This chapter has not been proofed for bad spelling and grammar.

You have been warned.

The Dance of the Butterflies

Chapter 5

The first time he fired a gun he had expected a flame to spark through the barrel. That's how they'd shown it when the traveling theater troupes had come to perform for the Grand Duke and the high born aristocrats. His mother had once taken him to view them perform at the ducal palace. He had been awed and mystified by their lavish costumes and captivated by their display of sheer strength and acrobatics. It had been a war drama, full of action, death and special effects—very much a boy's dream. He had been so engrossed that he had hardly spared a moment to blink. However, even as he watched he remained unaware of the silent war raging on between his mother and the Grand Duchess through poisonous glares and haughty glances. After that night, he would not set foot in the ducal palace for another thirteen years.

Whatever the reason, when he first fired a gun the deception was undramatically revealed, there was no blast of light or spark of fire, just a loud crack, like a baseball bat snapping a fastball. It had left him trembling as the resonance of the blast vibrated from the barrel through his arms and into the pit of his stomach. The sensation was exciting, and yet he could not deny the gripping nausea as the bullet clipped through the barrel and into the targeted tree trunk.

He had been a boy enamored with the glamour of violence only to discover that it was arbitrarily simple. Just one click of a gun was all it took to dispatch mortal wound. Perhaps there would be a gasp of startled breath or an outcry of pain, but when he first took a life, the doe had been completely silent. Upon the click of the trigger and the resonating crack, there was only the soft thump and rustle of grass and leaves as she lifelessly crumbled to the ground. Far more startling had been the deafening flap of wings as dozens of Blue Heron's took to the skies in alarm.

When he'd approached the doe and knelt over the body, her blood had already pooled thickly around her, staining the grass beneath. He could almost make out his reflection on the dark glossy surface of her blood, but a child's shriek sprung him to his feet and he whirled around toward its direction. Some hundred yards away, little Shiho Huit came barreling toward him, her elfish tear-stained face twisted by her pained cries.

"Maki, maki, maki," she cried out over and over. Her eyes squeezed shut and her small hands curled into tight fists. "Stupid Yuuchi!"

She rammed her head against his stomach and struck her small fists upon his chest, her cries growing more profound. Realizing the gravity of his sin, Yuuichi dropped the gun and stared at his hand in awestruck horror.

"I'm sorry Shiho," he said remorsefully as he slid his arms around the little girl, but he wasn't sure if she had heard him. Shiho's tearful face was buried in his jacket, sobbing stifled 'maki-makis' through the thick wool.

"I hate you," she grumbled between curses as she firmly tugged on his jacket.

"I know," he answered dolefully and pulled her up into his arms. Shiho rested her head at the crook of his neck and clung to his shoulders. The soft rumble of the overcast sky told him that the rains were coming. He glanced at the gun on the ground, its grip submerged in blood, and hesitantly decided to leave it. Perhaps later, when Shiho was tucked in bed he could return to retrieve it without risking it too much damage.

The thing was an antique, and he suspected that it was not built to withstand filth and water. He wondered what his uncle would say to know that the same family heirloom he had been bestowed was left to rust in the mud and rain… and blood.

Souju Tate had stepped into the role of father immediately after Yuuichi's birth. The man had been hard to love. Stern and unforgiving, his expression of fondness was nearly indiscernible behind his mirthless, tyrannical eyes. His life lessons were often crueler. And yet, he realized years later as he grew into Tate the man, that his uncle's method of parenting had been an act of kindness. Yuuichi the boy, had an innately gentle disposition, far too kind and sweet for a courtier. Without his uncle's hard life lessons and stern upbringing he would have been as the lamb to the slaughter when he first went to court.

"Do you remember the spring of my Twelfth birthday? You and your mother spent the month at my family's summer home. We played kimodameshi in the woods behind the manor and my cousin broken his leg." It had been more than seventeen years since that day, but he was certain she still remembered. He noted the anxiety drained from her face as his words reached her through the tangle of burdening thoughts. It wasn't the proper time to reminisce, yet at a time like this, while they waited for the inevitable to come, he suspected that she needed the distraction most.

"Yeah," Shiho replied as the memory swept in slowly like fog, her trembling hands unwinding. "I remember. .. It was getting late and…we weren't allowed to play hide and seek. Because we'd get dirty. So I told you about the game I learned in school."

She shook her head and exhaled a small deprecating laugh.

"It wasn't your fault," Tate assured her.

"I was selfish, I just wanted you to myself so I begged you to convince everyone to play," she confessed.

"You were five. And I was also being selfish. I wanted to show off. Show my cousins that I wasn't that sniveling little wimp they always teased and bullied."

"Your uncle locked you in the feed room for twelve hours," she pointed out, a half smile on her lips as she tried to make light of past indignities. The subject of his uncle had never been an easy one to approach. He'd either loved him or hated him depending on the mood of the moment.

"I figured he was always such a bastard to me because I am one. His sister's illegitimate child. I could only imagine that the humiliation was too much to bear."

His communicator flashed and beeped, and they both jumped, tensions rising once again. She locked eyes with his, expectant of a reply and he flipped open his communicator and read the incoming message, his body tightening and then relaxing.

"Not yet," he declared and they eased back down.

"I don't know what's worse, Yuuichi," she said as she chewed on her fingernails, "the waiting or what we're gonna…" but she couldn't bring herself to finish that sentence.

Tate suffered a of stab of guilt. The burden etched in her eyes and the sound of his private name on her breath reanimated before him the doe he'd killed years before. He saw her in his mind's eyes as she had been moments before her death, her hesitant, curious gaze and her shy approach just as he raise the gun.

"There's no turning back anymore," he told her. "It may as well be as good as done."

Shiho nodded and willed away her uncertainties to that same place she had closed off her heart.

She had enrolled in Garderobe Academy, not out of a sense of familial duty or for the satisfaction of self-sacrifice, but because she liked the uniforms. At least that's what she had told Yuuichi after her public decree to honor her family and her royal lineage. What she didn't tell him, or anyone else for that matter, was that she'd hoped to one day be bound to Yuuichi by contract.

Her father had been surprised by her sudden enthusiasm in pursuing a career as an Otome, not realizing that her desire had been procured by his recent unannounced arrangement with the Cardair's King: a political marriage between his youngest daughter, Shiho, and the Cardair prince.

"I think you'll like the boy," her father had told her. "Kazuya's a handsome lad; even tempered and good natured. We'll announce a long term engagement until you're both old enough. This is good, honey. I have it worked out quite well."

After days of secretly cursing her father with her grandmother's "maki, maki" voodoo curse and sending the staff into spirals, she'd succeeded in doing no more than inducing curls in his beard. She had forfeited quietly without objection and resigned herself to a future without Yuuichi when an encounter with the haughty Juliet Nao Zhang provided her with a window to freedom.

Not that she would ever thank Miss Zhang. It hadn't been that kind of an encounter. There had been no exchange of smiles or friendship bracelets. No, the first time they met Shiho had hardly bothered to acknowledge Juliet Nao's presence.

A year before their enrollment in Garderobe Academy, an International Assembly of the United Kingdoms was held in Gristholm. It had been a rather informal affair, less of a political congregation and more of a social gala. Artai had used the Assembly as a platform to show off their future investments in Nina Wang and Juliet Zhang. The girls were dressed up and paraded around the ballroom from one diplomat to the next, although it was Nina Wang who was given the greatest coverage. After all, she was a member of a reputable Artai family, even if not by blood.

Juliet Nao, although impressive enough by skills alone, had no such connections. But none of that bothered her. She'd been glad enough to earn a scholarship to such a prestigious school and did not have it in her to care over Nina's preferential treatment in spite the fact that the girl still had another two years to go before she was enrolled at Garderobe. What had bothered her was the haughty glance cast her way by a girl who looked as if she'd had her hair styled by a blind hairdresser.

With just one look, Juliet Nao was well on her way to exacting retribution. True, it had been such a little thing, a gesture that could very easily have been overlooked, but Nao supposed it was because it had seemed like such a natural thing that she felt so engorged with malevolence. She could not tolerate that some little rich twit could look down upon her so easily just because she wasn't one of the elite.

That's when she tripped her. It hadn't taken all that much effort. Shiho had not been balancing well on her high heels all evening. It was her first function wearing heels, and in spite of all her practice, she still fought back the trembling that rode up her heels and to her calves with each careful step. Nao had only to step on the hem of the rich girl's dress to send her stumbling forward, and sure enough, she did. Shiho struggled to keep her balance, but her hands were preoccupied with a glass of Champaign and a slice of cake. Her fall was inevitable, she toppled forward, the cake crushed beneath her chest and the Champaign flute rolling away across the marble floors. When she came up, clumps of cake sputtered off her unusually lopsided chest.

"Need a napkin?" Juliet Nao offered with a saccharine smile, but Shiho was quick to read beyond Miss Zhang's thinly veiled concern. She slapped her hand away and rose to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster.

"I supposed not," Nao went on. "You seem to have napkins aplenty."

Shiho looked down at her caked chest with alarm. Heat crawled up her neck as she fought back tears of humiliation. The stuffing in the right side of her bra had been pushed up when she fell, making very apparent to all who looked on that her chest was as artificial as the gracious smile upon Miss Zhang's lips.

Swallowing down her humiliation, Shiho grit her teeth.

"It's so unfortunate that Garderobe Academy's standard's have dropped so low," she shot back. "It seems that anyone can be a candidate. You should consider yourself so lucky."

With that she walked off not caring to look back and cake still crumbling off her dress. Juliet Nao had hardly heard a word of Shiho's biting retort, too busy holding back the laughter that rumbled in her gut. Shiho herself hardly seemed to care whether or not her insults had injured her rival's pride, because at that very moment, even as she bit back indignant outrage, it dawned on her that perhaps she too could become a candidate for Garderobe Academy and escape her father's future plans of political unions.

Shiho spent the rest of that night casting curses against Juliet Nao Zhang and all her future descendants. She had to send her 'maki, maki' device in for repairs in the morning.

Meister Huit chewed on what little fingernail was left on her pinky, the rest of her nails were already chewed down to the quick. Tate could not bear to look at her; there was still so much of that little girl that used to run after him and clasp possessively at the hem of his shirt.

"You shouldn't have come," he told her. "He shouldn't have sent you."

Tate's uneasy alliance with Charles Guinel Roy d'Florince VIII had come about from their mutual desire to remove Takeda Solice from power, although he remained very much in the dark to d'Florince's agenda. Tate knew that his coconspirator saw him as no more than a chess piece to be manipulated at his own discretion, but d'Florince was willing to provide Tate with the assets and backing he needed to take Takeda down. However, Shiho's involvement had not been part of the plan. He had been especially explicit on that matter.

"He needed me here," she replied. "And I wanted to come."

It was as much of a lie as it wasn't. Although her master sent her along as 'insurance' for Duke Tate McAllistar's 'little Coup d'état,' a part of her was excited at the prospect of reuniting with her childhood friend. They had gradually drifted apart after she started her enrollment at Garderobe Academy and had since then only seen him in passing. When she had last spoken to him, he had been involved with Mashiro Blan de Windbloom. By then the distance between them seemed as expansive as the space between two stars, and yet a part of her had still longed for the fulfillment of the love she'd bore him as a child.

But their reunion would not be a nostalgic one. She was not there to reminisce over childhood exploits and games played in the dark under a sky full of fireworks. She was there to help destroy a man and possibly risk the world into war.

"I know he's your brother," she admitted. "I've known for a long time now."

He wasn't surprised that she knew. It was Gristholm's best known secret. His mother's affair with the previous Grand Duke had been public enough, and it had even been unsurprising that their relationship produced a child. What had sent Gristholm abuzz with gossip and the Grand Duchess into a rage was his mother's defiance and nerve to dare name her illegitimate son "Yuuichi" after his father.

"You aren't going to curse me, are you?" he asked.

"No, stupid. But I get why this might be a hard thing for you to do."

Tate turned to her with a detached clarity in his eyes.

"It's not as difficult as you think," he explained. "He's not my brother or a Grand Duke. He's a tyrant, and I have no compassion for monsters."

With that said, his communicator beeped once more. Only this time there was no false alarm or sigh of relief. But there was no time to think; the adrenaline pumping in their veins cast aside all their fears as they stealthily made their way through the unguarded corridors of the ducal palace and parted ways. Tate did not think twice to aim and fire when an armed guard crossed his path. He did not see the blood that came pouring out the man's head, nor did he see the men that followed after him; he saw only moving targets to be picked off one by one.

By the time he made it to the council chamber, all the other players were already in position. Almost in unison, the surrounding doors to the assembly room were kicked open and the windows were broken through. Smoke bombs flooded the room with a thick haze as bullets pierced through the fog.

It wasn't until the smoke began to clear that the gunfire died down.

"He's not here," he dimly heard someone say. But Tate was not all there anymore, just as the smoke lifted he felt himself descend into his own waking nightmare. Blood wet the floors of the council chambers and bodies lay twisted across chairs and slumped over tables. It covered walls and tapestries and trickled down tables and chairs. His stomach seized and vomit pushed up his throat. He swallowed it back down but another spasm sent him doubling over.

He wiped his mouth, not caring how weak or foolish he may have seemed to the rest of the squad, when he realized that Shiho was standing at the center of the room, her eyes unhampered of naiveté. Without a word he walked up from behind and took her hand, leading her out of the room. He had hoped she would curse him until she went blue in the face, but those words never came.

Author's Note:

Okay, so before I get hate over the complete lack of Mashiro/Arika in this chapter, I would like to state that this is building into something…really. Although between my uncle's death and my brother's failed suicide I may have slipped into a darker state of mind. For that, apologies.

So now, go ahead and rant.