A/N: This is my favourite chapter so far.

It was the voice that threw me off. The name I knew, and so many aspects of him matched up in my mind – his hair, still sticking up at all angles, was the same colour, though now the angles seemed purposefully harsh. And his eyes, maybe they were even more crimson than I remembered. And he was taller. Much taller, though how much of that was an illusion created by the great cape that he held around himself, I couldn't be sure.

But his voice was so different, I thought to myself at least six or seven times that it definitely wasn't him. I was remembering wrong, something was wrong.

Something was wrong, but it wasn't my memory.

The harsh lines of his face, so completely still, this too was at odds with my memory of a boy who smiled so easily. And his gaze lingered on me for a moment when he was first introduced in the small chamber outside the hall, but it could have just been my imagination.

His voice made my insides drop, I was almost hypnotized. Each word enunciated, the smooth, deep tones like a thick liquid that coated each syllable.

And how my father didn't recognize him is beyond me, but perhaps I overestimated my own wager of how much I had held onto the memory of that smiling boy.

Folken stood there and said that they were chasing a fugitive, that Fanelia had betrayed Zaibach, and so many other things that I was sure were lies.

I found it funny, suddenly, how I was so concerned that he was with Zaibach rather than with Fanelia, that I'd almost forgotten to realize that he had been dead for the last ten years.

I swallowed my amusement, and listened while my father ate up every single word – then again, with a huge floating fortress parked outside the palace, how could he not believe the strange, mysterious man of Zaibach?

Then a page rushed into the room, interrupting the man's list of requests for searching our city, and said that Allen Schezar had arrived from Fort Castelo and was requesting an immediate audience.

"Sir, I believe this is a matter of our own concern, however, should you wish to remain while I meet with my advisors on this issue of a fugitive, you may stay here."

My father rose, and accompanied by Meiden Fassa, his right-hand man, they spoke to the page and headed towards the main hall. I lingered behind, and Folken remained still, his eyes closed and his head tilted down, as though in meditation.

The door closed behind my father and his attendants, and I stepped around the chair he had been sitting in, and cleared my throat.

Folken opened his eyes slowly and raised them to me.

"Princess?"

My throat was tight. What could I say?

"Everyone thought you were dead."

He considered me for a moment, no visible emotion crossed his features.

"Do you think you know me, Princess?"

All this did was incense me.

"Of course I know you. You're Folken LaCoeur de Fanel. We met when I was eleven and you were nearly fifteen, and you were going to marry my sister, because isn't that what princes and princesses do?"

He continued to stare at me. I wasn't sure if his silence was meant to make me talk more to fill it, as though I was uncomfortable, but since he had not said a word, I was not going to keep talking.

"I am not who you think I am," he stated simply.

"Horseshit." I bit the word, surprising myself.

Apparently he did have emotions, because one eyebrow raised slightly. "Princess?"

"I know who you are."

"You do not."

I considered him for a moment, so vehemently denying that he was definitely the man I knew he was. The tattoos and voice aside, it was the same person – now a man instead of a boy.

"You may have marked your face, and ten years can do a lot to erase who a boy was, but I remember you, Folken Fanel. I remember you from the day we brought my sister to meet you, and I met your father, King Goau, who was cheerful and gentle with his sons, and I remember your mother, Queen Varie, with her musical voice and her equally lilting manner. And I remember your brother, Van, who is now King of Fanelia because his brother was killed by a dragon."

Folken's cape dropped on one side, and he flung it back over his shoulder, revealing a glint of metal on his right arm. My first thought was a sword, but then he lifted his arm, showing me the claws he had instead of fingers.

"Do you remember this, Eries Aston?"

My eyes widened and I was without words. A small part of my mind loved the way the vowels of my name sounded in that molasses voice.

He stepped towards me, slowly, and I shrank back, but there was nothing to shrink back to, until I tripped and fell into the chair my father previously occupied. He leaned down to make sure he was heard.

He clenched the claws into a metal fist, and I winced at the sound of metal scraping metal that close to my face, keeping it mostly in check by only clenching my jaw and allowing only one eye to twitch. I gripped the arms of the chair, willing myself not to break his gaze.

"I am not the boy you knew. That boy was killed by a dragon. That boy is dead." His voice was a monotone, but the lower volume gave it a different timbre, and I could feel his breath warm on my face at the same time as feeling the cold of his metal fist pierce the air, however impossible that actually was.

And even though I was petrified, my tongue still managed to loosen to let out a quip.

"That dragon wasn't as good as he thought he was. Because I'm seeing a flesh and blood man before me, and if that boy is dead, how exactly are you here?" I narrowed my eyes at him. I was not going to play this game. I was not going to give in to his veiled threats, I was not going to shut up, not as much as my stomach flip-flopping wanted me to, and fast.

He leaned away from me, and the fist unclenched, and the cloak was readjusted to cover the mechanical monstrosity without his eyes ever leaving mine. I held the gaze, determined not to look away first.

"Forget me, Eries Aston. The boy you knew is dead."

And he turned away, with only the rustle of his cloak, and walked evenly out of the room, turning left towards the main hall.

I let out a breath, not realizing I'd been holding it.

What the hell just happened here?

A/N: Okay, so maybe I'm a little over-eager with the voice!crush. But admit it, doesn't he turn your bones to jelly too?