Note: I'm going to try and address changes quick, but there's a lot. Sorry! 1. High beast chapter is updated to be more accurate. Exception being high beast color and roar. According to fan books you can change a high beast color. Minerva and Maggie both practice to do so (yes Maggie's is still wrong it should just be red) and do in fact have feystones embedded into their high beast's mouths. Minerva actually has 6 in hers. (reasons, will explain later, promise) 2. Minerva's strongest color is blue and Maggie's is red. 3. I will neither confirm nor deny Rozemyne is Minerva. There are clues. 4. This is my fault I was not clear. Minerva's bride task does not allow her to refuse a challenge from anyone who is a noble. However, only someone who has a hope of matching her mana can actually win the right to be her husband. (Archduke candidates, and higher arch nobles of which Peter is the latter and Sigurd is the former) 5. Sigurd originally had no intention of making the challenge, he was besotted and did snooping through his attendants and happened (*cough Peter cough*) to learn about the bride task. While he did gain a stain through the loss, he did also get some respect from Dunkelfelger students by not backing down.

6. Thank you Dy, you are a saving grace!

Peter 2nd year Royal Academy

I watched Lord Ferdinand go and my lady furiously stomp back to the ring she had just finished battling in. She impaled one of her swords into the sand. It was regretful that everyone, including Lord Ferdinand thought she was angry with him. I chewed on the inside of my lip and admitted that she was angry with him too, but most of it was directed elsewhere. Sadly, she still sometimes forgot this was not the old world. I sighed to myself knowing I would end up being the one to fix this.

I watched as a new opponent approached. Another third year who was in Dimitri's faction. A mild tempered; for Dunkelfelger at least, arch noble. He had frosty gold hair and light green eyes. I searched my memory for a name. Joseph? Johnthan? Something with a J. He was moderately skilled with a sword though with Minerva in a temper he was never going to last very long. It took about two dozen strikes before Minerva destroyed his guard in a flurry of blows. As his defenses crumbled, she focused her attacks on joints. Practically his knees, wrists, and elbows. I winced at the loud crack of the practice sword crippling an already damaged knee. This forced the boy to sand.

Well, this match was over.

"Yield." Minerva commanded flatly.

He hissed and grimaced gripping his wounded knee with one hand while the other kept his sword up in guard. At least he managed that much. "No." Gods curse the stubborn pride of these fools.

Minerva struck the moment the word left his lips. A mercy really. He slumped to the sand, unconscious well before he hit the ground. Several other apprentices rushed to the fallen boy's aid and removed him from the sing. A line had started to form of grinning apprentices wanting to practice against their archduke candidate. Thus began a brutal pattern of quick practice battles that only grew more vicious as time passed. Slowly my lady was holding back less and less. Her anger and frustration being vented in the only way she was allowed to release them. More and more fellow students left the ring battered and bruised. If they left on their own power, they were among the lucky ones.

It was when a sixth year stepped up that I started to really worry. Her silver eyes had a hard gleam to them as she understood instantly that she did not have to restrain herself any further. I walked over to Heisshitze who was watching nearby.

"Heisshitze, prepare yourself to intervene."

My love's guard was watching her with something akin to fanatism. He seemed surprised and almost offended by my words. "Why would we intervene? It's not like she is going to lose or even get hurt." This ditter obsessed idiot was going to get my love hurt in so many ways if he continued to view this in that light. A problem I will be addressing later when there was less witness to potentially over hear. I smiled at him even as I shoved down my anger.

"Have you ever seen her fight like this?" I pointed to our lady. She was fighting with such ferocity that it completely lacked her usual fluid grace. She was even reverting to some of the old-world methods of adding kicks. Every strike be it her sword or her foot was aimed lower. Each one aimed not to break her opponent's guard, but his very bones. She was no longer fighting a fellow student from Dunkelfelger. Instead, she was fighting an unknown person who she wanted to hurt for hurting someone we deemed precious. Minerva would kill her opponent after she had toyed with him. What's worse is she wouldn't realize what she was doing until it was far too late. This was something I would not allow.

"Hmm, now that you mention it, her fighting style does seem odd."

At least he was completely blind.

"What is she so angry about?"

I pursed my lips and checked to make sure no one was paying any attention to us. "I suspect she is angry about what Lord Ferdinand said."

"Why? He wasn't wrong."

I sighed inwardly. Gods, what have you done to these people. "I do not think it was the words themselves. My lady and I believe that the young lord is not treated well in his home duchy. Those words." I shook my head. "They had a lot more venom than was normal."

Heisshitze nodded along with my explanation. Clearly, he had noticed things too and my comment was making him revisit those things with new eyes. Together we looked back to Lady Minerva. Her eyes were as cold and unyielding as the stories about the Lord of Winter. Though she still smiled, it was a pitiless thing that lacked true joy. She swung battering the sixth year. He was holding out, but he had not yet made a strike on her. So, it wouldn't be much longer now. Minerva continued to drive at him pushing him like a cat playing with a rabbit. Slowly she was driving her prey to just the right spot. I saw it just before he fell. The exact same spot Heisshitze had tripped Lord Ferdinand.

Irony abounds.

Bloody triumph lit her silver eyes as the boy stepped back. His ankle twisted just as Lord Ferdinand's had. And just as lord Ferdinand fell, so too did he. Only he landed on his sword arm, pinning his only weapon and defense underneath himself.

"Heisshitze!"

"I see it." He moved with a speed far greater than anything I could have attained without magic circles and enhancement magic. Heisshitze moved to intercept the downward swing that would have been a finishing blow.

'Minerva!' I hissed through the magical tool I knew she was still wearing. But she couldn't hear. Or wouldn't.

He made it just in the nick of time. The blow that should have split the sixth year's head like melon instead clattered loudly against Heisshitze's practice sword. Minerva leveled her glare against her cousin, a feral growl escaped her. It was a low threatening sound that set the hair on the back of my neck standing up. She went to redirect her sword at Heisshitze, much to his shock.

(*Ash!*) I shouted the word heedless of who heard me. I just prayed that that word break through her frenzy. She hesitated, then instantly froze, stopping her attack just a hair's breath from Heisshitze's nose. By some small miracle she managed to mask her horror behind a frown.

"Heisshitze, you should not interfere with practice like this. It is dangerous to do so." For him, for anyone else.

"My apologies, my lady. I found myself so excited I got carried away and forgot myself." A surprising lie that covered for not only my interferences, but the stole away attention from the loser. For an idiot, Heisshitze was considerate.

"Hmm, I think I am done for the day." Lina rushed forward at my love's words, snatching the sword from the sand and taking the one she was still holding. Minerva was hiding it well, but she was shaken by her own actions. I knew she would hide away in her room until she was confident that she had her 'beast' -as she called it- was under control again. Until she was less mortified by her behavior.

'Minerva?' I asked over the tool. I had to keep it brief just in case someone was looking closely at either of us.

'I'm alright.' Her voice was raw and raspy as it passed through the magic tool cuffed to my ear.

'I'm going to investigate.' I half expected for her to flatly refuse to allow it, or at the very least threaten to come after me if I did not report back regularly. Instead, she sighed completely exhausted.

'Be safe.'

'Always.' I watched as Heisshitze, Lina, and Catherine escorted my love back to Dunkelfelger dorms. Once they were gone, I moved towards the Ehrenfest dorms. It was unlikely that Lord Ferdinand was still walking around, but it wasn't him I was looking for. I had just past our guards when a voice nearby said,

"That Lady of yours is something else."

I turned to find Justus strolling beside me. Just the boy I wanted to speak to. "That she is. But your Lord is not one to scoff at either. There aren't many who could go toe-to-toe with my lady and make her work for every strike. Not to mention trade bruises with her. Not in our year at least." The other boy preened at the praise for his lord. It was well deserved too.

"Lord Ferdinand fulfills his duties to perfection."

We walked towards the library and companionable silence fell between us. Who would break first I wondered idly. Though this body was the same age as Justus, I certainly had a few advantages over him. Plus, if he had been watching his lord had left; I very much suspected he had, his curiosity would be getting the better of him.

"What was that word you said, (*ash*)? I have never heard it before."

Fishing, huh? I hid my smile. "It means ash." Nothing but the truth even if it did not actually answer his true question. But neither he nor his master were ready for the questions or answers that that information would lead to. Much more trust was needed on both sides before we could speak on that.

He chuckled, "Another mystery." He had a gleam in his eyes. Hunger for knowledge and answers, but it was tempered by loyalty that was easily as strong as my own. "I wonder if Dregarnuhr will weave your lady and my lord's threads together anytime soon." I resisted the urge to raise my eyebrow at that. He could mean in the romantic light, but I knew this boy was smarter than that.

"Dregarnuhr has no way to cool the eagles' temper at the unknown beast who would hunt in their nest."

Justus shifted. The only sign that he was surprised by me implying Lord Ferdinand was my and my lady's family.

"The only beast I could think of brave enough to hunt in an eagle's nest is the lioness." The venom with which he spat the word beast was enough to tell me that I was only scratching the surface of what had been done to Lord Ferdinand. The lioness, he had said. The Aub's first wife then. Minerva was not going to be happy, not at all.

"I will see if Dregarnuhr's can be moved along." But first I needed to get my stubborn love to see reason.