Day 34:

Luna and Noctis' giggles echoed down the hallway. Through his open door, Ravus watched them race past, Luna pushing Noct in his wheelchair. By the time he reached the door to look out, they were already gone around the corner. But the hallways wasn't empty.

"Reina." Ravus smiled. "Aren't you going to play with them?"

"No," she said in that would-be casual tone of a child trying to hide her upset. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Princess Lunafreya likes Noctis a lot. And Noctis likes having a new friend." She tugged at her skirt, looking down as she straightened her already-perfect dress.

"And you're not interested in new friends, is that it?" He teased gently.

"I don't think Princess Lunafreya is my friend."

"Why is that?"

She shrugged one shoulder, noncommittal. "She is very polite and friendly."

Polite, friendly, and yet still perceived as distant. Maybe she was. Mother had been filling Lunafreya's head with all manner of tales about the Chosen King and how Luna would walk beside him as the Oracle. It was her duty to ensure his destiny was carried out, Mother had said.

Not a word had been spoken about Reina: the second child without a glorious destiny or any fate of note. In fact, Ravus had been surprised when two ebony-hair children emerged from the car with the Lucian entourage. She stood in Noctis' shadow the way Ravus stood in Luna's. The difference was, he was at peace with it. Time had done that.

"Come on, then." Ravus held his hand out to her. "That just means more time for us to read in the library. I seem to recall hearing that Cook had just received new spices. If we're quick, we can sneak some spiced tea before she chases us out with a broom."

He was gratified to see a smile on her face when she looked up at him. She swiped surreptitiously at her eyes, which he diplomatically pretended not to notice, and took his hand.

She would learn acceptance someday. It wasn't so bad being in the shadows.

Ravus woke to an empty room and lay staring out thround the tall balcony doors for a time. The taste of his dream was bittersweet, but he held onto it for as long as he was able, unwilling to let it slip away once more. Inevitably it did.

What he wouldn't have given to be waking in his bed in Tenebrae. To have been, once more, the boy who merely wanted to help. A fool, yes, but a happy one. Reina was still as stoic at twenty as she had been at eight, but there was something dark behind it. It was emptiness she hid behind now. Not strength.

He dressed and left his room to join the lounge adjacent. They had given Luna the room opposite from his, whether by Reina's suggestion or something else entirely, he could only guess. Regardless, it made his job of keeping an eye on her more simplistic.

Lunafreya was nowhere to be found; not in the lounge and not in her rooms beyond. Likely she had left on some fool crusade once again; it had yet to sink in that she could not simply walk around Lucis and tell people the princess was some corrupted puppet of the Starscourge. Even if it had been true, which it was not. Reina was too strong-willed for that and, in any case, he would have seen it when he had spoken to her.

He hastened to buckle his sword to his belt and made his way out into the hall. If he was to prevent her from doing anything more foolish, he would need to find her and close her back in this room.

The Citadel was impossibly large. It had seemed massive from the outside, but searching for a single person amidst the endless square halls was a fool's errand. Better that he seek someone more easily tracked. It was a small matter, for instance, to find King Regis when every servant seemed to know his whereabouts. He might have guessed that Lunafreya would go to Noctis, but Noctis had left the city. On royal family business, they had said.

He guessed, then, that Lunafreya might seek the king. Fool that she was.

King Regis was in his office. Neither the guards outside nor the king's attendant would answer Ravus' questions, but he was offered the opportunity for an audience with the king, which he accepted on the off chance that King Regis would have some knowledge of Lunafreya's whereabouts. If she was not with him, he had no notion of where else she would have gone.

He was led to the antechamber across the hall to wait for the king to see him. At first glance it was empty: simply a lavishly furnished lounge with a fresh tea tray on the coffee table. A second glance revealed one other person.

"Ravus." Reina stepped from the shadows; they seemed to cling to her like a cloak for a moment before melting away reluctantly.

"Reina."

Always where she was least expected. And perhaps most needed. She knew most everything that occurred in this castle—perhaps extending into the city, if she had any need to.

Standing before her now, for the first time in several weeks, strands of conversation and rumors in the Citadel came back to him. Three members of the royal council had died. How many had she pointed out to him in the hall? Four, but one had been trivial rather than dangerous.

"I hear you've been busy," he said.

"Lucis is safe," she said, her tone level—emotionless. "For the moment."

"You killed all three of them."

"Yes." She said it so simply and so matter-of-factly. He was taken aback. And yet, he could appreciate the simplicity of her solution.

"Why?" He asked. "Why not jail them?"

"It was a permanent solution with immediate results. All other options waste a great deal of time and make too many assumptions. Do you truly believe that a person can ever change who they are?"

A curious question, coming from a woman who had changed to a man who had changed. But she meant for the better. It was simple to go careening down a steep slope, muddying your good name and faith. To climb back up was another matter altogether.

Nevertheless.

"I must," he said.

She gave him a peculiar, searching look. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I should too."

They spoke no more, for a time. Reina stepped up to the windows and stared out over the city. Ravus joined her, struck by the antithesis of the moment. On a cool spring afternoon they had first stood together, staring out over Tenebrae. Now the heat of the summer day was tangible, even so early in the morning, as they contemplated the city skyline.

"What brings you to Father's study?" She asked at last.

"I seek Lunafreya."

"She isn't with him," Reina said. "But I was elsewhere early this morning. It's possible she has been to see him and left."

"She will do something foolish if left to her own devices here."

"She already has," Reina said.

His eyes narrowed. "More than I am aware of?"

"No. But she wishes for the prophecy to be fulfilled, which, in turn, means she seeks my brother's death. I'll kill her myself before I see her succeed."

"I know." Ravus sighed. Reina had no reason to like Lunafreya and every reason to dislike her. That line between like and dislike was where any sense of empathy in her disappeared. He hoped he was on the good side of it, but it was difficult to tell with her.

In the halls, he would hear whispers that she had changed. Perhaps that fact alone gave credence to Lunafreya's imagininings; if so, they were all fools. Whether she had changed or not he could not judge. Certainly she had changed since twelve years ago, but so had the world. Had she changed since waking from her Dream? He had no notion. Looking at her now, he saw no puppet. Merely a hardened woman struggling to protect her family from threats they hardly recognized. Broken underneath.

"Were we in Niflheim, I would simply have her placed on house arrest again," Ravus said. "But I have no authority here. No place."

"You are a friend and a guest of the princess, however far that stretches," she said.

"You are well-regarded among your people."

"Well-feared, perhaps."

"Feared? No. Within the Citadel, I sense only reverence for you. And some puzzlement. But never fear."

She turned to stare out the window, which looked out across Insomnia. The great expanse of grey stretched all around them: teeming with human life. He could understand why it would have been strange for an eight-year-old Princess Reina to find herself surrounded by the silver forests of Tenebrae now. But she did not look at the city. Or, at least, she did not see it. Her eyes fixed on no particular point without moving. Without focus.

"They all used to fear me," she said distantly.

She saw, perhaps, some world that would never come to be. A Dream world where her subjects feared and hated her.

"And you believe they will again?" Ravus asked.

"Perhaps," she said, eyes still unmoving. "Once they learn what I am."

"Better to be feared than fawned over," Ravus said.

She broke her gaze from whatever invisible sight it had fixed upon. She looked, instead, upon him. "Yes. I suppose it is."

A knock came to the door. "The king will see you now."

"I won't put Lunafreya on house arrest for you," Reina said. "I reject the authority to do so. But Father might. If you ask."

"Ask a favor of your father?" Ravus bit back his distaste.

"He isn't what you believe him to be," she said. "Just like you; he is greater than a flat perception."

She stepped back into the shadows and disappeared before his eyes. If she was still standing in the room with him, he had no notion.

He left, following after the attendant with her words still in his mind, and was led into the king's study: a simply but richly furnished room, where King Regis himself sat behind his desk.

"Commander," he said. "To what do I owe this visit?"

Ravus grimaced at the title. "Commander no longer. Niflheim is gone."

"So it is. What title would you prefer? Beneath Niflheim you were Lord Ravus following Commander, but by rights you are Prince Ravus and heir to the throne of Tenebrae. The empty throne of Tenebrae."

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in.

"I am no king," Ravus said. "And I have not been Prince Ravus for twelve long years."

Ever since King Regis had turned his back on Tenebrae and let it burn.

No.

Ever since Niflheim had killed his mother and forced King Regis to make a choice: the life and safety of his children, or an impossible battle against an army of Magitek soldiers. It had been no choice at all. There was nothing he could have done against that force. The best he could hope for was to protect his children—he had tried to protect Lunafreya as well. If she hadn't been such a fool, she might have escaped the cage they had both lived in since then. But she had stayed for Ravus.

Fool.

"Lord Ravus then," King Regis said.

It would do.

"I came seeking my sister."

"I regret I have no knowledge of her whereabouts. We have not crossed paths for several days."

Yet another waste of time. If he was forever chasing after Lunafreya, it tied his hands to deal with more important matters. The issue of the snake set loose in the Citadel, for instance. Ardyn might not have corrupted Reina in whatever capacity Lunafreya meant, but he was not to be trusted—least of all in Reina's sole company.

"Then I deliver a request, as Princess Reina has informed me she has no authority to carry it out," Ravus said. "I wish for Lunafreya to be confined to her rooms and under guard."

King Regis' brow furrowed. "For her safety, or that of others?"

"To prevent her from digging her grave deeper with the lies she insists on spreading."

"I see. Am I to take this to mean you do not agree with your sister's views?"

"I believe the former chancellor is a dangerous man who cannot be trusted. I believe he should be kept from Reina, for her well-being. It matters little to me whether he is the monster from horror stories as she claims, but I know Reina's mind is her own."

For nearly a minute, King Regis studied Ravus. At the end of this time, he appeared to make up his mind. "Then we are in agreement. I will have Lunafreya confined to her quarters on your request. And if you are earnest in your beliefs then we may have common interests to discuss, if you are so inclined."

"Common interests?"

"The matter of Reina's life, for one."

For all Ravus had spent the last twelve years of his life blaming his misfortune on this man, it was difficult to judge him as anything save shrewd when faced down by that stare. It was the sort of gaze that left a man wondering if he had any secrets that were unknown to the crown.

"I have a vested interest in Reina's life," Ravus said cautiously.

"I thought as much," King Regis said. "We will discuss these matters further when my son returns. I will have you sent for when the time comes."

It was a dismissal. One so succinctly given it left no space for alternatives. Ravus found himself turning on his heel and leaving before he knew what he was doing. Perhaps his assessment of the Caelum family as a whole was wrong. These were not people who merely happened to hold the throne and the fate of the world in their hands; these were the people who had been made tools of fate because they were best suited for the job.

Until they turned against it.