The Dragon Priestess
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Happy Sunday my wonderful readers! I swear I had this chapter ready I just got busy today and forgot to post. So we have more sass in this chapter so I hope you guys enjoy all that's going on. As always don't forget to drop a review or a follow or a fav and I'll see you guys next week.
Chapter 17: City of Intrigue pt. 2
Allen had gone to see his King just as Millerna had told him to do, though he had planned to go regardless. There was much to discuss, much to explain.
He was seen into the throne room right away. He walked down that royal blue carpet and then knelt in front of his king, sword by his side ready to tell him all that had happened and why he was there.
And King Aston let him get right to it.
"The Zaibach Empire broke out treaty an attacked our fortress. We may be allied countries, but there's no telling when they'll attack Asturia herself. Your decision please, King Aston."
For a moment King Aston just stared at him in a contemplative way. Allen thought himself in the clear, his King would back him and Van up and they'd be safe here. But that is not what happened.
"Allen Schezar, are you deliberately trying to bring disaster upon my country."
What in the hell was this man talking about? Didn't he hear anything Allen had said?
"Are you trying to tell me that for one little outpost, you're willing to risk Zaibach's wrath? What have you done!"
But Allen was just flabbergasted by this response. "Chivalry demands that we protect the King of Fanelia, whose country was destroyed by Zaibach."
"That's not true," a voice said, slimy and smug. Allen immediately disliked this person before they even walked out.
"You seem to be the victim of a misunderstanding, Allen Schezar."
What was with everyone saying his full name today? He felt like a reprimanded child.
"And who's this?" Allen asked, since it was only fair, the slimeball in the long navy cloak and blue hair knew his name after all.
"Allen, may I introduce to you Folken Strategos of Zaibach."
"Of Zaibach?" he echoed. Yeah, that would explain his king's reaction. Clearly Zaibach already had the King of Asturia in their pocket.
"King Aston, are you aware that Fanelia launched a sneak attack against us?"
"Just wait a minute, I've heard nothing of this attack."
"And yet it's the truth."
Allen could almost hear Brooke's defiant voice. If she had been here, she would have said something like: It's only the truth because you say it's so. Where is your proof?
He sort of wished she was there just to knock that smug look right off of Folken's face.
"But if you were to hand over Fanelia's king and his Guymelef, Escaflowne, I'm sure that we could see fit to overlook this little incident. What do you say, Allen Schezar?"
When Allen didn't answer Folken turned to the King. "I'd like to avoid any incidents which might endanger our alliance. We have an agreement then?"
The king nodded, sealing Van's fate. Folken turned that smug look back to Allen. "That is excellent." And then he laughed, most sinisterly as he walked away.
This left Allen in the spot light and in one hell of a conundrum now that his king's attention was back on him and he clearly wasn't going to help Allen or Van.
"Allen Schezar, if you truly love this country, you will turn him over to us at once. Chivalry alone cannot protect a country, Allen Schezar."
Seriously, what was with his king using his full name? What was going on here? What was he going to do? He didn't want to hand over Van, not after rescuing him and promising him help, but he wasn't in a good position to help him either.
For some reason, before going to the bazaar, Millerna wanted to go back to the castle and change. And not just herself either, she wanted Brooke to change to.
Van really should have paid more attention to the kind of dress he had bought for her, but he hadn't thought he had put her in servant's clothes. That was the kind of dress that his mother used to wear… while gardening. Wow, huh, maybe it was a servant's dress.
But whatever Millerna had planned for Brooke was taking forever. Which left Van sitting at a table with Millerna across from him and Merle right beside.
Millerna was focusing on the fruit bowl in front of them, Merle had leant all the way forward in the chair she had specifically pushed back and had her chin resting on her arms. Van was sitting, staring at the door that Brooke had disappeared behind what seemed like hours ago, his chin resting on his palm. The palm that wasn't sliced open.
Why was this taking so long? All they had to do was put her in a dress… and then the door opened and Van's hand dropped to the table. Yeah, he understood what was taking so long now.
They had done Brooke up entirely. Her hair had been styled similarly to Millerna's where a bejeweled diadem now rested across her forehead and was keeping the hair closest to her face out of the way. She had been paled, and her lips reddened and her black hair curled.
And then there was the dress.
It had a dark pink bodice, pale pink skirt that went all the way down to her feet, but it had no sleeves, which made sense cause it was warm here. Or at least it was right now, it would no doubt get colder once the sun went down. The collar was wide and made of spiked pattern lace and she had feminine white gloves that were so long they went up to her biceps.
She looked… she looked…
"Well, look at what we have here. That dress looks great on you," Millerna said.
"You look good enough to be a handmaiden now!" Merle teased.
"You trying to pick a fight?" Brooke shot back, a slight blush on her cheeks.
"Fighting isn't very lady like," Merle teased, and Van instinctively put a hand to her head to push her down and shut her up.
Brooke had looked pretty in the Fanelian dress he had picked out but she looked straight up beautiful in this one.
"This is such a pretty dress, are you sure you don't mind?"
"If someone were to see you walking around in that servant's dress well, Allen's dignity might be called into question."
Wow, that sounded like an insult, and judging by the look on Brooke's face she had taken it as such. And really, he hadn't thought the dress looked that servantly, it might have been slightly plain but it was still a rather expensive dress.
The woman who had been in there helping Brooke walked past them with the green Fanelian dress in her arms. Van was immediately curious about where it was going and apparently Brooke was too.
"Uh, excuse me… isn't that my dress?"
"That's correct. You don't mind us throwing them out."
"Throw it out?!" Brooke thundered. "But you can't!"
"What's the matter?" Millerna asked feigning confusion. Van was confused too, he figured that by now Brooke hated that dress. "I can give you as many new sets of clothes as you want."
"Van bought it for me," she said softly, once she had wrested the dress out of the arms of the handmaiden. "It has sentimental value to me." And then she scowled at Millerna. "And I don't want your hand outs or hand-me-downs either… but uh… thanks… for offering I guess."
Van was just shocked that she regarded something he had bought for her worth sentimental value. It sort of made his heart race a little.
Millerna just sighed. "I get the impression that there's a long story behind this. I'll have to sit down and have Allen tell me all about it."
God, Van didn't want everyone finding out that Brooke was from the Mystic Moons or that she had magic powers. Could Allen even lie to the princess or would he be forced to tell her the truth? Or would he tell her the truth because she was pretty and he couldn't say no to a pretty face?
He was going to have to talk to Allen about what lies he should be telling everyone in regards to Brooke.
And while he worried about that a completely different handmaiden came in with a single note on a silver platter. A note from Allen for Millerna.
"It says: Please go down to the bazaar without me. Men, why is it that they can never manage to keep their word?" she asked and then sighed again. "Well, we'll get bored waiting for him, is everybody ready to go?"
Millerna was immediately away from the table running off to get god knows what now. Van stood as did Merle and he noted that Brooke still stood where she was, her green dress clutched to her chest. He should say something to her, tell her she looked nice or something.
Instead he took her bag, the one she had brought with her from the Mystic Moons and Fanelia and tossed it at her. She almost lost the dress as the bag collided with her chest and she struggled to keep a hold of it.
"What did you do that for?"
Why did he do that? Why did he have to be so awkward around her?
Because she was pretty, and she made him feel things that he wasn't comfortable with yet and… this was the best he could do with what he knew.
"Keep it with you, because there's no telling what will happen," he said instead and she sighed, but didn't argue, being sure to keep her bag close as he requested.
Van was going to have really work on his game because at this rate, Brooke was literally going to run to the hills if he kept acting the way he did.
He had promised her that she could always go with him, wherever the adventure took him. And he wanted her to want to stay.
"Did the King of Asturia believe you?" Kaydence asked him breaking the silence that had befallen them as they walked the crowded streets of Palas.
Folken turned to his little protégé with a smile on his face. She had the ability to do that, to make him smile. She always had.
In fact, the year he had been forced to spend away from her, when their studies separated them, had been the worst year of his life.
And then when he got her back a year later, she was a proper woman. Old enough to spark his attention and hold it. Of course, it was wrong, he had watched that girl grow, had been like her older brother, taking care of her since s he had been lost in a world she didn't know and struggling to live up to the Divine Destiny and her part she was supposed to play in it.
But he had fallen in love with her at some point. And no matter what he did he couldn't turn it off.
"He did," Folken admitted and Kaydence's smile widened.
"I knew he would," she said.
That was another thing that Kaydence had. Unflappable faith in him. He always felt like he couldn't fail with her standing beside him.
But that was the point of the Divine Destiny, with her standing by him as the Dragon Priestess they would be unstoppable.
And he was only a little worried about how that would go now that her sister was on the planet. Now that her sister had powers too. Stronger powers.
The last time Kaydence had seen Brooke, Brooke had knocked her unconscious. Folken had found her form just lying there on the floor by her scrying room and for a moment he thought her dead and his whole heart shattered in his chest.
He was reminded, when he picked her up to cradle her body in his arms that he loved her. With every inch and fiber of his being he had loved this girl, and a few manly tears of relief escaped him when he realized she was alive.
Despite knowing he shouldn't have, he produced a single bloom, stolen from a flowering tree that he had walked by while in the castle.
Kaydence took it right away and put it in her hair, smiling up at him and thanking for the small gift.
He never had to impress Kaydence with jewels and dresses she liked the softer more valuable things in life, like small wooden trinkets he carved with his own hands or his time.
But time was something he knew he didn't have a lot of, his tests with Fate were making it evidently clear that his time was going to be cut short and he didn't want to tie his beautiful Kaydence to that grief.
So that flower would be all that she would get for now and he would do what he could to keep himself at a distance. Not just to save her, but to save himself too.
They had gone down to the bazaar which turned out to be a row of stalls all set up along the canal of a certain area of town. Brooke was immediately enthralled and Van had to constantly remind her to keep up. He walked with Millerna while Merle stayed with her.
Brooke got the distinct impression that Van liked Millerna, the same way that Allen did. Probably because she was a perfect model of a princess. Brooke would never be able to measure up to her in beauty or grace or… anything.
Brooke had been stopping at each stall, looking at all there was to offer which was exactly how she noticed it.
It was a little shop of wares, mostly jewelry but the man with the dolphin head had something special.
And she didn't mean just the dolphin's head on a mostly human body. She knew cat girls were a thing because you know, Merle, and wolf people too, cause Rhume, but there were all sorts of animals here. Though mostly aquatic she noticed, but that was probably because they were so close to the ocean.
"Where did you…" she started and then remembered that people weren't supposed to know that she was from the mystic moons so she shouldn't really know what this thing was. "Can I see that?"
The Dolphin man handed her the guitar talking about how the instrument was similar to the cytar, though she wasn't certain what that was. She fitted the strap to her and both loved and hated how familiar this all felt.
She was just strumming a few chords or a country song her father had wrote years ago thinking of how she used to do this with a kid's version of a guitar with her family. And how upset Kaydence had been that Brooke had picked I up faster than her.
Brooke had always been like that though, she picked up things quickly or not all. Like Violin, Kaydence was wonderful at the Violin, but Brooke couldn't get one note right. It was like all of the things Kaydence was good at, she was so good there was no room left for Brooke to be good at it.
Lightning flashed, striking through the sky, crashing straight into… Van?!
The vision had taken a hold of her so violently that she hadn't had time to really processes it. But she understood what it meant.
Van was going to die.
Brooke whirled around to where Merle and Millerna were staring at her. Van was not with them.
"Where's Van? Where did he go?" she asked the two girls. Merle looked around seemingly realizing that Van was gone too. Millerna, however, had seen him run off and hadn't said anything.
Why the hell had she kept that to herself?
"He went towards the harbor. He seemed to be a little upset about something."
Great. Useless information, except the part about the harbor. Brooke shoved the Guitar back into Millerna's hands and then took off.
"Hey what's wrong!" Merle cried as Brooke weaved through the people heading for what she hoped was the harbour.
She had to find Van!