to feel sorry for him so that somebody will go smooth things over on his behalf. He keeps insisting that he has nowhere to go and that he might lose his job if no one does anything.”

“Seriously?”

He was going to hurt Reggie’s reputation if he kept that up. If he wanted to serve the prince so badly, why was he going out of his way to get on his bad side?

Girsch provided an answer to my musings. “Hmm... He might be playing politics in hopes of getting into His Highness’s good graces after the war. He’s probably banking on His Highness bringing him under his command in hopes of getting the rumors to stop.”

“Still, spreading gossip about the commander-in-chief? Those rumors could come back to bite us if they call the prince’s commands into doubt on the battlefield. Besides, I figure the whole reason His Highness is keeping him at a distance is because he’s the type to resort to those tricks.”

Since the two mercenaries knew the truth of the situation, they’d apparently taken the gossiping soldier to Girsch’s counseling room and given him a stern talking-to. While they were at it, they’d suggested that with someone like Reggie, it would be more productive to faithfully and politely watch over him from a distance than to incessantly follow him around.

“He seems to have taken it to heart, so hopefully that’s the end of that. But warn His Highness to be careful, won’t you, dear?” Girsch gave me a wink.

◇◇◇

I had to go tell Reggie about this. The following day, I stopped by his room to talk. Felix, who was standing guard by the door, welcomed me inside.

Reggie’s room in the main tower contained a wooden table that was both simple and elegant and a wooden bench big enough to seat three people. There were no cushions on it, of course, but what else would you expect in a fort during wartime?

I sat down beside Reggie on said bench. He grabbed hold of my hand and refused to let go.

“Hey, uh, Reggie? Can I have my hand back?”

“Not yet. We have to get you used to this.”

“Oh, come on.”

This wasn’t the first time we had held hands. But when we were keeping it up for this long, and in front of other people to boot, it got a little uncomfortable.

Yep, you heard me. His lord-in-waiting, Colin, was in the room with us.

Colin was pretending not to see it. Boy, I really wished he could tell me the trick to keeping such a straight face. How could he go on serving us tea like this was nothing out of the ordinary?

“C’mon! This is really embarrassing,” I pleaded in a whisper.

His response was to kick it up a notch by lacing our fingers together. The tickle of skin rubbing against skin was making me giddy. Reggie made his intentions clear, declaring, “I’m not letting you go.”

“Why are you being so mean to me?” I asked, tears in my eyes.

Reggie’s face fell. “Do you find it so unpleasant?”

If I was being totally honest here, it was the opposite of “unpleasant.” I mean, he already knew I was in love with him. I just wasn’t a fan of the PDA. It sounded like Reggie wanted me to acquire a taste for it, though.

He wouldn’t even let go while we drank our tea, so I picked up the cup in my left hand. It was from the princely china set Colin had so staunchly defended throughout our campaign. Evidently, he hadn’t brought along any of the truly expensive porcelain for fear of what could happen on the journey, but what we had in front of us was still an elegant, clean white.

As soon as we’d drained the cups of their black tea, there came a knock on the door. Colin opened up, and in came Groul with a report for Reggie.

“The reinforcements led by Lady Évrard should be arriving shortly.”

“How far out are they?”

“About thirty minutes from the fort.”

Reggie gave a nod. “Let’s head to the gate to greet them. Kiara, you come, too.”

This got him to finally let go of my hand, so it was with great relief that I followed along.

Fort Nazant was on the smaller side, so despite our leisurely pace, it wasn’t long before we had arrived at the gates. Alan, Emmeline, Jerome, and Lord Enister were already there, so perhaps they had been informed ahead of us.

The gates were already open. A good number of soldiers who couldn’t fit inside the fort had been camping outside, but the path from the gate had been left totally clear.

The solemn march of the troops had drawn close enough that I could make out the figures at the vanguard. Groul had likely timed the announcement so that Reggie wouldn’t have to wait for too long.

It wasn’t long before the dear Lady Évrard came into view. She was riding a horse and clad in the same Évrard knight uniform that Cain was wearing. Her hair was tied back near her neck. Thinking back to the days I’d seen her regularly patrol Évrard Castle and the Farzian border, I felt a lump in my throat.

Alan must have been even happier to see her than I was. When I gave a sideways glance to check, however, his face looked terribly stiff. He was being oddly conscious of Reggie too.

Just as I was wondering what that was about, Reggie whispered from beside me, “By the way, do you mind if I tell Lady Évrard about us?”

I immediately grew flustered. “Uh, err...”

“I figure it might be wiser to tell her now rather than wait for her to get suspicious and start interrogating me. My aunt is the closest relative I have left.”

Wait, that’s right! She is the closest living relative he has! If there’s anyone he needs to present me to, it’s her!

Still, hearing him ask me flat-out was making me strangely nervous. I never imagined I’d trigger a “visit your boyfriend’s house and meet the family” event in the middle of a war!

But wait a second...

“Are you sure we can’t keep it between the two of us?”

If we were still just in the “dating” stage, there was no reason we had to say anything. Just as I was about to submit that very cynical opinion, however, Reggie flashed me a delighted smile.

“I think it’s better to tell her now than later. All you have to do here is stay quiet. No denying anything. Okay?”

“Um, sure.”

Apparently, I didn’t have to say anything at all.

While we were busy with that discussion, Lady Évrard had passed through the gate and made it all the way to Reggie. She came to a stop and bowed before the prince. “It’s been quite a while, Your Highness. I’ve brought the reinforcements from Évrard, Bertrand, and Irvine.”

Though they were family, Lady Évrard had fallen in rank when she had married the margrave. Now that the royal family had shrunk amid the national crisis, she was using her former status to get as much work done as she could, but she still had to conduct herself as Reggie’s vassal.

“Thank you for making the long journey here, Aunt Beatrice. May I ask how the margrave is doing?”

“His wounds have mostly healed. He even wished to make the trip himself, but as the margrave, he had his own role to play. I’m glad to see you in good health as well, Your Highness. Has that son of mine been pulling his weight?”

When Lady Évrard glanced his way, Alan stood up straight as a rod, even more nervous than before. Considering this was his long-awaited reunion with his mother, I would’ve thought he’d look a little happier about it.

“Of course. He’s taken quite a few troublesome tasks off my hands. As has Kiara. It was certainly worth poaching her from you.”

As soon as he said my name, Lady Évrard’s gaze finally shifted to me. “I’m glad to see you doing well, Kiara. I must say, I was worried about you heading into battle without so much as a sword.”

Her smile was just as compassionate as it had been when she’d seen me off back in Évrard. I couldn’t keep my eyes from watering. I tried to take a step toward her, only for Reggie to grab me by the hand. My shoulders jumped in surprise.

“Fear not, Auntie. I’m always keeping a careful eye on her. Though I’m afraid to admit she was taken captive by the enemy at one point.”

I did my best to keep myself from squealing. No, no, no! If I make a sound, it’ll just alert all the people who haven’t noticed we’re holding hands yet!

Cold sweat dripping from my forehead, I tried to hold out.

“I won’t let there be a second time. She’s very precious to me, you see.”

I had to stop myself from screaming yet again. Did you really just say that in front of EVERYONE?! I mean, he kept it vague enough that someone could take that as “precious as a military asset,” but not Lady Évrard! She blinked when he said it, and now she’s staring down at our joined hands!

That was when I finally understood what he’d meant. If this was the way he wanted to break the news, of course he didn’t mind if I kept quiet. Lady Évrard clearly understood that there was a very personal implication to his words.

Look, now she’s flashing us a suggestive smile!

“Oh, I have a lot of questions to ask you. You too, of course, Lady Spellcaster.”

Reggie finally let go of my hand, and the tension bled out of me. When I glanced sideways and my eyes locked with Alan’s—whose face said, Great, now they’ve gone and done it—I all but wilted. Alan had clearly known this was going to happen. That explained why he’d looked so nervous, even though it technically wasn’t his problem.

If he knew, I really wish he would have told me.

Nevertheless, Lady Évrard was quite busy that day. She had to discuss how the prisoners were to be treated, and she had to work out a plan to send sick or injured soldiers to the rear. Thus, it wasn’t until the following day that I got the chance to talk with her. Naturally, she had plenty of questions for me.

“So? When did he tell you? And how?”

“Umm...”

“I have a guess, Lady Évrard. I bet it was soon after she was taken captive,” remarked Maya, who had accompanied the margravine all this way and was now ganging up on me with her mistress. There was nowhere to run from their combined assault.

Master Horace, my most dependable ally in a situation like this, was nowhere to be found. He had demanded I leave him in my room the second he heard Maya was here. I had no choice but to fend for myself.

Did Master Horace hate getting dressed up that much? Since we’re in the middle of a war, I doubt Maya brought much with her, anyway.

Much like Lady Évrard, Maya was wearing a knight uniform and had her hair tied back. “Ready for a fight” was certainly one way to describe her. Given that there were traces of blood left on her clothes, it was clear she had already done her fair share of clashing swords.

I resigned myself to my fate and began my rambling account of what had happened. Lady Évrard and Maya listened to the whole story with grins on their faces. It seemed Reggie had already filled them in on the details; I skimmed over a few parts, but they didn’t pester me for the specifics, thankfully.

Reflecting fondly on Reggie’s behavior just earlier, Lady Évrard said, “Bringing it up by the gates gave me the opportunity to ask him for an explanation after our meeting. He set things up so he could be the first to share what had happened, meaning we wouldn’t barrage you with quite so many questions.”

She had a point. There had been no time to discuss such personal affairs on the day she arrived. She probably would have found out about us before we even had the chance to bring it up. And if she wanted to find out what had happened between us, it would have made more sense to go straight to me than interrogate the prince.

Lady Évrard let out a sigh. “I’ve known for a while now that His Highness was very taken with you.”

“Huh?”

“You’re the first girl he’s ever paid attention to.”

I was surprised to hear that. Reggie had always seemed, well, accustomed to dealing with girls. I’d assumed he must have courted several women before. In fact, that was part of why I’d convinced myself not to take his attention too seriously.

“I’d always thought he would live his life without depending on anyone. Perhaps it was difficult for him because of his relationship with his parents and grandfather; he grew up to be a rather aloof boy. Still, I was afraid a life like that might be too painful for him to bear, so I’m truly glad he found someone to love.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. While I sat there squirming uncomfortably, she went on, “Besides, what with you being a spellcaster, there’s no need to worry about you meeting the same fate as his mother. You know how to fight.”

“Ah... Did you hear about Queen Linesse?”

Lady Évrard must have known Reggie’s mother, too.

She nodded. “I heard from Reggie. It’s horrible what happened to her. She was always so kind to me too. I haven’t the slightest clue why my father was so fussed over her. But... it’s also my fault for believing her when she said she was okay.”

Lady Évrard clenched her hands into fists. “So, if you’re planning to stay by Reggie’s side forevermore, tell me if there’s anything I can ever do for you. I’m sure there are plenty of things that can’t be solved with magic. I’ll make sure you don’t end up like Linesse. Of course, if we come out of this victorious, no one is going to jump to criticize His Highness or his number one benefactor for some time. That’s the one good thing about his timing in ascending to the throne.”

True. If we won this war, that would make Reggie a hero. Not a single noble would dare to stand against the prince once he’d liberated our country. Unless he made an awfully big mistake in the subsequent administration, his defeat of Llewyne and Queen Marianne ought to serve him for his entire reign. As a close aide of his, it didn’t seem likely that I would be attacked just for being a spellcaster, either.

“When you become queen, my husband and I will offer you all the help you need.”

“What?! Queen?!”

“Are you really that surprised? I thought you were courting Reggie.”

“Well, sure...”

If I stayed with Reggie long enough after he became king, I would eventually be presented with the option to become his queen. I knew that, of course, but it sounded so unrealistic that I’d put off thinking about it. Besides, I wasn’t confident I could do it.

“Being queen is a pretty hard job, isn’t it? Besides, am I even a high enough rank for that?”

I had heard that Queen Linesse had been a daughter of nobility too. Queen Marianne was a former princess. No matter how you spun it, a high standing in society was non-optional here.

Or so I’d thought, but Lady Évrard just laughed at me. “There’s no point thinking about all that.”

“There isn’t?”

“This is Reggie we’re talking about. If that’s what he wants, he’ll make careful preparations to ensure you can sit by his side, no matter what your rank is. Don’t you think so?” She giggled.

I had to agree with her. It was easy to be fooled by his mild demeanor and appearance, but Reggie was pretty stubborn. If he said he was going to do something, nothing could make him back down—and he’d pull it off so neatly you’d never know he’d had to force his way through.

It was a relief to hear that my status and abilities weren’t going to be a factor.

After I’d made it back to my room with renewed peace of mind, the fact that I was putting such serious thought into becoming Reggie’s queen when he hadn’t even asked me yet was abruptly embarrassing enough to make me shriek.

I flopped down on my bed, flailing like crazy while Master Horace had a good laugh at my expense. Once I’d gotten that out of my system, I decided to put those thoughts on hold for a while. If everyone didn’t make it out of this war alive, none of it would even matter.

Lady Évrard and her troops were afforded a day of rest after that. The following day, we set out.

Our destination was the plains of Sestina. It was the place where the king’s troops had lost to Llewyne in the summer—and where Lord Patriciél was most likely waiting for us.

We had wanted to wait until Isaac and his troops returned, but it was going to take a good bit of time for them to go all the way to the territory of Patriciél and back. Upon word that they were lagging two days behind us, we decided to go ahead and take the lead.