A/N/Disclaimer: This is basically a verbal doodle I started one day when I was bored and started thinking about what Flauvic's take on Crown Duel might have been. I obviously do not own Crown Duel, Flauvic, or anything else you recognize from Crown Duel. I think I'm mostly sticking to the original plot, but I did add a couple tangents that Mel might not have known about. Also, while I did write the scenes from Flauvic's point of view, most of the dialogue from any conversation that includes Meliara is taken from the book. Any dialogue in scenes not in the book uses my own words.

Candlelight flickered through the parlor, drawing gleams and sparkles from gems on gowns and headdresses. The sweet scent of incense drifted through the air with the sound of soft voices, pleasant laughter.

Mother stood at the door, greeting guests as they entered. The Marquis of Shevraeth and Duke Savona entered with the Count of Tlanth and his fiancé. Mother was all courtesy, all graciousness.

A tap on my shoulder; Fialma was there, gesturing to the next couple with an elegant flick of her fan. The Count of Orbanith, accompanied by an unfamiliar woman with long, long auburn hair, bound back with white starstone ties. I turned back to Fialma.

"Well, sister, it seems your suitor is courting someone else."

Her look was beyond disdain, and that alone was enough to tell me that my barb had hit its mark. She'd held that affectation of scorn for me even before Mother passed her up as heir. Not that it made much difference to me whether I held Merindar.

Fialma's hiss, hidden behind a beautifully painted fan, called me back to the parlor.

"That's the Countess of Tlanth, you halfwit."

"Careful, sister. If you hold that expression too long, your face will freeze that way," I said, smiling. I didn't need to look at Fialma to see the sneer on her face. My eyes were on the Countess.

Her coloring was like her brother's, deep blue eyes the color of twilight and dark auburn hair, and, knowing who she was, I could see the family resemblance in the lines of her face. I should have seen it earlier, and I chose to believe I would have, if Fialma hadn't distracted me.

My mother took the countess aside after greeting her, leading her through the crowd to where Fialma and I were standing.

"My dear Countess." Mother's voice was all warm courtesy, an affectation belied by the expression on the Countess's face; nervousness just barely concealed. Certainly she was not a courtier. "Welcome. Permit me to introduce my children, Fialma and Flauvic. The rest of the company you know."

"Welcome," Fialma said, voice so listless it was barely audible. Her eyebrows were raised slightly, disdainful, her whole bearing suggesting that she just couldn't be bothered with courtesy. More likely she was still irritated that the Countess arrived with Deric. A stupid pose, and a thoroughly false one. "Delighted to…" She shrugged, flicked her fan open. The pause stretched.

"…meet you, Countess," I finished, when it became obvious that Fialma had nothing more to say. She looked at me, trying to judge the meaning of that perhaps. Politeness? Humor? Insult? I took her hand, bowed over it. The candlelight caught a gleam from a ring on her finger. A sapphire, set in a silver band. Familiar. An old ring. Where had I seen it before?

A puzzle. I glanced back at her as she followed Deric to the next room, meeting her startled gaze over the Count of Orbanith's shoulder. She turned away swiftly, blushing with the realization that she'd been caught staring. I smiled.

Fialma turned away, following the couple out of the room. I lingered for a while. I wanted to speak to the Countess, to see if I could find where that ring had come from, but perhaps it was best not to be too blunt. Meliara had no skill for courtliness, and her face said she didn't know what to make of the Merindars, happy family that we were. After all, my uncle had thrown her in prison, but hadn't he also made it necessary for me to leave the country if I wanted to live past the age of ten?

I raised two fingers to the thin scar that ran along my jaw, so old it was barely visible, just a pale line where Galdran had struck me across the face when I was six, his jeweled ring leaving a cut that still showed.

I crossed into the next room a few minutes later. Fialma was her usual sweet self, discussing what made a duel with Vidanric and Lady Tamara, or, rather, letting them discuss it and dropping hints that they were both wrong. Count Branaric talked of horses and racing with Lady Renna. Meliara sat by Tamara, sipping a glass of punch, silent. Her ring caught the light again, and again I knew it was familiar. Where…?

A portrait. Of course. Liannara Renselaeus. The present Marquis's great-grandmother. Why did Meliara have her ring? I glanced from Meliara to Vidanric, then to Tamara. She was smiling at Vidanric, waving her fan. All Athanarel knew she was courting him, even I, despite any pretence of reclusiveness (if Vidanric sent spies to watch me, couldn't I do the same for him?). But Meliara was said to avoid the Marquis whenever possible. I dropped my gaze back to her face, in time to see her brow furrow in confusion as she looked away from me.

There was a riddle that demanded solving. But not now. I turned my thoughts back to the conversation.

"Duel or dabble," said the Count of Tlanth, "I'd hie me to those practices, except I just can't stomach rough work at dawn. Now, make them at noon, and I'm your man!"

Laughter greeted his blunt words, and I joined in. He turned to me. "How about you? Join me in agitating for a decent time?"

I smiled, holding my fan between my fingers. The Count of Tlanth amused me, but I was less than interested in joining Vidanric and Savona for swordsmanship sessions, particularly sessions where I'd have to feign the clumsiness of a scholarly recluse.

"Not at any time, Tlanth. You will forgive me if I am forced to admit that I am much too lazy?"

My mother's voice rang out above polite laughter.

"You are all lazy, children. Come!" And, with a gesture towards the artfully arranged food, "Do you wish to insult my tastes?"

The group rose politely, and as several guests converged on the tables of food, Mother approached Meliara, whispering in her ear, and led her to rise. Meliara looked back as she was led from the room, confusion and surprise plain on her face.

Arthal couldn't possibly mean to try and recruit her to that clumsy abomination she called a plan! Could she? And now, of all times! Everyone in the room would note that she'd taken the Countess aside!

Meliara's eyes met mine as they reached the door. I held her gaze for a moment, then flicked my fan up, just for a moment, a swordsman's gesture. On guard. Her eyes widened, then she followed my mother from the room.

I wanted to hear what Mother planned to say to her, but my absence would be noted if I left now. I wouldn't want my dear cousin Vidanric to think I was up to something.

Ezrin Halefeld stood before me in my chambers.

"What's your will, Lord?" the spy asked me. I'd summoned him as soon as the last guests had left Merindar House.

I took a breath. "I want to see any messages that the Countess of Tlanth sends or receives, and I want to know who they're from and where they're headed. Don't stop any messages, simply copy their contents and tell me to whom they're sent."

Ezrin bowed and left with no other comment than a simple "Yes, Lord." I sat down on a cushion, pouring a cup of coffee from the pot I'd had brought up to my rooms, but I didn't drink. I stood, paced to the window and stared out at the gardens of Athanarel.

Certainly there was more to the Countess of Tlanth than even she perhaps knew.

My first letter of Meliara's was delivered to me before the bells rang for whitechange. I sat in my study, reading, when a knock sounded from the door.

"Enter." Ezrin pulled aside the tapestry. "Back so soon?"

"A letter, my Lord. From Lady Tlanth to the Marquis of Shevraeth. Not addressed, and the opening reads 'Dear Unknown,' but it was delivered to him."

Perfect. Did she write without knowing who she wrote to?

"Thank you, Ezrin." I paused, considering. "See if any of the runners along the route delivered a ring to the Countess some little time ago, and if there was any note accompanying it. Possibly an anonymous one." I smiled. "I trust I needn't warn you to be discreet?"

"Of course not, my lord."

"Thank you. You may go."

I opened the letter. It had been copied, Meliara's handwriting traced perfectly onto the translucent paper, down to the words she'd crossed out.

Dear Unknown, she wrote. You probably won't want to answer a letter, but I need some advice on Court etiquette, without my asking being noised around, and who could be more closemouthed than you? Let's say I was at a party, and a high-ranking lady approached me…

So. That was what had transpired with my mother. Two questions answered at once. I smiled.

Another note from Ezrin waited for me when I arose. Vidanric's reply had come in the form of a memoir by the Duchess Nirth Masharlias. He had not brought the book, for my orders had told him not to interfere with the delivery of any messages. Inspection of the book had showed neither a letter slipped into its page, nor any mark written on it that seemed to contain a message. A single petal of starless had marked the Duchess's account of a mock duel with the then-Count of Orbanith. I was familiar with the book, and remembered enjoying that scene in particular. I smiled.

Ezrin had also done his best to discover whether the ring had passed along the runners' line. No one remembered delivering a ring, but both a white rose and a porcelain sphere that might have contained some jewelry had been delivered to the Countess, neither accompanied by a note.

Could she really be ignorant of whom she wrote to? And why would she open her heart to a faceless stranger?

I saw the Meliara herself far sooner than I had expected. I was sitting on the terrace behind Merindar House, papers spread out on the table before me, when a scattering of pebbles landed on the terrace behind me.

I held still, startled. Surely no spy of Vidanric's would be so careless as that? I turned slowly. Meliara stood at the edge of the terrace, the hem of her walking dress stained with mud, a few stray flower petals in her hair. Not, I thought, a deliberate effect, but charming all the same. I smiled.

"Serenades are customarily performed by moonlight, or have fashions here changed?" I rose from my seat and crossed the terrace to her, murmuring an illusion over the papers to conceal the fact that I was reading a careful copy of her latest correspondence with my cousin.

"I don't know," she said. "No one's serenaded me, and as for my serenading anyone else, even if I wanted to, which I don't, my singing voice sounds like a sick crow."

I couldn't help but smile a little wider at that. "To what, then, do I owe the honor of this delightful—though admittedly unorthodox—visit?"

She raised her fan, still closed, held it to the duelist's guard position. "That. You did that when your mother took me aside last night. I want to know what you meant by it."

I was surprised. Not at the question's directness—it was common knowledge that, like her cousin, she favored the blunt—but that she'd walked halfway across the gardens and surprised me here just to ask it. Why?

Probably for the same reason I was reading her correspondence. To know more. What plans did she have, then? Did she have any plans? I didn't even know whether she was for Shevraeth or against him, for all her directness, and I hated not to know, when I should be able to read her as easily as I read any of the courtiers in Athanarel. As easily as I read anyone.

"You do favor the blunt, don't you?"

"I favor truth over style," she retorted, half angry. Oh, dear; I'd annoyed her. Truth over style, how charmingly naïve. I smiled, kept my face blank, pleasant.

"Having endured the blunt style favored by my late Uncle Galdran," may he rot in his grave, "which had little to do with truth as anyone else saw it, I beg you to forgive me when I admit that I am more dismayed than impressed."

She appeared to think for a moment. "All right," she said, seemingly mollified. "So there can be truth with style, as well as the opposite. It's just that I haven't been raised to think that I'd find much truth in Court, though there's plenty of style to spare there."

Well. Naïve, maybe, but she wasn't unintelligent. And honest, a refreshing combination. A scholarly recluse was allowed so few interesting conversations.

"Will I seem unnecessarily contentious if I admit that my own life experience has engendered me with a preference for style, which at least has the virtue of being diverting?"

I paused, looking past her. "Not so diverting is the regrettable conviction that truth doesn't exist."

"Doesn't exist? Of course it does!"

"Is your truth the same as mine? I wonder." Do you know who your letters go to? Why do you trust a faceless stranger? Would you have the throne?

What is truth? What you see with your eyes? And yet, doesn't everyone see something different? Memory itself is a distorting mirror, and the eyes cannot see through illusion. What else is there? Something higher, truth, that we can see only as light reflecting from the facets of a ring, the true jewel hidden in the brilliance? Can we ever know what is really true?

Meliara sighed. "All right, then, you've neatly sidestepped my question—if you even intended to answer it."

I laughed at her bluntness and at myself, because I'd underestimated her again, thinking she'd forget her purpose. I bowed deeply, pulling illusion from the air. A bouquet of flowers, and, as she held out her hands, a shower of sparks, a flight of butterflies, insubstantial as light. I clapped my hands, let the vision dissolve.

"Magic!" she breathed. "You know magic?"

"This is merely illusion. A fad in Sles Adran. Or it was. No one is permitted to study true magic unless invited by the Council of Mages, as agreed on by the royal treaty." Maybe that had been a foolish display, but it was only illusion, and who would she think to tell?

"I'd love to learn it," she said. "Real magic or not."

I shrugged, increasingly convinced that I had not been wise. This could become inconvenient, if she insisted on wanting to learn. "I could show you a few tricks, but I've forgotten most of them. You'd have to ask a play magician to show you—that's how we learned."

"Play magician?" She didn't know the term.

"Ah," I said, remembering. "Plays here are still performed on a bare stage, without illusion to dress it."

She frowned. "Well, some players now have painted screens and costumes, as in two plays here during recent days. I take it you haven't seen them?"

"I so rarely leave the house," I replied, due to my cousin's unfortunate habit of setting spies to tail me. I hoped, fervently, that none of them had heard the beginning of this conversation. I did not, not need Vidanric Renselaeus to hear that Flauvic, supposed recluse on his estates, was secretly performing magic tricks for the Countess of Tlanth's benefit.

Vidanric himself was waiting around the next corner, on horseback and accompanied by Savona. Certainly not a coincidence; one watcher, at least, had informed the lords that Meliara had sought out my company. With luck, he or she had scampered off as soon as we began talking, and missed my stupid little demonstration.

It took a very short time for them to decide, amidst a torrent of mutually insincere compliments, that my presence was not necessary, and they soon set off with the Meliara in tow, and looking as though she hadn't quite caught up with events.

I thought. She did seem keen to avoid Vidanric. She'd been horrified to see him riding down the path. And that, like her last letter, implied more than ever that she didn't know who she wrote to.

I sighed, turning back towards Merindar House. I wasn't sure whether or not I was relieved that she'd gone.

It was only two days later that I heard from her again—two eventful days, for her. I cannot think of anyone else in Athanarel who could contrive to get publicly drunk and yet retain all her popularity and then some—and, of course, make the good, moral choice and not ruin little Tamara Chamadis's reputation.

It was only a short note, two lines asking for my advice on a matter of fashion—notable in that, unlike so much of her correspondence that I read, it was addressed to me.

I penned a quick reply and gave it to a servant to deliver.

I rose late the next morning, and was breakfasting on the terrace, reading a history of the Treaty of Two Rivers, when Fialma interrupted me—strangely, as I had marked with great satisfaction that today was the day that she and Mother would return to Merindar and leave me in peace (and privacy. You know your family affairs are in a sorry state when your own sister insists on searching your room—not that Fialma is intelligent enough to find any of my private papers.).

She looked at me. "So here you are, wasting time over your breakfast and your book. We are leaving. You can read in the carriage."

I smiled. "But Fialma, dear, as I've said numerous times, I am not going to Merindar."

She laughed. "Don't be an idiot, Flauvic; of course you are. Your things are in the carriage; Mother told the servants to pack them, as you hadn't made any arrangements. Now come."

"I am not going." I stood, angry. "Where is Mother?"

"The entrance hall," Fialma answered, tight-lipped.

I brushed past her as I walked back inside.

Arthal was standing at the center of the entrance hall's mosaic floor, surrounded by bags and bustling servants. She looked up as I entered.

"Why, Flauvic, have you decided to grace us with your presence?"

I took a deep breath. "I believe I mentioned that I am not going to Merindar?"

She frowned, her face shadowed. "Of course you are," she said levelly. Trying the role of mother, gentle but firm, with ice under the calm. I recognized it from when I was a child: you will do as I command, it said. But I was too old for it now.

"You had no right to order my bags packed."

"I had every right!" she snapped. "You are coming. We need you to support our plan. Don't you want Merindar to take back the throne?"

"I refuse be part of that muddy-minded jumble you call a plan!" I shouted. "I am not going!"

"Yes, you are," she snarled. "I made you heir to Merindar, but I can take that away if I choose!"

I waited a moment to still my breath, calm my anger. I smiled. "So take it. What makes you think I care?"

She gaped. I turned to a servant, who stood, watching our argument nervously.

"Fetch my things and bring them back to my room," I ordered.

The man hesitated, glancing first at me, then at my mother.

"Do it!" I shouted, and he scampered away.

"I'm not going," I told her, and walked away.

I slammed my fist into the wall, hard enough to bruise my knuckles. Cursed. I leaned against the wall for a moment, then pushed myself back, breathing. Free. My elbow caught a large painted vase sitting on the sideboard, brought it crashing to the floor. Sartoran porcelain. My mother had particularly liked that vase. Shattered now. I brought my shoe down on the almost-whole curve of the side, splintering it until it held no recognizable shape.

"My lord?" A maid stood timidly at the door.

"What?"

"T-the Countess of Tlanth. Is here to see you," she stammered, eyes fixed on the floor.

"Oh? Wonderful. Have her taken to my sunroom…" I gestured to the vase. "And get someone to clean that up."