In Human Skin

by Akemi Homura-san

In January, a.t.b. 2010, Empress Marianne vi Britannia, Knight of Two and His Majesty's favoured consort, was assassinated at her residence in the Imperial Villa at Aries. But for Justine and Juliette vi Britannia, her daughters, this proves to be a blessing in disguise... Surrounded by old foes and sheltered by new and unexpected allies, their tale heralds the dawn of a new era.

23. At Times, Love Is

Ashford Estate, Ashfordshire, December, a.t.b. 2014

There were benefits, she'd come to learn, to having lost and regained her arm: the black nails that had been such a cause for concern initially were not, as it happened, made from keratin; rather, they were formed of another, stranger sort of tissue entirely, its appearance resembling igneous glass or flint, and yet stronger by far than either. One of the first discoveries she made with them was that they could extend into sharp claws or retract back into a configuration bearing a passing resemblance to proper cuticles, and with a process of regular practise, she'd gained command over them that she then proceeded to hone, allowing her to bare or to conceal them as she willed, and at a moment's notice.

This came at a cost, however, as that very same practice had seen Justine vi Britannia develop a bit of a nervous habit with them, extending and retracting her claws in rhythmic sequence whenever she began to feel her composure start to fray, for whatever reason. The flexing of her fingers that brought them forth might have corresponded to a jostling of the leg, the clicking of a ball-point pen, or a tapping of the fingers in anyone else; and much like with any or all of those same outlets for pent-up anxiety and nervous energy, others were liable to find Justine's baring and concealing of her claws to be quite vexing indeed.

"Could you please not?" Juliette huffed in exasperation, combing her fingers through Justine's own wet raven curtain, sparing the water-laden silken locks the silver-toothed comb's tender mercies for the moment. "I swear, Justine, it's driving me mad."

Justine smiled uneasily at her sister's scowling reflection in the mirror, letting her claws remain out for the moment (they were much more comfortable out, akin to the satisfaction of cracking one's knuckles), and said, "I'm sorry. I suppose I'm just a touch anxious."

"Anxious?" Juliette snorted sceptically, finally sliding her fingers out of Justine's wet and at the moment very heavy hair before reintroducing the silver-toothed comb to tease out some of the finer tangles that had formed while Justine washed her scalp. "What's there to be anxious about, Justine?"

"Quite a bit, it looks like," Suzaku tossed in from her prone position on the nearby settee.

"It's a birthday party, Suzaku, not a damned firing squad," Juliette huffed as she began to draw the comb through.

"With all due courtesy, Juliette, you're not the one who's getting married in a week's time because of this birthday," Justine remarked with no small degree of petulance. "Don't mistake me, I'm ecstatic that it's finally happening, but I think I'd honestly have better luck with the firing squad."

"She would, too," Suzaku interjected, lifting her head from the seat cushions for that sole purpose. "Your nee-san can be right scary when she wants to be. Probably'd stare down the fuckin' gunmen, make 'em all miss their fuckin' shots. I can picture it now! Justine just standin' there, prim and proper as always, bullet holes all around her, and there she stands, lookin' disappointed."

"You have the most vivid imagination," Justine sniped back. "Clearly, I'd also admonish the lot of them for their poor aim. 'You call yourselves soldiers. Soldiers, indeed.'"

"Oh, yes, truly the most crucial of details," snarked Suzaku.

"Indeed; how embarrassing for you that you should forget it," snarked Justine in return.

"I swear, the both of you share the same brain cell sometimes…" Juliette grumbled.

"It's less sharing, and more a game of badminton," Justine corrected.

"It's a funny little word, innit?" Suzaku added. "Shuttlecock… Shuttlecock…"

"My personal favourite is 'rural,'" said Justine. "It's a very silly word indeed. 'Rural.'"

"Well, if nothing else, dear sister," Juliette sighed in resignation. "I'm glad that your collective team effort to irritate me has at least managed to put you in a better humour about the whole thing."

"What the fuck, 'a better humour'?" the brunette laid upon the settee asked rhetorically. "Okay then, Little Miss King's College!"

"Speaking of which, how is that going?" prompted Justine, undercutting her best friend's attempts to needle the Sixth Princess in the process, thus also needling said best friend. Of course, Justine was also genuinely asking after her younger sister's well-being and the health of her affairs, but at the very least, she considered herself to be rather uniquely qualified to multitask. "I imagine it must be something of a trial, to be so far afield of all the resources to which you're privy in Pendragon proper…"

"It proceeds apace, for the most part," Juliette replied, electing not to remark upon the sudden shift in topic. "And I've tasked Marrybell with looking after things for me at court while I'm gone, so it's not as if I've managed to strand myself entirely. I talk to Clovis fairly regularly even still, and so between him and the fact that Euphy's also attending, it helps a great deal. There are snags every so often here and there, but that's only to be expected as a daughter of the so-called 'Commoner Empress.' Even from beyond the grave does she find new and inventive ways to torment us…"

"While I admittedly still can't quite muster your level of vitriol, Juliette," Justine began at length, "I know for a fact that I wouldn't be here today, on the advent of my wedding, if our mother had had her way. The thought of that is admittedly a sobering one."

"Y'know, hearin' the two o' ya go on about the royal bitch that birthed ya, it really makes me appreciate havin' grown up with a single dad," Suzaku remarked contemplatively. "Fuckin' A…"

"Well, I suppose it wasn't all bad experiences," Juliette replied, a nasty smirk twisting the corner of her mouth. "I just can never remember any of the good ones she was responsible for."

"With all due courtesy once again, Juliette," Justine said as softly as she could manage, to make it clear that she'd taken no true offence. "I'd really rather not talk much further about our late mother for the time being, if it's all the same to you."

"Oh! Right, sorry…" said Juliette, flinching slightly.

"It's not that I want to invalidate your feelings, you understand," Justine rushed to clarify. "I just…"

"No, no, you're right," Juliette interrupted, shaking her head and taking a deep breath as she ran the comb through Justine's hair a few more times. "This is a happy day, after all. We ought not to let even her memory darken it for us. I'm done, by the way. One hundred passes through, to leave it smooth and soft as silk, just like always."

"Thank you, Juliette," said Justine. "I mean it. Suzaku entirely lacks the patience for something like this."

"My hair's just fine as it is, thank you very much," piped up the other girl. "I brush it when I wake up and when I go to bed, and that's more than enough to keep me lookin' like Hell on wheels."

"Oh, would you please get on up off of the settee, you great lummox!" Juliette exclaimed, setting the comb aside upon the vanity before which Justine was currently sitting as she moved away to begin looking after the rest of the younger princess's preparations. "Start getting yourself ready! Euphy is going to be back any moment now with our garments for the evening, and I will not have you flashing her! For Hell's sake, I get more than enough exposure to her filthy jokes already! I absolutely will not stand for you adding more fuel to that fire!"

"Wow, you're just goin' full socialite mode on us, ain't ya?" Suzaku remarked somewhat derisively; but she lifted herself up from off of the furniture all the same, semi-obediently seeing about setting to rights her own preparations for the beginning of Justine's sixteenth birthday celebration—the day of her majority, in the eyes of Britannian society, making her old enough to enlist in the Britannian armed forces, or potentially even get married.

Personally, Justine was much more enthused about the latter possibility.

The elder princess herself rose from the vanity and joined Juliette, donning a black cotton chemise and fastening a corset of the same colour around her midsection and bust; with the laces of the undergarment fastened, and having slipped on her black silk stockings and garters before sitting down to have her hair meticulously combed by her sister's steady, precise, and careful hand, Justine debated with herself about whether or not she should go and grab a petticoat from the wardrobe nearby. As if on cue, a knock upon the door resounded throughout the dressing-chamber, and seeing that Juliette had her hands full with the peculiars of her own appearance, Justine took it upon herself to pad across the carpet towards the door. She opened it, and upon seeing who waited at the other side of the threshold, Justine stepped aside to admit a grinning Euphemia, buried under folds of voluminous fabric that Justine could only assume were meant to be the gowns the three of them would be wearing to tonight's ball held in her honour, where she and Suzaku would receive their friends from Ad Victoriam when they arrived ahead of the wedding. "Special delivery for a very special big sister—and company!"

"Thank you for retrieving these for us, Euphy," Justine greeted her pink-haired sister warmly. "Go ahead and set them down on the settee, please."

"My pleasure," Euphemia assured her as she brushed past, making a beeline for the furniture before dumping the lot upon it in a very expensive heap. "You're taking the black one, naturally."

"Naturally," Justine agreed with a nod.

"And since it's winter, it's of a heavier construction, so you won't need a petticoat," said Euphemia, finishing her explanation.

"You spoke with the seamstress?" Justine inquired as she stared down at the dress, gazing down at the mass of fine black silk velvet fabric and pulling together the beginnings of a completed look in the eye of her mind (one of them, at least) as the two princesses conversed with one another.

"We exchanged words, yes," Euphemia affirmed.

The princess with the raven hair nodded slowly. "Any word on the state of my wedding dress?"

"She said she made the one before you as a sort of proof-of-concept," said Euphy. "So, according to her, this gown should give you an idea of what wearing the final product is going to feel like."

"Wonderful," Justine breathed, the word half a sigh as it left her lips. She then turned to Euphemia, eyeing her and her attire up and down; the dandies of New York City were considered by many who ran in such circles to be the avant garde of Imperial fashions, and Euphemia had dressed herself in proof of such for tonight's event. "A pity we couldn't have made this a masquerade ball—I daresay you'd have made an exceptional Don Juan…"

Euphemia flushed pink at the compliment, but otherwise accepted it with grace. The majos of old Spain were the local dandy community's most recent fixation, and the Seventh Princess had taken to the new fashion as she had with many other such fashions: with a great deal of gusto. The variation on that theme she wore included boots in lieu of stockings and court shoes, along with a more muted version of the vivid palette the old style was known for, but it was no less pronounced in its tones for it, and it resulted in a new form of that style that felt much more at home among the stark contrasts of the winter season. Justine's comment was not one spoken idly. "Perhaps another time, dear sister."

"Another time indeed," Justine nodded. "Perhaps we'll throw one to herald the new year. I suppose I shall have to discuss such matters with Juliette when the time comes… But if I may impose upon you just a bit more? I'm in need of a favour."

"Anything," Euphemia replied without hesitation.

"Once I've gotten my gown on, could you help me with my hair?" Justine asked, reaching down to lift the dress she'd be wearing tonight to refine the idea she had in her mind further. "I feel like the evening and this ball gown both demand something of a change of pace in that arena. I'd ask Juliette, of course, but I'd imagine she'll have her hands well and truly full dealing with her own appearance. Her time as the belle of many a Pendragon ball has left her very particular about how she aims to present herself."

"I wouldn't mind that in the slightest," Euphemia replied honestly.

"Thank you dearly, Euphy," Justine sighed with a heave of her chest and her shoulders, her eyes closed. "Whatever would we all do without you?"

"You'd muddle along just fine, I expect," the younger princess said with a smile. "Albeit, much less fashionably."

"Precisely," Justine proclaimed. "Could you imagine the tragic indignity of such an unfortunate and unjust twist of happenstance?"

"Entirely unthinkable, I agree," Euphemia nodded.

The raven-haired princess smiled, but then made a bit of a show of looking about the room, as if she was just now noticing a rather conspicuous absence. "And dare I ask, where is the estimable Lord Darlton then, hmm?"

"The same place as your two," said the rosette. "Outside this room and down at the end of the hall."

Justine nodded, and with her dress in hand, she moved over to behind a room divider that Suzaku had put out while the two sisters were conversing, throwing her gown atop it so that she could have both of her hands free to don the garment properly. "Euphy, please be a dear and grab me a pair of silver earrings from the jewellery box on the vanity. One of the dangling ones with embedded rubies, if you please."

"Do you want the ones with the elaborate engravings, or one of the understated ones?" Euphemia asked her sister as she approached the vanity, and the elegant yet unassuming black wooden box with gold trim in which Justine held all her jewellery—with the exception of her collar, which she wore even now. It fit her neck better these days than it had when she'd first received it, since she'd had time to grow into it a little, and she considered that fact with a faint smile as she scrutinised the gown and formulated a response to Euphemia's question.

Eyeing the intricate designs of lace and the thorny vines carefully sewn into them, Justine nodded to herself, and called out over the top of the room divider, "The intricate ones, thank you."

"Are you quite certain?" Euphemia called back, incredulous laughter in her voice.

"Euphy," Justine sighed playfully. "Would I have answered so if I wasn't? I am perfectly capable of asking you to use your discretion in the event that I find myself genuinely ambivalent."

"No, I suppose not," Euphemia conceded, closing the box and approaching Justine's position as the older princess worked at getting the dress on over the top of her underlayers. "Still, I feel I should state that it is very much conventional wisdom to contrast an elaborately-designed dress with simpler accessories…"

"Yes, well, as I've told you in the past, Euphy," Justine began as she got her arms through, and then let the rest of the gown settle down around her a bit before straightening it out. "'Conventional wisdom,' as you so eloquently put it, was concocted by women deathly concerned by the prospect of being outshined by their garments. Now, not to be conceited, but I think we can both agree that I am myself in no true danger of running afoul of that eventuality, can't we? And besides, doesn't conventional wisdom also dictate that I would be better-suited wearing brighter colours on account of my hair? That I should look pale and deathly morose wearing black as I do? And have any such fears ever come to pass in my years of adorning myself in such a manner, dear sister?"

"I can't rightly say they have, no," Euphemia conceded again, now keeping to a respectful distance away from the folding-screen. "I've never seen you look anything but ravishing, no matter what you wear."

"Well, that's that, then, now isn't it?" Justine rejoined teasingly, emerging from behind the divider with her dress donned and firmly in-place, and turning to her sister just in time to catch her staring dumbly. The elder princess found it in her to smirk at Euphemia's somewhat lascivious expression of shock, giving a small twirl to make the skirt billow around her in a storm of shimmering silk and glittering lace. "So, why don't you let me worry about what looks good on me from now on, hmm? Not that I don't appreciate your concern, of course, but I suspect I'm a bit far afield of the sorts of highborn tarts who've managed to find themselves in your bed so very frequently that I'd almost be given to think you were actively attempting to seduce them. Or am I mistaken?"

Even staring at Justine's form in the dress, Euphemia had enough presence of mind to understand that the proper response to the question, however rhetorical it may have been, was a shake of her head. Justine remembered that she'd been bothered by it when the staring had begun to mount and grow more intense in the span of the past year, worried that Milly might think…well, she'd never actually managed to articulate to herself what precisely would be so intolerable to have her fiancée think of the situation; but when Justine had mustered up the courage to address the issue, Milly had laughed at her. "On the contrary. It pleases me greatly that others now see you as I always have. You're beautiful, my Justine, and so it's only right that they stare. But I certainly won't deny that I get a special sense of satisfaction from knowing that while they may look all they want, that's all they'll get: only I will ever get to touch…"

The recollection of it was enough to send her blood running.

"I'm well-aware that the gown is beautiful, Euphy, and I'll certainly make a point to visit Madame Arnault to thank her for it personally before my wedding dress is due," Justine began, tilting her head and cocking an eyebrow. "But I will be needing those earrings, as well as your help with my hair."

"Huh?" Euphemia blinked.

Justine sighed. "The earrings, Euphy."

The rosette blinked again, twice, and then jerked, as though startled from a dream. "Hmm? Oh, yes! The earrings, right, the ones you had me go get for you…those earrings…"

"Quite," Justine replied primly, with a wry twist of her lips, as she held out a hand for them.

Euphemia placed the lustrous and intricately-engraved silver pieces with their glittering rubies into Justine's outstretched palm (the one with her claws out), a mortified blush dusting her cheeks as she did so. The raven-haired princess refrained from remarking upon this, and instead saw about fitting each piece into her ears, putting the ruby-eyed serpent-shaped cuffs of them into her pinnae so that the teardrops, both of which featured larger rubies, could hang properly from her earlobes. They'd been commissioned to match her day collar as a set, and for that reason she'd immediately been fond of them.

"Now then, for my hair," Justine said once they were securely in place, stepping away to lead them both back to the vanity. "I don't believe I want to put it all the way up, per se, but if I could have a portion of it pinned into a bun while the rest falls as normal…"

"I think I know just the style," Euphemia assured her as she sat down.

"Excellent. While you're doing that, I'll work on my make-up. I have my gloves in the top drawer, and Suzaku should be back here any second now with the shoes I picked out…"

"Yeah, yeah, calm your fuckin' tits, Princess Sourpuss," Suzaku groused as she emerged at last from out the large walk-in closet that was mostly stocked with Juliette's broad catalogue of outfits, catering to a vast array of different occasions—though, that wasn't to say that Justine and Suzaku didn't get a good deal of use out of it themselves. "Got 'em in hand. Though I still don't know why you've gotta wear these death-traps when you've got a pair of perfectly good boots…"

"Two reasons," Justine pronounced primly, even as Euphemia, who was by now very much used to this kind of repartée between the two of them, set about arranging her hair. Justine followed suit, picking a brush and beginning to apply the first layer of cosmetics. She generally went rather light with it, as a rule of thumb, seeking only to protect her flawless pale skin from inconsistent or poor lighting, partly because she lacked the expertise necessary to make anything more elaborate look good, and partly because doing something more substantive tended to be increasingly time-consuming, at least as she understood it; but she always made an exception when it came to her eyes. "The first is because I actually enjoy indulging in a bit of harmless pageantry on occasion. I happen to like feeling beautiful every now and again."

"For your fiancée, maybe," Suzaku scoffed, approaching with Justine's shoes in hand.

"That's actually the second reason," Justine continued without missing a beat as she exchanged one brush for another. "The wedding is in a week's time, as you well know—and I promise that I shall be very cross indeed should I discover that you had needed to be reminded of such—and so tonight's ball shall, in an unofficial capacity, serve as my first proper outing as a bride. So certain cultural expectations and traditions must be met. Rest assured, Suzaku, that in the unlikely event that you are ever wed, I shall be sure to aid you in your efforts to don a shiromuku of your own, as a proper Shintō bride yourself."

Suzaku grimaced at the thought of it, and bent down to place Justine's shoes within easy reach. She rose, then, and shook her head. "No, thank you. Not for me."

"You say that now," Justine said, pausing in the application of her make-up to smirk at her friend in the mirror. "But you and I both know that if Lady Izanami asked it of you, you'd only protest on grounds of you being a brat."

"Okay, you're right, but fuck you anyways," said Suzaku as she stepped away.

Justine huffed playfully, picking up another brush and returning to her current task. "So unrefined, even now…"

"Hey, you've got more than enough refinement for the both of us," Suzaku snorted. "There's no real need for lil' ol' me to go steppin' on your toes."

"You may have a point there," Justine relented. Then she put the brush down and checked her face in the mirror, being careful not to move too much and thus obstruct Euphemia. She chose a finer brush, but changed the subject to something more germane all the same. "Suzaku, I had a new tube of lipstick that was a lovely shade of plum. Would you happen to know where it got to?"

"Left side, third drawer, under the false bottom," the brunette rattled off.

"Thank you," replied the princess, putting the current brush down for a moment so that her hand was free to slide out the appointed drawer, then to lift the first layer of lipstick tubes to get at her own personal supply. She put the tube in question on the tabletop, and then retrieved the brush she'd set aside to put on a few finishing touches.

"All done," pronounced Euphemia, stepping away from the finished product of her raven-haired elder sister's newest style.

"And now…" Justine pronounced, pressing her lips together to evenly spread her lipstick. "I'm just about ready. By the way, you did a wonderful job, Euphy. Thank you, truly."

"No problem," Euphemia replied cheerily. "You're honestly a lot easier than Juliette when it comes to stuff like this. It's a nightmare. Her hairstyles only ever look simple."

"Don't I know it," Justine laughed. She slid open the drawer with her gloves, then, and then slipped them up to just above her elbows as Juliette made her presence in the room known. "I'm the one who has to do it whenever you're otherwise indisposed, after all."

"I can hear you, you know," the younger vi Britannia grumbled, and Justine privately thought that she did so only because she knew the accusation to be entirely accurate. "Quite well, in fact."

"I'd be concerned if you couldn't, truth be told," Justine replied cheekily, standing from her seat in front of the vanity in a single fluid motion. "Now then, girls, are we all ready to go?"

"Sure," Suzaku shrugged.

"It'll do," Juliette nodded.

"I mean, I came here ready, so…" Euphemia muttered, shrugging herself.

"Wonderful," said Justine with a nod of her own. "Well then, what do you all say we go down there and knock them dead, as they say?"

"Wait a moment, Justine," interjected Juliette. "Just one more thing…"

---

Almost five years had come and gone since the disappearance of her last contractor—half a decade, in fact; a drop in the ocean in comparison to the time she'd lived, for all that she was the youngest of those she considered to be her current peers (which was in itself quite the novelty)—and yet C.C. was certain that she'd attended more of these high-society parties in those nearly five years than she had in the entirety of the last two centuries, at least. Juliette seemed to possess a similar breed of social sadism to Marianne, and took a special sort of pleasure in roping her into attending this party or that party—tea socials, balls, fêtes, soirées, often thrown by Clovis, but increasingly organised and hosted by Marrybell mel Britannia, a very precocious girl who was in many ways Juliette's protégé, and one-third of the triad of which Euphemia was herself a part, she'd attended them all, in some capacity or other. She'd expected that by this point, based on her extensive pool of prior experience, she would have grown well and truly tired of attending these sorts of events; and it was with no small amount of rising horror and creeping dread that she'd come to understand, slowly and by degrees, that this eventuality that she'd predicted had in no uncertain terms failed to come to pass.

Even when she'd been mortal—by Heaven, especially when she'd been mortal—C.C. had not been the sort of person who 'had friends', too absorbed in the tragedy of her existence even then for any sort of relationship she attempted to cultivate to have amounted to anything more than another doomed dalliance; and yet, it seemed to her that Juliette vi Britannia, whom she was coming to realise resembled her mother in only the most superficial of ways, was determined to drag her into a bond of sorority, even through the immortal's kicking and screaming if need be. This was the dread, the external fear for all that it was of an existential nature; the horror, the fear that arose from the unknown within, however, was that the witch was finding it increasingly difficult to convince herself that she wasn't enjoying the entire thing on some level.

This was why she continued to suffer these outings, and it was how she found herself currently in the grand ballroom of the main Ashford Estate, the august and elegant manor she hadn't properly set foot in since she'd brought Marianne here some twenty-five years past, give or take. Though she had to admit that this was admittedly a much more joyous affair than that event had been, and eventually turned out to be.

Juliette had seen her dressed in a rich burgundy gown embellished with golden filigree, pinning her lime-green hair up in a complicated bun that was made to appear simple—an adaptation of one of Juliette's own favoured hairstyles, a recent addition to the princess's slowly growing repertoire, at least as far as she understood it—and further decorated with the distinctive plumage of a great horned owl sprouting from the bottom of it for the sake of further contrasting her hair's brilliance. She understood it was a rising fashion, too, for ladies of the court to adorn their hair with the feathers of different birds, with each distinct species possessing its own layered meanings and implications. It struck her as distinctly French, reminiscent of the sorts of increasingly ostentatious whirlwind trends that came and went with the passing of the seasons in the courts of several different French monarchs (though Louis the Great she counted as chief among them); but she wisely kept that thought to herself, and instead found her own private humour in the fact that for all the things that had changed in the wake of the Humiliation, the Britannian peerage's unspoken mimicry of the excesses and grandiose affectations of the French nobility was not one.

The advent of autumn and winter had brought with it the seasonal outmoding of the fan, which left C.C. to grapple once again with the fact that she sorely missed having the damned accessory, if for no other reason than because its absence left her hands woefully idle; and so, as always, she lingered at the outskirts of the dance floor, watching the parade of fresh faces who were, as she'd gathered, almost entirely made up of Justine's 'schoolyard friends', to the extent that such a thing could be said of a military academy, nursing a flute of incredibly expensive and rare sparkling wine that tasted its age and couldn't even begin to intoxicate her, what with her unchanging body's propensity for unceremoniously flushing poisons from her system. To her surprise, many of them came in pairs, and most of those pairings seemed to feature some degree of romantic interest in one another; in fact, the departures from that trend consisted only of the pair who were named as Odette, Lady Rochefort and Marika, Lady Soresi, who seemed to have come together as friends, and Lindelle, Countess Rathbone, who seemed to have come unaccompanied. Of course, Milly, as the lady of the house and one-half of the promised couple, had made a point to invite her own friends from the curious combination of school and workplace that she'd spent the bulk of her time engaging in in Area Eleven over the past year and a half or so, and C.C. considered herself pleasantly surprised to see how well Lloyd, Earl Asplund had cleaned up, for all that the estimable Doctor Croomy's choice of attire was certainly…unexpectedly bold. Though the delegation from Ashford Academy, who made up a quartet by themselves, also certainly seemed like an interesting bunch, indeed…

"Well, well! There's a face I haven't seen in quite some time," came a voice C.C. recognised, for all that she'd known he'd be here and hoped that he wouldn't recognise her. "And, wondrously enough, that face hasn't aged even a single day in over twenty years… Would that I could say the same of myself…"

Drat… C.C. swore internally, as she turned to regard a face from her past. She did her best to smile, and despite the fraught circumstances of this unwanted reunion, she found it within herself to do so; and without needing to resort to any significant degree of performance art to boot. "Perish the thought, Reuben. I daresay you've aged gracefully enough."

"With all due respect, Miss C.C., that's easy enough for you to say," chuckled the aged grand duke; he was tall as he had once been, and his frame still boasted the remnants of the same formidable athleticism that he'd been known for in his youth, but true to his protests, he'd grown old. The rich auburn hair that she had known to have gone iron-grey when it came time to bury his prodigal daughter was now beginning to grow just as bone-white as Charles's own had become; and cataracts were now in both eyes, though it was much stronger in one of them. The crow's feet at the corners of his increasingly milky gaze had joined the lines of laughter that had creased the rest of the man's face, and though he was dressed as befitting his station, his gait was such that he'd elected to accompany it with a silver-headed cane upon which he was now doing his level best not to lean overmuch. "Between the two of us, you aren't the one whose hip is finally starting to give up the ghost, as they say, under the strain of renewed activity."

C.C. grimaced in sympathy. She'd had to walk thirty kilometres through an active war zone during the Great War with a hip reduced to dust by an artillery shell, and she could only imagine how it must feel to have one's body develop that same affliction, slowly and by degrees. "I suppose you've got me there…"

"Still, it is good to see you again, Miss C.C.," the ageing man professed, drawing up alongside her in his grey tailcoat and trousers, his moss-hued waistcoat, and his white jabot, pinned in place with a silver brooch housing a gleaming emerald. Then, a single well-groomed eyebrow raised itself halfway towards his thinning hairline as his diamond-blue eyes glittered. "Or should I say 'Dame Emilia Ravencroft', now?"

"How witty you've become in your old age, Lord Reuben," C.C. replied with as dry and sarcastic a tone as she could muster.

"An old man should have a few hobbies, I daresay—to keep him from entering his dotage prematurely, no less," he chuckled to himself.

"Well, I couldn't very well go by the name you, Marianne, and Charles knew me by when attending parties in Pendragon, now could I?" she asked rhetorically. "It would certainly have raised a few eyebrows, particularly given that our parting was not precisely on the most amicable of terms…"

"I'd imagine that your rather unique hair would have been every bit as distinctive as your peculiar choice of sobriquet," remarked the man, leaning back a bit onto the heels of his black leather dress-boots.

"It might well have, had I elected to display it," C.C. agreed. "The girls, thankfully, have gotten me into the habit of dying my hair whenever my presence at a gathering needs to remain circumspect."

"The girls, you say?"

"Euphemia and Juliette, chiefly," she clarified.

"Ah," Reuben nodded. "Yes… They're a very clever bunch, aren't they? Marianne's daughters, and those with whom they choose to surround themselves…"

"They are indeed," C.C. sighed. "Enough that I fear I've grown a trifle fond of them, in spite of my better judgement."

"More than a trifle, I'd venture," the man chortled gaily. "It's the damnedest thing. When Marianne and His Majesty were wed, I'd had such high hopes for the future of my line. Yet with how she sought to put distance between our houses after Justine's birth, and especially Juliette's, I'd begun to think that perhaps we had reached too far beyond our station, that I had somehow brought ruin upon the ennobled lineage of my mothers and fathers before me. And now my granddaughter's getting married to one of those very daughters. Isn't it funny, how these things sometimes work themselves out in the end…?"

"I suppose so," C.C. replied noncommittally. She'd been there, after all, when Marianne's dream of the ideal family she'd have with Charles began to deteriorate through sheer force of genetic luck, and she'd sought to put a bit of her own distance there as Marianne took that disparity out upon those children she did have for the sake of those she saw herself as having failed to. And yet, though she knew that that was what had begun the drift Marianne had put between herself and the house that had sponsored her originally, C.C. could not help but think that if it hadn't been Justine's birth, it would have been something else entirely that precipitated that distancing. Such thoughts, she believed, were perhaps better kept to herself. She sipped at her sparkling wine to cover her sudden thoughtful silence.

"I've never asked about the specifics of your peculiar affliction," Reuben said after a moment. "And I don't need to know. It's your secret to keep or to tell as you see fit. Yet, I suppose I at last have an idea of it, how a woman of such youth and beauty can carry your particular air of melancholy, as though time itself has ground all that you are down to the barest nub. I jest about your youth, Miss C.C., but never once through all the time that we have known one another have I envied it. I need only look at my granddaughter, and I am given to think that I shall be happy to content myself with fulfilling this final duty of mine, before I may see my beloved Irina once again, past Death's grey curtain. I sincerely hope, for your sake, that you may find some similar measure of peace in the course of your own existence."

C.C. gave a wan smile at the sentiment, but instead of meeting the man's gaze, she stared down at the flute of sparkling wine once again, swirling it in the crystal glass as she mulled it over. "That's very kind of you to say, Reuben. But I don't think that's in the cards for me…"

"Or, perhaps, you already have, and simply have yet to realise it. Food for thought," offered Reuben with a smile and a wink. Then he straightened, and the amount of space he occupied seemed to increase of its own volition. "But, I sense that the young lady has had quite enough of this old greybeard's ramblings for one night, and so I shall be off. Be well, old friend."

With that, Reuben Ashford made his expeditious exit, the tapping of his cane upon the marble floor of the ballroom heralding his retreat.

"'Young lady,' he calls me. As if I wasn't already older than he is—or will ever manage to be, for that matter…" C.C. grumbled, giving her drink a speculative look for a moment before downing the rest of it. It wouldn't impair her judgement, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the burn in the back of her throat was pleasant enough on its own.

"I suppose that must be the cruellest part of your affliction, then," came a new voice, one that C.C. was not as familiar with, but was still recognisable all the same. It was smooth and sultry, though not overtly so, despite the husk of its alto register, every phrase voiced in such a way that they seemed equal parts chiding and teasing as they reached the ear. "That despite the truth of your age, your withered juniors will forever treat you as though you were truly the greenhorn you appear to be."

"It's certainly a persistent irritation, though I'd consider it more of an occupational hazard, in truth," C.C. replied, as she looked away from her now-empty glass to regard the lady of the house, who had elected to draw closer to C.C. in her grandfather's wake. "And how are you enjoying the ball thus far, Milly?"

Carmilla, Duchess Ashford and Marchioness Tremaine, smiled politely at her, and C.C. had to stop herself for a moment to take in just how much the girl had changed. She'd grown even lovelier, which was plain enough to see, standing now perhaps a head taller than C.C. herself, her body packed tight with lean, powerful muscle, for all that she'd also somehow managed to maintain an impressive degree of curvature, to the point where she surpassed all the other women currently in the ballroom in that arena. Her blue eyes were even more piercing now than they had been when she was younger, and her golden hair was bound back into a thick, flowing tail, though enough of it remained loose and free that it framed her gorgeous face with all its boldly Britannian features that would have made her one of the most eligible bachelorettes in all the realm, were the duchess's heart not already very firmly set upon her royal bride.

There was, however, only one display of feminine fashion visible in how she attired herself, in the form of the feathers of a golden eagle, the bird which was the central part of her house's coat of arms, pinned in and around where a scarlet ribbon secured the tail near the nape of her neck; otherwise, she had elected to dress herself in a manner similar to her grandfather's choice of garments, albeit much more youthfully. High and polished black leather boots covered her feet, ankles, and shins, stopping just beneath her knee, with a ring of gold trim about the collar separating them much more clearly from the similarly black breeches that put the lean, powerful muscle of her toned, shapely thighs on full display. A stiff-collared white shirt served as a backing for the much more daring crimson waistcoat she wore, double-breasted with buttons of polished bronze (bearing also the telltale chain of a fob watch) and decorated with golden trim, alongside her white cravat, which was pinned with a silver brooch that housed a large, expertly-cut ruby in the shape of a kite. Overtop all of this, Milly wore a fine black tailcoat, also sporting gold trim and bronze buttons, and as she raised her glass to toast C.C. with perhaps the slightest note of obligation, she revealed not only the pristine white gloves she was wearing tonight, but also the fact that, apparently, her brooch and the cufflinks of her shirt both came as part of a matching set.

"I'm doing well enough, I suppose," C.C. replied while she eyed the girl up with a very appreciative gaze indeed. "You're certainly looking very dashing tonight,aren't you?"

"For all that my beautiful bride is practically guaranteed to outshine me when she does eventually join us," Milly began with a roguish smirk, "That doesn't excuse me from at least attempting to put up a proper fight, now does it, C.C.?"

"I suppose that's certainly one way of looking at it," C.C. replied sceptically.

"So very glad am Ito have your approval on this, truly," said Milly with biting sarcasm.

C.C. threw her head back and laughed, Milly maintaining her mask of antipathy for a few moments more before joining in the mirth herself. When both of them had calmed, C.C. gave she who was perhaps the most unlikely of her new friends a far more sincere smile, and asked, "So, in only a week's time, you, Carmilla Elizabeth Ashford, shall be a married woman at last. You'll forgive me if I ask the inane question of how it feels, I trust?"

"That's a deceptively simple question to answer," Milly remarked with something of a chortle. "It's a very different feeling than I imagined years ago, back on the night that she and I began…the night that all this ceased to be an unlikely dream and became real and tangible again. I never could have imagined, even in my wildest fantasies, that it could feel so exhilarating… Or, I suppose, so very terrifying…"

"Why 'terrifying,' pray tell?" C.C. prodded, curious despite herself.

"Cassiopeia, my late mother, may have been a bitter tyrant and an unpleasant shrew to the very end, but the lessons she attempted to drill into me were, at the very least, incredibly practical in their nature," Milly explained, swishing her sparkling wine around in the fluted crystal glass as she stared down into it. "One of the more notable ones was that while it's incredibly poor form to look a gift horse in the mouth, if there is something that seems too good to be true, then it most likely is. Something wicked this way comes, C.C., and I can't shake the feeling that it's soon to arrive…"

"My lords and ladies, honoured guests one and all," declared Jasper, the herald—who was also the nephew of the chauffeur, Simon, if C.C.'s memory served. "Announcing Her Royal Highness, Marrybell mel Britannia, Fifth Princess of the Realm, escorted by her esteemed Knight of Honour, Dame Oldrin, Viscountess Zevon; His Royal Highness, Clovis la Britannia, Second Prince of the Realm; and finally, Her Excellency the Prime Minister, Her Royal Highness Friederike el Britannia, Second Princess of the Realm, who is escorted by her aide, Priscilla, Countess Maldini, Minister of Foreign Affairs."

"I suppose Clovis is awful enough on his own," C.C. joked, though her temporary companion's face remained in its severe, contemplative cast.

"Clovis is harmless enough, if properly managed," Milly disagreed calmly. "And at the very least, his presence was expected. I'm certain dearest Euphy will be over the moon not to have to spend the night in an empty bed; Friederike, however, is, while a pleasant surprise, of course, wholly unexpected…"

True enough, neither Clovis nor the other two-thirds of Euphy's relationship were of any immediate concern; instead, both Milly and C.C. focused upon the tall, willowy, svelte figure striding with a purpose directly towards them, every motion of her dress seeming to flow with a certain august grace even as its cut, which was skirting the boundaries of scandal so very sheerly, appeared almost as though it aimed to distract onlookers with how it accentuated the flaxen-haired Second Princess's very generous endowments. It was a long gown, at once both shimmering silver and glittering pale gold; and for all that Friederike's hair was pinned up into a bun that was, for once, exactly as complicated as it looked, it only put her slender throat on display, as well as how her neckline seemed to plummet to her navel, for all that it was very complete everywhere beneath the waist and secured around the back of her neck. Both the bracelets and the necklace she wore were a matching set of ovoid capsules of pure gold, threaded through with a chain that glinted silver in the warm and inviting light of the ballroom, and she'd handed off the hefty fur stole (arctic fox, by the looks of it, unless C.C.'s eyes deceived her) she'd worn on her way through the door to a man C.C. knew only as Claude (who, as C.C. understood it, usually worked at the Pendragon Imperial Opera House, and through that employment had apparently become a very fond acquaintance of both Milly's and Justine's), one of the servants Taliesin had personally hand-picked to handle the coats of the guests as they came in from the bitterly cold December evening.

Friederike, after a few words to Claude, snatched a glass of sparkling wine off of the silver tray of one of the staff members working the floor as she passed by on her warpath to where Milly and C.C. had been conversing; and when she finally reached them, the prime minister let out a heavy sigh, tossing back a good third of the glass's contents before greeting either of them properly. When she lowered the glass, Milly was gazing at her with a bemused expression and an arched brow. "Long day at work?"

"You don't know the half of it," Friederike huffed, blowing part of her blonde fringe out of her face in the process. "I've had to bring my work along with me for this, but thankfully Juliette has had better luck sourcing personnel in the last few months than I have in the past decade. Marrybell has proven surprisingly capable, and so I hope not to be too frazzled at all hours of the day to enjoy the festivities… Ever since that business in the Sahara, dealing with the E.U. has only become more and more intolerable; the disgruntled noble houses who are in charge of Area Six have officially formed a faction called 'Los Peninsulares,' with which they are overtly threatening secession; and last, but certainly not least, Luoyang's very finest cockless jackals have begun to snap at my heels anew. It's enough to drive a woman to distraction, I tell you, not to mention that I've had practically no reprieve whatsoever from organising all the other affairs of state that I have had dropped rather squarely into my lap over the years—practically single-handedly, at that."

"If it's really so harried as all that," C.C. ventured, alarmed and somewhat concerned. "Then why, pray tell, have you come? I'm sure Justine would have understood the reasons for your absence, given the circumstances…"

Suddenly, Friederike turned to stare at C.C. as though she'd spontaneously grown two additional heads, each of which were immediately occupied with saying something profoundly ridiculous. "Well, you see—Dame Emilia, was it not? It is precisely because my little sister would understand my absence on her wedding day that I refuse to miss it. I know I've been forced to miss my fair share of birthdays, but if I elected to stay in Pendragon on this occasion, I'd know immediately that I have, at long last, well and truly cracked under the pressure of my station and gone stark raving mad. I shall be there to escort her down the aisle, even should bells toll and trumpets sound…"

"We recently worked out a deal between us where, for both of our sakes, she wrote down the things she would categorically refuse to allow this job to take from her, so that it doesn't end up consuming her entirely," chimed in a fourth voice, in the form of Priscilla, Countess Maldini, herself dressed in black silk trousers, a pair of black leather Hessians, and a black silk tailcoat, with a white muslin cravat, an onyx brooch, and a starched waistcoat in a light cream tone that, to C.C.'s eyes, was reminiscent of sun-bleached bone, interrupted by a slash of purple—a sash, trimmed in gold, the inclusion of which denoted the position that the countess had recently been promoted to in the ranks of His Majesty's Diplomatic Corps. "This just so happened to be on that list. Rest assured that, as per our agreement, I'd have dragged her here by the ear if she so much as thought of weaselling her way out of it…"

"…Quite," Friederike agreed after a moment, a faint dusting of pink beginning to bloom across her high cheekbones. She raised her glass and gestured vaguely at her surroundings with her free hand, elegant and tapering, with long, slender fingers. "And so, here we are. Any other questions you'd like to ask me?"

"The only thing worth questioning, my dearest good-sister,is that dress," Milly cut in smoothly, her tone carrying a vicious edge that was present even when her teasing was meant in good fun. "And Priscilla. How lovely it is to see you again, as always."

"Likewise, your grace," Priscilla replied with a sharp smirk, both of them baring their claws to one another for a moment, as was their wont.

"It's a Parisian fashion, as it happens," Friederike sighed, her hand flowing from the vague gesture into a dismissive one with a fluid grace that Justine and her elder half-sister seemed to have in common. "I realised too late to commission anything that I don't have anything in my wardrobe at the moment that's entirely appropriate for attending what amounts to a bridal shower, and so I sought to improvise. I haven't had to journey to Paris for any sort of summit in quite some time, and when I eventually do so again, I have a suspicion that it shan't be the manner of celebratory occasion for which this dress was meant. It would be beyond wastefulto leave it to sit where it was, gathering dust—or at least, I think so."

"So long as you recall that this is a ball, and not a bordello," Milly teased, smirking a bit viciously.

"Rest assured that I am not the royal sister who might need to be reminded of that fact," Friederike snorted, taking an unhurried drink from her sparkling wine. When she lowered it from her painted-red lips, she asked, "Speaking of whom, where is our dearest Euphy, anyways?"

"She'd gone to help the other girls get ready, when last I heard," replied Milly, swirling the contents of the glass before downing a bit more of it. "They should be coming down to join us any moment now…"

As if on cue, from one of the grand staircases that flanked either side of the ballroom came a certain familiar figure, slight of build and obviously feminine, with bright pink hair tied back into a tail that was bound just beneath the nape of her neck. She was dressed in crimson breeches and a similarly crimson coat, both with gold trim, and black leather boots, with a maroon blouse and a scarlet corset featuring elaborate scrollwork in golden thread covering her chest beneath the coat—though it was more of a jacket, honestly, much more at home in a bullfighting ring than the Imperial Court, for all that C.C. had been assured that it was nothing more outlandish than the 'latest in avant-garde fashion.'

As Euphemia was friends with a great many dandies, and was one herself, in fact, C.C. usually gave her the benefit of the doubt in such matters; but this time, she'd been sceptical.

One look at Princess Marrybell, however, who wore a flashy gown of scarlet silk and golden thread, and Oldrin Zevon, her Knight of Honour, who dressed herself in an identical colour scheme to Marrybell's and the same style as Euphemia, making her look even more the part of a toreador than Euphemia was able to manage (what with her comparatively lacking athleticism), was more than enough to remind C.C. of just why, exactly, she did not make a habit of second-guessing Euphemia li Britannia when it came to matters of high fashion and haute couture.

"Euphy~!" cried Marrybell, surging towards Euphemia and crashing into her in a crushing embrace as the younger princess emerged onto the dance floor proper.

Euphemia, to her credit, let out little more than a soft grunt at the sudden impact, and made certain that her older half-sister was set properly upon her feet before she did anything else. It was here, and not for the first time, that C.C. cursed the impossibly keen senses that her immortal body granted her, for she could hear, every bit as clearly as if she was standing right beside them, Euphemia pulling away a touch, and whispering to the less notorious of her two lovers, "Marry… Oh, how dearly I have missed you…"

"Me? Or merely my presence in your bed?" Marrybell replied, and C.C. had never wanted to die so keenly as she did the moment when she realised that the pink-haired princesses had started flirting with one another.

"Can it not be both?" Euphemia asked with an arched brow and a rakish smile that C.C. could never manage to stop herself from wondering if Euphemia had learned to use by mimicking Milly. She lifted her sister's head up by the chin, and drew her closer by the waist, their noses brushing up against one another. "And besides, Marry, it's our bed…"

They sealed it, then, with a kiss that, for all its obvious passion, was nonetheless mercifully tame. It was still somewhat mortifying for C.C., being, as she was, very far now from the state of detachment she'd taken great pains to cultivate up until shortly after Marianne disappeared, but at least…

…I spoke too soon… C.C. sighed.

For indeed, Euphemia looked up from her broken kiss with Marrybell, and greeted her other partner with considerably more naked anticipation. "Ozzy…"

Dame Oldrin, Viscountess Zevon didn't waste words: she wasn't a woman prone to such things, and C.C. had always liked that about her. True to her reputation, no sooner had she stepped in and then around Marrybell than did Oldrin seize Euphemia by the waist and kiss her, engulfing the princess's lips with a searing potency that left Euphemia tilted back over her lover's arm in a position of absolute surrender, a conquered maiden and her gallant knight.

When Oldrin broke the kiss at last, Euphemia was flushed and panting, her pupils shot wide. "Have you been a good little princess while we were apart, Euphy~?"

And that was quite enough of that, thank you very much.

With a considerable exertion of effort, C.C. tuned out the reuniting triad and returned her attention to the conversation between Priscilla, Milly, and Friederike; when she did, she found that Friederike and her partner had departed roughly halfway across the floor, where they were conversing with Lloyd and Dr. Croomy, and Milly was looking at C.C. with a knowing look in her eye and a devious smirk upon her lips. It was, as anyone who spent enough time around the duchess eventually came to learn, a deadly combination. Resigned to her fate, C.C. sighed. "What."

"Oh, nothing of any consequence, I assure you," Milly said, but the innocence of her tone betrayed her complete insincerity. She was gloating. "I suppose I just never took you for a voyeur, C.C.; it seems you're as chock-full of surprises as ever…"

"I certainly can be, whenever the mood strikes me," C.C. admitted easily, and without shame. "Less so when I can't avoid it. Tends to put a bit of a damper on the whole experience, truth be told."

Milly threw her head back and laughed. Only when it had died down to chuckles that shook her shoulders did she concede, "Fair enough, fair enough…"

"So, what did I miss?" C.C. asked, tacitly attempting to change the subject.

Milly, being in a good mood, was merciful, and allowed it to go unremarked. "Well, for starters, Friederike, after much urging, has appointed Priscilla to the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs while making ready to hand the Ministry of the Interior off to someone specific. So now there's someone she can delegate the bureaucratic and administrative busywork associated with that title to. Apparently, Marrybell is very adept at twisting arms…"

C.C. made to respond, but no sooner did she open her lips to begin to form the words than did the herald's bellowing voice strike through the air of the ballroom like a clap of thunder. "My lords and ladies, esteemed guests of the House of Ashford! It is my great honour to present to you: Her Royal Highness, Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of the Realm!"

Immediately, a vast majority of the eyes of those in the ballroom swivelled to gaze upon the grand staircase, and into the dense shadows at its top, to observe the procession as the lady of the hour descended to the festivities at last. First came Ser Jeremiah, Margrave Gottwald, Justine's Knight of Honour whose ceremony had coincided with Ad Victoriam's commencement, leading the way in lock step with Dame Villetta Nu, who'd been chosen at the end of her own time at the military academy to serve Justine, both as her retainer and as her aide-de-camp. Both were attired in full dress uniform—polished, knee-high black boots, black breeches with burnished brass buttons and gold trim along the seams, a black tailcoat, single-breasted and worn closed with brass buttons, golden trim on the facings, and golden swirls and vines embroidered into the lapels forming the basis, with slim-fitting supple leather gauntlets covering both their hands and their forearms, golden épaulettes, and different-coloured belted sashes across their abdomens to differentiate them, thus completing their attire. Jeremiah's uniform bore an aiguillette due to his rank, as well as the winged sword pin of a Britannian Knight of Honour, but both had the various medals and accolades they'd won during their time in Indochina on full display, and both carried a basket-hilted sabre hanging from the belt that wrapped around their respective sashes—Jeremiah's royal blue, while Villetta's was tyrian—with matching white cravats wrapped around their necks; and they cut quite the striking portrait as they made their way to the foot of the stairs before anyone else began to descend, taking up straight-backed guarding positions on either side of the elaborately-decorated and sweepingly grandiose balusters.

Next came Euphemia's bodyguard and future Knight of Honour, Mycroft, Lord Darlton, dressed in the uniform of his ascendant house (for which the Darltons could thank Princess Friederike), which, unlike those who boasted a service history among the Imperial Army, lacked tails, giving the outfit a much closer resemblance to old Prussian parade dress than to Britannian officers—black trousers and Hessian boots, with a single-breasted maroon jacket featuring brass buttons, with black facings decorated with gold trim on the cuffs and on the collar, with white gloves on his hands and a cavalry sabre with a decorative tasset at his waist. His auburn hair, which he'd let grow to the point where it brushed against his shoulders, had been tamed and arranged in such a way that it looked comely and well-groomed instead of unkempt and boyish, and though his eyes had lost much of the initial discomfort he'd worn in most avenues of escorting his charge throughout all the different walks of her life, a spark of wariness remained—though C.C. couldn't rightly say she could blame the boy, especially given the identity of the woman who was descending alongside him, her arm laced through the crook of his.

Princess Juliette vi Britannia was a young woman who had, in C.C.'s expert opinion, well and truly come into her own, having gained for herself a reputation of danger that was tempered with the deniability of her actions and designs. No one could figure out exactly what part she'd played in the financial, political and legal ruination of the ne Britannia family, and that was the highest-profile bit of intrigue any one of the Imperial courtiers had even a sliver of just cause to attribute to her; but the rumours abounded, far from the ears of the emperor or his closest supporters, that not only had Juliette vi Britannia masterfully manipulated His Majesty into doing her dirty work for her—so masterfully that none of them could string more than one or two pieces of circumstantial hearsay together in attempting to pin it on her—but also was she continuing to gain allies and ruin her enemies. The fact that Empress Flora mel Britannia's daughter Marrybell openly consorted with Juliette, bringing along with her the House of Zevon and any number of the allies the famously well-connected empress had made over the past few decades, since even before Carine's unmourned death, and especially in its aftermath, allowed Juliette to build up something of a power base, for all that, though it was aided by Justine's graduation at the top of her class, the allegiance of the House of Rochefort by way of its young daughter, Lady Odette, and the much-debated duel that had lost the notorious Vampire of Britannia an eye, Juliette frequently complained it was not nearly as entrenched as she would have liked for it to be. She was known as a dangerous woman in certain circles, and Mycroft was right to be wary of her.

Although, C.C. had to admit, one wouldn't necessarily know that merely by looking at her. She had chosen a more traditional look this evening, C.C. noticed, with a voluminous gown of brocaded gold silk, interspersed with accents and flourishes of teal velvet in the shape of ribbons to accentuate the way that the neckline scooped at the front, exposing the princess's clavicle and a suggestion of cleavage; and for all that the silk brocade of her gold court shoes peeking out from under the hem of her gown, her pagoda sleeves, and the ungathered layered white lace engageante that left her hands free and exposed were both antiquated and a bit out-of-fashion by modern Britannian aristocratic sensibilities, she wore the gown more than well enough to perhaps provoke a revival of them at court. In another departure from her normal style, it seemed she'd trimmed her hair quite substantially for the occasion, with the ends of the wavy light brown/dirty blonde locks sitting quite comfortably just past her shoulders, her ears adorned with gold earrings housing a pair of substantially-sized and immaculately-cut sapphires; but despite it all, her polite smile, for all that it retained her characteristic slight edge of mischief, as though consistently amused by a private joke, was the same as ever, as though her appearance was only appropriate for her elder sister's sixteenth birthday.

When those two reached the foot of the stairs, parting ways at the end of their task, two final figures emerged from the shadows; and while both of the young women were certainly beautiful in their own way, only one of them could truly be said to be breathtaking.

Justine vi Britannia glided along the steps as though she had draped the fabric of the very night sky across her body, as though that was the only material fine enough to be worthy of her. The black silk gown was at once sheer and opaque, equal parts voluminous and flowing; it possessed no true neckline, rising up only to the upper third of the pale swell of her chest, with a mantle that was decorated across the shoulders with the feathers of a raven mitigating the otherwise lurid image with long cape-sleeves that complemented her elbow-length black silk opera gloves splendidly. Her silken hair was bound up only partially into a bun, with the rest of the raven curtain left to frame and shade the striking, stark beauty of her face, an allure that had only grown more pronounced and more transparently wicked over the years. The black eye-stain she'd applied to her eyelids only accentuated the effect of her strong, dark brow, making the amethyst of her eyes stand out even more than normal, with the thickness of her eyelashes all but negating the need for eyeliner; and upon her lips, she'd painted an eye-catching dark shade of plum-hued lipstick that seemed deliberately chosen to draw attention to their haughty fullness, a natural pout that she'd only further grown into over the course of her adolescence thus far.

C.C. had, in retrospect, been sceptical when Milly had boasted initially about how easily her bride would sweep the floors with her competition; and only now that she was almost powerless to do anything but stare at her graceful procession, even as the silver-and-ruby earrings she wore caught the light at last and dazzled onlookers out of the spell in which she'd ensnared them all for a few moments, did the French immortal at last comprehend the depths of her folly.

Once Justine reached the floor herself, the heretofore-unnoticed Suzaku following just a bit behind her, her lips curled into a fiendishly captivating smile as she swept her gaze across the floor. She tilted her chin up a bit, then, letting the serpentine silver and glittering ruby of her collar catch the light, and began to address her guests.

"Friends, Britannians, countrymen, I pray you lend me your ears for but a moment," she began, her voice rich and musical and enthralling. "Much-awaited has been this day, and the day that is soon to follow in its wake; each of you who has been invited here tonight, I or my beloved fiancée have chosen, our dear friends, comrades, and family, to share in the joy of that day with us. Long have I wished to be married; yet a wedding requires a witness, does it not? And I, for one, can think of no finer witness than those of you who have come here—some of you despite great hardship—to celebrate this, my sixteenth birthday. Thank you all for being here with us; and, if it isn't too dreadfully impertinent of me, I bid you welcome to this house. Now, eat and drink your fill. Let there be much imbibing, much carousing, and perhaps most importantly of all, let there be much dancing~!"

---

It didn't take long for the ball to begin in earnest, the strings ensemble that was situated upon a dais of their own off in a corner of the grand ballroom eagerly awaiting the command of the lady of the house to begin playing; and without further ado, they got whatever signal they were waiting for, the violinist starting up a lilting, bouncing melody that Justine recognised almost immediately. She gaped in surprise, but it was not her fate to linger in her shock for very long, it seemed, for before she could take another breath, there in front of her stood the love of her life, the woman who would make the princess her wife before the month was out.

"May I have this dance, my love?" Milly asked with a bow, the arch of her golden brow making it clear that she knew exactly what the answer would be.

"Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 3 in F Major… Darling," Justine gasped, making certain not to forget to extend her hand even through it all. "You remembered…"

"Of course I remembered, my love," Milly replied, her lips twitching into a bemused smirk as she took hold of Justine's offered hand. "Have I ever even once forgotten something you've told me?"

"I suppose not," Justine conceded with a breathless smile. "But I expect I shall always be taken aback by it. And perhaps it is for the best: after all, I can scarcely conceive of a greater folly than taking you for granted~."

Milly chortled in that peculiar way of hers even as her mouth broadened from a smirk to a full grin, which meant that she thought Justine was being rather silly indeed about something or other, but somehow found it endearing nonetheless. She slipped her other hand around to the small of Justine's back, and pulled the princess flush against her, chest to chest and nose to nose, before leaning in to press her lips to Justine's in a searing, hungry kiss, lust and affection twisting upon each other into a Gordian skein. When they broke at last, Justine realised that Milly had manoeuvred them onto the dance floor as couples began to form and join into the act. Their lips were still practically moving against each other when Milly murmured to her, "Happy birthday, my Justine…"

Justine knew she was grinning like a madwoman, but in that moment, of all moments, she found she didn't rightly care. "I believe you promised me there would be dancing? I know you meant the wedding, of course, but…it can't hurt to take a little taste before it all, can it?"

No more words were needed as they smiled to one another once again, and it was as though they no longer felt the planet's pull upon them with how they glode upon the marble floor, even as more and more couples, both long-standing and hastily-assembled, swept into the dance, swirling about each other very sprightly indeed beneath the warm light of the hanging chandelier. And though Justine didn't know why they'd started giggling to each other, neither did she care who'd done so first: the day she'd looked forward to felt real for perhaps the first time, and she felt so deliriously happy all of a sudden that she couldn't bear to keep it contained for even an instant.

They flowed from one movement to the next, so wrapped up in one another that it was as though no one else existed, their eyes locked together so intensely that Justine was actually feeling more than a little intoxicated by all of it. She recalled reading that it only took a short span of time staring into another's eyes to fall hopelessly in love with them (the specific span of time was a matter of some debate, apparently); and she had an errant wonder of what it would do to two people who were, like the two of them, already wholly devoted to one another.

"What is that wonderful mind of yours thinking of, I wonder?" Milly asked her suddenly. "Will you tell me, my Justine?"

A shiver ran through her entire body at the way her fiancée's voice caressed the endearment. Milly and her open acts of possession never failed to twist Justine's insides into knots, and each time was just as exhilarating as the first. "You know how they say that it only takes five minutes of sustained eye contact to fall in love with someone?"

"I'm familiar with the adage," Milly chuckled, twirling her as the latest movement hit a flourish.

Justine didn't speak her words to the open air; she waited for their bodies to intertwine, their heat to commingle with one another anew, before she murmured back, "I was wondering what it would do to us…"

Milly let out a strained sound, half-purr and half-growl; it sent another chill through Justine, one of the rare reminders that she could unravel Milly's composure just as easily as her fiancée could hers. It was a heady rush, and in that moment, Justine became aware that something needed to be done. "You, my love,are a temptation…"

"It would be unwise of us to escape to the bedroom now," Justine cautioned in a hurried whisper, though it would be a lie to say she wasn't feeling her blood racing through her veins, too. She had no doubt that her pupils were fairly dilated already. "This is ourevent, and we don't want to be poor hosts ahead of the wedding…"

Justine could see the moment that Milly understood the truth of her warning words; the music in the background began to wind down, and as it came to a close, though it pained them both, they released each other for the moment, stepping apart. Under the influence of a peculiar rush of guilt, feeling as though she had just denied Milly something, Justine took a moment to think of a proper solution. After a moment, she settled on saying, "And besides, darling, don't you have people for me to meet?"

Milly sighed heavily. "Very well…"

"I'll be sure to make it up to you later," Justine added, to sweeten the deal.

The blonde cocked a brow. "Are you certain, my love? I can assure you, I'm not feeling particularly merciful…"

Justine felt yet another shiver, a vibration echoing through her blood; but she cocked a brow of her own, and smirked at her fiancée with a saucy wink and a playful chuckle. "Darling, you really should know better than to threaten me with a good time by now~."

---

Kallen Kōzuki-Stadtfeld hated to admit it—and indeed, the sort of person she'd been two years ago would rather have died than even entertain the possibility—but her first time at a swanky Britannian high-society party wasn't turning out to be completely intolerable, not by a long shot.

It had been quite a surprise to all of them when the president, Milly, tore into the Student Council clubroom on some kind of warpath two months ago, only to then invite them all, Shirley, Rivalz, Nina, and Kallen herself, to her upcoming wedding to a princess of the realm; and it was a shock to Kallen personally to discover that she was doubly expected to attend, seeing as the House of Stadtfeld was also a vassal of the House of Ashford (which technically made Milly her liege lady, she supposed, as terrifying as that thought was). Her stepmother was firmly ordered (by Milly's direct intervention, no less) to stay out of it, and so she had been left along with Naoto to prepare to travel to the Ashford Estate to represent their house. It was with a great degree of embarrassment, then, that it took Kallen so long to realise that the Student Council was perhaps the closest thing Milly Ashford had to a friend group of contemporaries, and that perhaps that had played a role in the four of them being invited to be transported here to the Homeland at no personal expense.

But now, here she was, attired in a sleeveless, voluminous crimson silk gown and a matching pair of elbow-length opera gloves, her hair allowed to hang naturally in its lengthened bob cut, her fingers wrapped around the stem of a fluted crystal glass of sparkling wine while she alternated between chatting with her similarly dressed-up school/work friends and her hovering brother (who was entirely too happy to use his position as technically her escort to ward off all the unwanted female, and a good bit of the male, attention that he was getting, seemingly by virtue of being him), and to her immense surprise, not really feeling all that much out of place among the well-dressed assemblage of well-to-do people. Kallen had come here expecting this to be a miserable experience—and if she was being completely honest with herself, the fact that it wasn't was really starting to throw her for a bit of a loop.

Then the time came for the procession, and just like that, Kallen was by no means the only one left at a complete loss.

If there were indeed words to describe the raven-haired princess Milly was engaged to, Kallen knew exactly zero of them; by the kami, the girl wasn't even Kallen's type, necessarily (honestly, she was much more personally appreciative of the brunette in the gold dress), but laying eyes upon Justine vi Britannia for the first time finally made it click in the redhead's mind, answering for her at long last the question of how, exactly,the president (and their boss) could be so eager to see an arranged marriage, of all things, through. Even though Kallen wasn't personally much of a fan of the whole 'gothic femme fatale' aesthetic that the princess had going for her, it suddenly made total sense how Milly could be so psyched for something that Kallen could not imagine reacting to with anything but dread. Even the princess's voice was beautiful beyond words, and for a moment, Kallen wrestled with a peculiar spike of envy, that it wasn't fair that this girl seemed to have it all. Thankfully, the sensation passed on its own in mere moments, but Kallen couldn't help but feel a bit humbled by it all nonetheless.

Though Kallen also had to admit that it was really cute, if not more than a little sickening, to see how all over each other the betrothed couple became within mere seconds of the music starting up.

"So, that's Princess Justine?" Shirley asked, her voice every bit as acutely mystified at the fact that such a gorgeous creature could exist as they all felt.

"Indeed," Nina remarked flatly, leaning with her back against the column near where they were all conversing with each other. "Which means the girl who descended before her has to be Princess Juliette by process of elimination—since I honestly can't imagine the one who brought up the rear being anyone other than Kururugi Suzaku…"

"The girl with the gold dress, you mean?" Kallen asked with a faint pang of dismay. "Like, the one with the sleeves?"

Nina nodded sagely. "Princess Justine's younger sister, and her only full sibling, yes."

Damn it, Kallen swore internally.

"What, were you hoping to charm her, Stadtfeld?" Nina teased with a slightly vicious edge of biting sarcasm. "You've set your sights very high indeed, I'll give you that."

Okay, so perhaps that wasn't quite as internal as I'd hoped, conceded the redhead.

"You know, I hear the Lancelot's being developed and tuned according to Kururugi's piloting data," Rivalz began, his face adopting an uncharacteristic expression of appraisal as he spoke.

"Really?!" Shirley gasped, a hand flying to her clavicle, which her gown left exposed. "I can barely get that thing to move…"

"Kallen, out of the four of us, you're the only one who can get any useful data out of the Lancelot," said Rivalz, eyeing her speculatively. "So that makes you probably the only person who can parse what that might mean…"

Kallen considered the new information for a moment: while it was true that the Z-01 Lancelot was prohibitively high-spec in many ways, the fact that she'd been able to somewhat come to grips with it, she imagined, rather took a lot of the astonishment out of the idea that it hadn't been some fantastical ideal that Lloyd Asplund's questionably-sane imagination had constructed from whole cloth that formed the basis of the benchmark for the prototype Knightmare's performance, but rather the combat capabilities of a living human being. That said, there was no denying what she said next: "If that's true…"

"It is," Nina interrupted abruptly. "I should know. I had to build the simulations based on that same combat data, after all."

"…" Kallen didn't gratify that with a response, having devised for the sake of her own sanity and its retention a method of dealing with Nina Einstein whenever she was being particularly abrasive.

To her credit, it didn't take the child prodigy very long at all to recognise her error. "That was rude of me, wasn't it?"

"A little bit," Rivalz said mildly, nodding.

"In that case, my apologies," Nina sighed, shaking her head as though she was trying to clear it. "My initial point stands, however—the physical media upon which the data was recorded had been labelled very clearly by the time it found its way onto my desk. It was very much demonstrably collected from a Knightmare Frame that was piloted by Kururugi Suzaku, for use in the calibrating of the Lancelot."

"Be that as it may," Kallen began again, her tone much more firm this time. "It means that she's at a level beyond that of most, if not all, of the current Knights of the Round—at least based on the difficulty of the simulations I've been through that were designed based on their combat telemetry. Even if the data we got on the Rounds was incomplete or downplayed their skill by a substantial margin, Kururugi Suzaku would still be among the ranks of the most dangerously proficient devicers in the entire world. Now, granted, I don't have all that much in the way of actual combat experience; but still, I'd be very surprised if there were more than a few dozen living pilots who could measure up to her."

"…Well, my cousin Julian went to the same school as her, though he was taking classes on the adult campus," said Rivalz, propping a hand upon his chin as he considered his words. "According to him, it was actually her that cut Lord Bradley's eye out. So I guess I can believe it pretty easily."

"Well then," Shirley huffed, her chest swelling in a manner that Kallen had quickly began to link in her mind to the spectacle of her fellow redhead putting on airs. "At least now we know there's no longer any cause for any of us to feel ashamed of our not being able to properly operate that…that over-designed monstrosity…"

"None of us were feeling ashamed of anything," Nina fired back. "You, Fenette,are just a singularly poor loser…"

Shirley whirled about and rounded on the shorter black-haired waif, scandalised. "How dare—!"

"Dear me, what a lively group of friends you've brought," came a musical voice from behind all of them, a smooth and chiding mezzo-soprano, with a powerful and full-bodied quality about it that made it unmistakable. "Won't you introduce me, darling?"

Abruptly, Kallen felt her entire body freeze upon itself, and she saw the same reaction mirrored in both Rivalz and Shirley, with Nina staring past them, as though thoroughly arrested by what she was able to behold. After a moment of hesitation, then, Kallen pivoted on her heel, and she turned, in the process coming face-to-face with none other than Princess Justine vi Britannia, who was currently all but hanging off of Milly's arm. And yet, despite her otherwise fawning pose, it was immediately clear that she wasn't a groupie or anything of the sort; for now that she was up close, Kallen couldn't possibly miss the glittering intellect sparkling in the princess's amethyst eyes, nor the coquettish smirk upon her full, haughty lips. To Kallen, she imagined the moment wasn't entirely unlike lingering under the curious and assessing stare of a dragon from out of those fantasy novels Naoto pretended not to have a stash of to this day. It was unsettling in a way, because the princess's gaze felt like it was piercing right through her flesh and bone to peer upon Kallen's very soul as it flicked up and down her outfit, leaving her feeling acutely exposed on some deeply existential level; but it was quick, mercifully enough, and it ended almost as quickly as it began.

"Of course, my love," Milly replied, and Kallen couldn't help but think that it was really fucking weird to hear the Mythic Bitch of Ashford Academy speaking with such softness and affection in her voice, let alone how her eyes seemed almost to be drinking in the woman in black on her arm. "This is Kallen Kōzuki-Stadtfeld, Count Stephen's heiress and scion of the House of Stadtfeld. Our newest acquisition, and the designated test pilot for the Lancelot."

"Is that so? Very impressive indeed, Viscountess Stadtfeld," the princess complimented, her tone as even and as polite as her voice was rich and every bit as silky as her long, lustrous raven hair. "Friend and colleague though Lloyd Asplund may be, he can be, shall we say, rather difficult to deal with, even when he doesn't feel like he has something to prove. I certainly do not envy you—neither you nor your position, for that matter; though, I'm sure that if you've lasted this long, you're likely more than equal to the task…"

"I-I'm honoured, your highness," Kallen managed to reply with a hastened, clumsy curtsey, hating how borderline-panicked she felt right at that moment.

"None of that, if you please," the princess chided softly. "Any friend of Milly's is a friend of mine. There's really no need to be so tense—I'm hardly the type of woman to order your head off your shoulders for what amounts to a minor breach of etiquette, after all. That's more Guinevere's past-time, and you may rest assured that there is no love lost between myself and her."

"As you wish…Justine," sighed the redhead, forcing her shoulders to relax in a herculean exertion of control.

The princess brought her free hand up to her lips, and giggled into the back of her black glove. "My, but you are a spirited one, aren't you? Jumping directly to eschewing our titles like that… How delightfully bold of you, Heiress Stadtfeld. Bravo, indeed~."

"Wait, you and Lloyd know each other, Princess Justine?" asked Kallen, more than a little shocked at the revelation, but not enough to miss the subtle hint the princess had given along with her chiding.

Milly grinned, sincerely, for the first time in all the time that Kallen had known the duchess. "Why, Kallen, who on earth do you think found Lloyd and Doctor Croomy in the first place?"

"I ran across Lloyd when he was a guest lecturer for my Mechanical and Applied Sciences class at Ad Victoriam," the princess elaborated. "Back then, the Core Luminous was little more than a few lines of sparse experimental data from the early stages of research stuffed into a portfolio alongside projections and equations and conceptual blueprints that had little to no empirical backing to support them. I ran across him and Doctor Croomy later that very day, in a café Suzaku and I frequented whenever we had time off, and I decided to hear him out. Needless to say, I saw quite a bit of potential in what his projections promised, and I offered to gamble on his ability to deliver on those promises right then and there. The rest, as they say, is history. C'est la vie."

"Wait a moment," Nina interjected hurriedly. "Your highness, are you saying that you got to see not just the experimental data, but the actual early concept diagrams of the Core Luminous?!"

"I did indeed," Princess Justine nodded with a bemused half-smile. "I was only able to skim them, though."

"Your highness is entirely too humble," came the unmistakable sing-song tenor of Lloyd Asplund, who had somehow managed to sneak up behind them. But Kallen, much like her fellow Student Council members, had long since grown used to the eccentric scientist's paradoxical stealth, and as such, had been on some level expecting him to pop in at some point, so neither the redhead nor her friends were able to say that they were particularly shocked by his appearance, nor by its suddenness. Kallen turned to face the man with his large glasses and his speculative Cheshire smirk, and caught sight of Doctor Croomy's apologetic shrug in the immediate background, as expected. "It might well have taken me at least another year to work out how to achieve Yggdrasil Resonance if not for you."

"Nonsense, Lloyd," the princess deflected, the half-smile softening and growing a bit kinder for it in the process. "I'm certain you would have made a breakthrough within the next six months or so. You're giving yourself entirely too little credit."

"Thank Providence that we shan't ever come to know which of our suppositions is correct on that score, your highness," Lloyd said good-naturedly.

"Lloyd, are you implying that Princess Justine had a direct hand in the development of the Core Luminous?" asked Nina, and Kallen was for a moment genuinely worried that the bespectacled waif's eyes were in real danger of popping out of her skull with how wide they had grown.

"More than that, Nina," Lloyd scoffed. "Her highness here was ultimately the one who worked out the successful method for achieving Yggdrasil Resonance."

"Lloyd, I really must protest," the princess giggled, seeming almost overwhelmed, and perhaps a touch flustered,by the credit she was being given—by Lloyd Asplund, of all people. "You're making my involvement out to be much more glamorous than it actually was. It was you all who managed to get all the heavy lifting done. I merely gave you a nudge in the correct direction at the very end, that's all."

The pair continued speaking with intermittent interruptions from a star-struck Nina, and while Milly was content to hang back and smile, half-smug, half-proud, and Rivalz and Shirley were both very much nonplussed by the bizarre situation of Wilhelmina Einstein of all people going through what amounted to a fangirl moment as the princess and the scientist alternated between talking shop and trying their best to out-humble each other in what might well have been the most bizarre display of one-upmanship Kallen had ever borne witness to (and she chose to hang out with yakuza until recently), for the redheaded heiress's part, she found herself tuning out their conversation around when they got to talking about hadron particles and something called 'sakuradite oscillation'—granted, that was partly because while Nina seemed torn between eating it up and cursing herself for not having thought to bring a notebook and pen, all of this nitty-gritty science talk was starting to go way above Kallen's head; but a larger part of her found her attention diverted by the girl in the golden dress she'd had her eye on earlier, who was conversing quietly with the brunette they had collectively decided could only have been Kururugi Suzaku (who was dressed as though she'd stepped off of the set of a jidaigeki) before breaking apart from the taller girl and making her way over to where the lot of them were assembled and talking.

She stepped gracefully, Kallen noticed as she stood there, transfixed; it was not as effortless a grace as her raven-haired sister, who moved as though she was not fully tethered to the ground, but it was the step of a woman in total control of herself all the same, which Kallen couldn't help but see as the noticeably more attractive option—not the least of which because she found Her Royal Highness Princess Justine to be similar to her fiancée, Milly, in that she was actually pretty fucking scary. The girl whom Kallen had been informed was Princess Juliette was gorgeous up close, in a way that was softer than her sister, less vicious and commanding in its allure, and as a result, she seemed infinitely more approachable—for all that Juliette vi Britannia was, as a princess of the realm in her own right, almost as far out of Kallen's league as the lady of the hour was—and as the younger of the two princesses drew closer to the assemblage, Kallen was acutely aware of the fact that she was all but smitten, practically at first sight, and that it might well be her ruin.

"Justine," said Princess Juliette, and Kallen noticed that her voice was much like her sister's, for all that it lacked that same musical, sireen quality that made the elder princess's tones seem very distinctly otherworldly. "If I may interject, dear sister, I daresay you and Earl Asplund will have plenty of time to talk in person over the course of the next week; but your own guests might grow to feel neglected, should you choose to linger for much longer."

Princess Justine was brought up short, then, blinking in a strangely owlish fashion, before turning to her younger sister and nodding. She sighed. "You're correct, of course. I regret that I must call a premature end to our conversation, Lloyd, stimulating as it is, but…"

"No, no, do as you must, your highness, by all means," Lloyd refused quickly. "I was just beginning to feel Cécile glaring holes into my back anyways. It seems that we both have duties to attend to."

"Indeed we have," Princess Justine replied. "We'll continue later, but I believe I might have just the thing to provide the solution to our little scattering problem. And to you of Ashford Academy and Annwn, it was assuredly brilliant to make your acquaintance, all of you, but I'm afraid that my dearest fiancée and I really do have other appointments we should be seeing to; Juliette, dear sister, would you be so kind?"

The expression upon the younger princess's face, then, was one of profound yet fond exasperation. "I would be only too happy to take your place here, Justine. Please, go and see to your school friends. I'm certain they've missed you terribly."

Princess Justine smiled at the four of them, then, and swept into a curtsey so immaculate that Kallen could not possibly imagine that any girl of noble birth who had been forced for years of their lives to practise that very same gesture through stupid drill after stupid drill, over and over again, would be able to look upon it without feeling even the slightest stirrings of envy. "If you would excuse us…"

"And that's enough from you, too, Lloyd," came the familiar chiding voice of Doctor Croomy, who, in her well-worn ire at her friend, had apparently (thankfully) temporarily given up on her disastrous attempts at flirting with Naoto—which Kallen had gradually come to find more hilarious than disgusting, a realisation that, as it happened, renewed her disgust all over again—in favour of coming up behind her eccentric genius and train-wreck of a colleague and dragging the man away by his earlobe, much to his vocal protests. "You kids have fun, though!"

Milly and Princess Justine were gone when Kallen returned her attention to them, after watching the two project leads at Annwn retreat into the middle distance, and once all four of them drew away to positions that were safely out of earshot, Princess Julitte heaved a heavy sigh of relief, fixing their gathering with an apologetic expression that did reach her eyes, for all that Kallen was suddenly given to wonder, by virtue of some primal impulse, how far beneath the surface the sentiment truly extended. "My condolences to each of you; I love my sister dearly, but social graces do not come naturally to her, and I find that all too often does her passion for her work supersede what few civilities she has managed to learn over the years."

"Not at all, your highness," Nina replied first, sullen at the interruption and not bothering to hide it.

"Princess Justine was really quite charming," Shirley gushed a little too enthusiastically, just a bit more overt about her intention to cover for Nina's lack of tact by playing up her bubbly disposition than she really should have been.

"Yes, I'm certain she was," Princess Juliette sighed, with a smile that was both genuine and slightly wan playing upon her cute lips—neither as luscious, nor as haughty as her sister's, nor even as full, but still eminently kissable in their own respect. "That is her way, after all: to wield her natural gifts of charm and charisma as if they were brute force. Incidentally, I'm glad that I have the chance to finally meet you both, Miss Einstein, Miss Fenette. Milly speaks quite highly of you. I've also heard of you, Mister Cardemonde, and your father. You do good work. My dear sister's faithful retainer, Dame Villetta, also spoke well of your cousin, as it happens. She is inclined to take a personal interest in his career, whensoever she gains the resources to do so. Rest assured, she'll ensure that he goes far—provided, of course, that he does not want for mettle.

"As for you, Heiress Stadtfeld—" and then Princess Juliette's eyes flicked to Kallen at last, looking her up and down, and if Kallen didn't know any better, she'd have guessed that the princess found the sight of her to be just as arresting as she did Her Highness. "But my, you are stunning, aren't you? I'd thought that Milly surely had to be exaggerating when she spoke of you, but now I must concede that, if anything, her accounts do you very little justice indeed…"

Kallen felt her cheeks heating up at being so openly praised, but the very next moment, the princess seemed to realise what she'd just said aloud, and blanched a fair bit, which emboldened the redhead a great deal. "Thank you, your highness. And if it isn't too bold or improper of me to say so, you're looking pretty good yourself…"

"It is impertinent—rather dreadfully so, in fact," replied Princess Juliette, faking a cough behind her hand and turning away to conceal the redness in her own cheeks, though obviously to limited effect. "But I, like my sister, am inclined to allow it."

And then, in a moment that the Stadtfeld heiress would, upon later recollection, consider to be nothing short of miraculous, Rivalz Cardemonde learned to read the room. "Uh, yeah, if it's alright with you, your highness, Shirley, Nina, and I were gonna go over there for a while, and…maybe get to know the other guests a bit, y'know? Socialise a little."

"We were?" Shirley asked, but Nina, ever quick on the uptake, elbowed her in the kidney, prompting the other redhead to attempt to disguise her pained grimace as a smile. "Oh, yes, we were! If you'll excuse us, your highness…"

Mercifully, Princess Juliette didn't seem to notice the little by-play, looking up at them as though she had just been brought forth from some haze of distraction or other. "Hmm? Oh, certainly! That's more than fine! Go mingle, join in the dancing, and make merry!"

"You have our thanks, your highness," Nina replied, attempting at a curtsey of her own before she joined Rivalz in working together to more or less drag Shirley away from the princess and the heiress.

A beat of silence followed their departure, and the reality dawned on her, then, that her friends had just left Kallen alone with a princess of the realm. And to make matters worse, it was the one that she was ever so slightly massively, disastrously attracted to right now.

The silence stretched on between the two of them, then; neither wanted to leave the other's presence right at that moment, of course, but neither of them seemed to want to make the first move, either. It was just when it was beginning to get awkward, after a few aborted attempts at conversation that ended before a word was spoken between either of them, that Kallen gathered her courage, and wagered a beheading on the headlong risk of taking the lead. She pictured how her older brother, Naoto, who looked like a male idol and was undeniably both a magnet for women and living, breathing fujoshi-bait as a result, as much as the thought of it might have disgusted her, would have handled this very situation, and did her best to mime a princely mien as she curtseyed before Princess Juliette with as much assertion and confidence as she could manage. "Would you like to dance with me, your highness?"

Princess Juliette stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed and stunned, her cheeks growing flushed all over again; but she nodded all the same, putting her hand into Kallen's offered one. "I… I mean, yes, c-certainly, Heiress Stadtfeld. I'm sure I'd love to."

The touch of hand-in-hand, even through Kallen's glove, was electric, and it galvanised her; she moved with a surety she hadn't known herself to possess outside of a fight, as though she'd repeated these very motions a hundred—a thousand times, even, until she could reproduce them by rote, stepping close to her partner and drawing their bodies together, her hand on the princess's waist as she guided them into the whirling crowd of dancers, leading them into their own dance as one piece's final notes faded, giving way to herald the beginnings of another.

Kallen grinned broadly, her breathing light and unburdened, the joy of the moment a brilliant spark in her racing blood, potent and feverish, practically delirious. "Just follow my lead, princess…"