Chapter 1: The Greeting

Ferdinand, 1st year Royal Academy

I was walking side-by-side with Sylvester to the advancement ceremony and fellowship gathering. Each of us had at least one apprentice guard knight following in our shadows. For me it was Eckhart, Karstedt's eldest son of his first wife. For Sylvester, it was three archnobles each who's families were firmly intrenched in her faction. One was a fourth year who was a decent enough guard, but I reframed from being alone with him regardless. The other two were in their final year, same as Sylvester. They only hid their disdain for me in Sylvester's presence. Despite this, all three were adequate apprentice guards for an archducal family member.

Sylvester was practically bounding down the hall, his excitement not even disguised behind a nobleman's mask. And he chattered to what many might call excess.

"You'll love the food. It's so good and sweet!"

I resisted the urge to point out I did not in fact like sweets very much. The few that I had had in my time at the castle had all been tampered with to the point of making me almost violently ill. And before that… well, I certainly had never had anything sweet before the castle wither. But none of this I could say to Sylvester. There were too many unfriendly gazes and I couldn't quite bring myself to say anything that might bring down my brother's cheerful mood. Perhaps brother's care free attitude was rubbing off on me, I thought with a sigh as we came to the Ehrenfest's door. Several older students had gone ahead and divided us all by rank. Allowing Slyvester and I to enter first. We found our seats with our retainers and sat through the general welcome as well as speeches from the teachers including one who was very brusque and wore a strange glass magic tool over one eye. It was fascinating to me, but Sylvester could not stop wiggling in his seat beside me, he was so impatient.

"Someone will see you." I whispered under my breath at him.

He froze, drawing the attention of some of his guards, but he let his chin drop in a slight nod. From then on, he managed to sit with all the grace and confidence expected of the Archduke Candidate and the presumed next Aub.

From there Sylvester and I were led to the room where we would be greeting the other archduke candidates and the royalty. It took a great deal of effort not to twitch at the thought of royalty, at the memories that came rushing back. I slammed the door shut in my memory castle. Those particular memories should stay buried. Whispers circled us as we entered. Everyone here was a higher status than us so we had to especially carefully not to anger anyone. Even when I heard the words 'mistress' and 'bastard' batted around I just kept smiling. As if it mattered, but Sylvester's keen eyes darted each time he heard the latter. He was frowning almost too noticeably as we took our seats.

At the end was a massive table with two people sitting at. Both were beautiful to look at. The first was a male who was both elegant and tall. His long hair draped over his shoulders like a pale cloak. The young woman beside him was equally as elegant in her black dress. She looked like a doll made from pale stone. Neither so much as glanced at me.

"Let me do the greetings. Only speak if spoken to." Sylvester's quiet voice came from right next to me. And I nodded my agreement. In the end it would be best to allow Sylvester with his years more of experience to take the lead here rather the risk any missteps. But more than that, I did not want to deal with them.

The greetings only started once all the archduke candidates and- in the case of those who did not have archduke candidates at the academy -archnobles were sitting. The First; in this case Klassenberg, would go and greet the royals then be seated. They would be followed by the Second who greet royalty then the First, so on and so forth. This continued all the way down to us as a middle duchy. We greeted the royalty as was proper with Sylvester speaking for us. I listened well, knowing I would have to do the same next year. It went over perfectly including our greeting of the First. When we got to the Second, Dunkelfelger I was surprised by the people sitting. There was a male and two females. But what was odd was the two females were very clearly twins. A rarity, much less that both had the mana to be candidates for their archducal seat.

They had silver blue hair. Though one was pulled back into a braid while the other allowed their hair to hang down with the smallest amount of flair that would be allowed for her status. The one with her hair pulled into a braid also wore a magical tool over her eyes. Every now and then she would shift enough that I could catch a glance of the magic circles on the glass. She caught my gaze and leveled her bright silver eyes with my own. Her amused smile took a wicked curl to it. It was then that I realized her and her twin had different eye colors. The one with her hair down had bright red eyes while the one with the magical tool's was silver. Odd.

Sylvester did the greeting again and the male archduke candidate responded in a way befitting their status and with no interest in us at all, as we were beneath his notice. We were about to move on when the girl with the magical tool spoke up.

"So, we meet the flower that has taken root in the garden of Ehrenfest. I wonder how you'll grow here in this much wilder garden."

Was she comparing me to something so fragile as a flower that would be trampled easily here? I put on my best sharp smile.

"Even the most delicate of flowers can develop thorns to protect itself."

Silence greeted my remark and I could see Sylvester had turned deathly pale out of the corner of my eye. But I was not going to back down from an outright threat. I would not let Ehrenfest be trampled with me either. The other two archduke candidates looked surprised possibly even mortified. But it was the one who had spoken who had the most interesting reaction. She was grinning with actual excitement and even chuckled,

"Thorns indeed, poison too. You will thrive here, Little Flower."

I felt her eyes on me the rest of the way through the greetings. It only stopped once we were seated and the lower ranked duchies started to give their greetings. Sylvester heaved a deep sigh once the greetings were over and fixed me with a glare.

"Why did you pick a fight like that?"

"She was looking for a fight. Dunkelfelger likes people who will not back down from a challenge. Their knights are famous for it."

"You are neither from Dunkelfelger nor a knight."

I shrugged. "It was the response she wanted."

He slumped a little and I had to subtly reminded him not to do so here. "I know that, but must you spit poison like that? It will come back to bite you one day when you have a student of your own."

I snorted. As if anyone would be my student. Not with her making my life difficult. Anyone with any promise will stay well away from me. They will be too afraid to be like Justus or Eckhart.