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.

24. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

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

The circumstances of her fateful meeting with Milly the Mythic Bitch aside, it was by no means a common occurrence for Kallen to awaken to surroundings that she didn't on some level recognise. This time, it was not only the ceiling, nor the walls adjacent to that ceiling, but also the very texture of the surface upon which she was laid upon opening her eyes to greet the morning that felt immediately alien to her.

Of course, she knew enough to know that she was in someone's bed, but the mattress was luxurious and plush and lavish beyond what she was accustomed to even in her father's house—and while there were many choice things she could and did say about her lord father, even now after they'd managed to achieve some degree of reconciliation and rapprochement with one another, largely at her mother's unusually firm insistence, she would never accuse Stephen Stadtfeld of being a man of modest means. Neither she nor her brother had ever wanted for physical comforts while they resided at the Stadtfeld Manse, in the Britannian Quarter of the Tokyo Settlement; and yet the bed she was currently laid upon, with its silken sheets and its soft yet voluminous pillows, made her bedroom in Tokyo seem practically Dickensian by comparison.

She became aware of her nudity shortly thereafter.

That's really strange… Kallen reflected to herself, somewhat perturbed by that detail. I don't usually sleep in the buff… So what could have possessed me…

Then she registered the shifting of a body next to her, the brush of supple, pale skin against her own sending flashes of recollection through her mind with all the abrupt force of a hollow-point round. The heat and the sweat, the ardour and the passion, the sounds that even now sent a shiver down her spine… To call it a pleasant memory to wake up to was to commit to lying by understatement, an experience so enormous in its euphoria that it was all Kallen could do to articulate the truth of what had happened to herself.

By the kami, I just fucked a princess…

It was an impulse that seized her then, the sudden and arresting need to turn and watch as her first proper sexual partner slept in the early morning light, and she heeded it without even thinking of hesitating. It occurred to her, then, as she gazed upon Princess Juliette in repose, that she was just as beautiful like this, too, for all that it was in a completely different way. Her swollen lips were slightly parted, her light brown hair (she'd checked) splayed around her head like a halo, her eyes closed and her lush eyelashes fluttering about, giving a glimpse into a mind still caught in the grips of a dream. Her generous chest heaved with the deep breaths of sleep, and Kallen let her gaze track down the slope of the princess's slender, yet deceptively gifted nude form, covered though it was with scattered (and likely soiled, Kallen would imagine, given all she could recall of what they'd gotten up to) sheets. She looked strangely innocent at rest like this, as if she could have become an entirely different person in another life, someone who would have been practically unrecognisable as the work of art that lay before her now, and while Kallen found this contrast fascinating, certainly, the pleasant tingle she still felt echoes of across her skin only reaffirmed her conclusion: that she rather preferred the version of Princess Juliette she'd 'known in the biblical sense,' as one of Naoto's male friends might have put it.

…Now that she thought about it, that was practically indecipherable as a euphemism, wasn't it? It wasn't as though she'd ever read the Bible herself, and try as she might to wrack her brain, she didn't think she knew of anyone who actually had read it…

The stirring of Princess Juliette's body beside her sharply drew her attention from her idle thoughts and back to the moment at hand, and the impromptu chorus of semi-somnolent groans and grumbles that Kallen honestly couldn't help but find fucking adorable that accompanied the shifting secured it there. The princess reached out with a lurching arm that swung itself around Kallen's body, grabbing her by the waist and dragging her in closer, which planted the princess's face directly into Kallen's own impressive bust in the process. Try as she might, Kallen couldn't manage to fully suppress her mirth at the situation, her chest shaking in silent laughter and jostling Princess Juliette's head very slightly in the process.

Grumbling at the movement, the princess tightened her grip and turned her head to burrow her face directly into the same cleavage she'd just nuzzled up against the moment before, pressing her nose against Kallen's sternum in the process, which only made the redhead laugh harder. So, the princess is a cuddler…

Unfortunately, this was enough to bring the princess close enough to disgruntled consciousness that she made it the rest of the way on her own, the muscles in her jaw working against Kallen's flesh while she felt the flutter of her brunette partner's eyelashes against her skin as she drowsily roused herself awake. It took Princess Juliette a moment to piece together her situation, and Kallen found it fascinating to watch the gears of her mind beginning to turn in real time, before cognition sparked fully and the entire mechanism, as well as her body, instantaneously froze in place.

Now, of course, Kallen found this just as hilarious as the rest of the sleeping beauty's behaviour, but she liked to think that she possessed enough decency to feel slightly guilty about that fact; regardless of whatever her motivations may or may not have been for what she did next, however, she took the initiative then just as she had on the dance floor, and moved to wrap her own arms around the princess in an attempt at a comforting gesture. This hadn't been what she'd expected to have happen to her when she'd agreed to travel to the Homeland for the sake of attending Milly's royal wedding, of course, but now that it was here, she didn't think she could find it in herself to regret what had transpired, for all that she had no right idea of what she was going to do next, of how she was meant to move forward from this spur-of-the-moment event that she'd gotten herself wrapped up in.

"Good morning, princess," Kallen bade the girl, hoping on some level that her voice would help her bedmate relax. "Did you sleep well?"

"Reasonably so," said Princess Juliette, her voice tight and her posture just as tense as it had been.

Kallen sighed heavily. It seemed she'd have to disarm this land mine of a situation manually; and in such situations, it was often better for one to rip the bandage off in one swift pull. "So, then…where do we go from here, exactly? This might come as some surprise, but I'm not exactly experienced with this sort of situation…"

"…Nor I, for that matter," Princess Juliette confessed ruefully.

"Oh?" Kallen prompted, unable to help the impulse to tease just a little—Milly did it so often that it would be a lie to say that the redhead wasn't at least somewhat curious to see what all the fuss was about. "So you're saying that I was your first, your highness?"

That provoked a full-body flinch. "Please don't call me that. Not right now… Not even as a joke…"

"Alright," Kallen said, keeping her tone light and trying her best not to feel as if someone had just slapped her across the face. "…I promise I won't be offended if you…well, you know, if you regret it, or something…"

Princess Juliette pulled herself away from Kallen and glared at her as though she'd just insulted the princess's intelligence. "Don't be ridiculous. One, that's not a promise you have any way to keep, and the fact that you seem to think I am gullible enough that your paltry attempts to conceal that will be enough to deceive me is incredibly insulting, and two, I'm already in for a lecture of a lifetime because of this, I don't need to bring my sister's ire down upon my head by lying, to you or to myself, about how I feel about what we did last night…"

…Alright, then; cautious optimism it is… Kallen thought, adjusting her position against the mattress in the process. "So…you don't regret it…"

"Perplexing as it is for reasons that have nothing to do with you, no," Princess Juliette conceded, as she sat up in the bed, with her back flush against the decoratively-carved wooden headboard. "I don't think I could manage that if I tried. Just… I… Where we go from here, I just…"

"Hey, it's not like I need an answer right the fuck now," offered the redhead, reaching up and laying a hand upon the fair-skinned shoulder closest to her. "If your not thinking that last night was a mistake is the best that you can offer me for the time being, I'll take it."

The princess took a heavy breath, and it shuddered through her shoulders as it heaved its way out of her bare chest. "I… Thank you. This is just…all very new, and I'm… I have some very conflicted feelings to sort through right now, and I can promise you once again that none of them really have anything to do with you, specifically… But you were wonderful. I don't want you to think that you weren't."

"You weren't so bad yourself, Princess Juliette," Kallen shot back, smiling through the warm flush she felt spreading across her cheeks.

"…Juliette," the princess said, her voice a little shaky, but unmistakably firm. "If, and I do mean if, we mean to be much of anything to each other after this, then we have to be past titles—at the very least in private, when it's just the two of us…"

Kallen nodded; that was a simple enough request. "I can roll with that. I mean, so long as you call me 'Kallen' in return."

Juliette giggled, then, catching it on the back of her hand before noticing what she'd just done, and seeming somehow surprised with herself because of it. "I daresay that won't be too much of an imposition. It's not exactly a commoner's name, you know—Kallen. I could get used to it…"

"Glad to hear it," said the redhead with a half-smile. "So, let me rephrase my question from earlier: in a more immediate, literal, and practical sense, where do we go from here?"

"Where we go from here, in a literal sense, is that you will need to gather up your clothes from last night and make your way back to your own room before people start getting up and moving in earnest," the brunette instructed, her brow furrowing in consideration. "Until I've had enough time to sort things out, I'd appreciate your discretion with this. For the time being."

Kallen nodded slowly. It wasn't ideal, certainly, and if she'd been the version of herself that she had been a year ago, then she didn't think she'd be able to avoid feeling acutely offended by the request, and maybe even a little hurt at the prospect of being her first partner's dirty little secret. But hanging out around Milly had necessitated she do a lot of growing up and take a few crash courses on just how high the stakes could be amongst the upper echelons of Britannian high society; and as such, she knew that there were very few ways to sleep with a princess of the realm and then have the luxury of ideal situations. "Alright. We'll play it quiet, just for now."

"Just… Just let me talk to my sister," Juliette sighed in resignation, running a hand through her light brown hair. "She and Milly have been all over each other practically since Day One of their betrothal. She might have some idea of how to get my head on straight…"

The concept of what Juliette had just said hit Kallen with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer. "So, you're going to go to your sister…for advice on your love life…"

"Yes, I am," Juliette replied, seeming to get her hackles up just a bit at Kallen's incredulity. "Is that so strange to you?"

"I mean, no offence, but the idea of Naoto as some kind of lady-killer just kinda squicks me out as a general matter," Kallen explained, putting her hands up in a universal gesture of surrender. "So I guess I just… I'm really having a hard time imagining how anyone could ever decide to voluntarily discuss their relationship woes with their older sibling…"

"Yes, well," Juliette sighed again, looking away from Kallen—but she seemed to calm all the same, so the redhead was only too willing to consider that a victory in and of itself. "My sister and I are…atypical in many ways, even amongst other full-blooded royal siblings. Our relationship is a lot less like the one you seem to share with your brother, and more along the lines of a mother-daughter sort of situation…"

Kallen blinked a few times, and then wisely decided to just…leave that statement untouched. She could no more fathom just how fucked a situation would have to be for that to be the case than she could think of a way to phrase that very sentiment that didn't invariably come off as ridiculously judgemental and more than a little accusatory, even. And besides, it really wasn't her place to throw stones at the family life of a princess of the realm—especially not one she'd just spent the night in bed with.

"And besides," continued Juliette, brushing past Kallen's poleaxed reaction as her face twisted into a playful little sneer. "I don't know if you've noticed, but the aspiration to warm your brother's bed isn't restricted to the women around him…"

"And like that, this conversation is over," Kallen replied firmly, rising from the bed as she furiously tried to scrub the question of if her brother was the top or the one biting the pillow from the forefront of her mind, and to no avail. "Thank you for that."

Juliette smirked at her from the bed, finally relaxed into a reclined and suggestive languid posture, and looking very much like the cat that got the canary. She gave Kallen a jaunty little wave with her fingers and purred the words, "Any time~."

---

It took Juliette maybe half an hour's time after Kallen finally gathered up her discarded clothes and left her bedroom for her to muster up the requisite courage and motivation to properly rise from her rest, herself, and thus to face the proverbial music. She picked out a nice, simple, comfortable white nightgown and an embroidered tea-coat of deep green and lustrous gold silk; and with her feet shod in a pair of warm, soft, slender slippers, she padded out of her bedroom and made her way across this wing of the estate to the apartments that Justine and Milly had claimed for their own use. She mussed and adjusted her own hair as she walked, more so that she had something to do with her hands to take her mind off of how completely and totally she'd fucked up here than because she thought she had bed-head or anything of the sort; if she was being honest with herself, she knew her sister would handle this even-handedly and wouldn't think to give her a scolding she didn't deserve on some level, and yet the fact that she'd even landed herself in this mess in the first place was already so thoroughly uncharacteristic of her that she wasn't inclined to examine her fraught nerves in any further detail than a surface-level acknowledgement of their existence. She wasn't in any way given to impulse or to flights of fancy, which was part of why her behaviour last night shocked her so thoroughly; before then, she couldn't recall the last time she'd made a decision without deliberate and careful consideration of all of her options, and the ripples each choice was likely to make.

Juliette was a spider, not a dragon; and yet here she was, having leapt ahead of any consideration of the consequences of her actions without even a moment's hesitation. No matter what perspective she used to view her recent indiscretion, though there were various permutations of the result, what was central to each, the thing she couldn't get past, was the fact that this wasn't like her…

Before she knew it, she was standing in front of the door that led to her sister's chambers. She blinked, attempting to banish the last frayed strands of fevered and cyclical thought from the forefront of her mind; and once she felt as though she had a strong enough grip on herself, she raised a curled hand and knocked on the heavy wooden door before her, three times, firmly, and in swift succession. Then, she stepped back, and awaited her sister's rising with baited breath.

Muffled sounds came through from the other side of the door, but none of them were loud enough that Juliette could hope to identify what they were with any sort of confidence. Thankfully, she didn't have to wait in ignorance for much longer—soon enough, the handle of the door turned from the other side, and it swung open on its hinges to flood Juliette's eyes abruptly with an image that set the gears of her mind grinding to a complete halt. Blood rushed to her cheeks, and she tore her gaze away, averting her eyes as best she could without turning her back on her sister entirely (which would have been rather rude of her to do, even under these circumstances), trying her best to only look Justine in the face, and not to let her gaze wander into places she'd personally very much rather it not.

"Juliette?" Justine prompted, her voice husky from sleep. "It's a little early for you to be about, isn't it? Is there aught amiss?"

"Justine," Juliette began, scrambling for a diplomatic and dignified phrasing for what she was about to say; but upon coming up empty-handed, she elected instead to speak it plain. "You're naked."

Justine's eyes widened a little bit, more curious than shocked, as she looked down at her own body, bare to the morning light save for the silver collar around her neck, and saw that Juliette was correct. "Oh! So I am. I suppose I'm meant to assume that you'd rather I not be?"

"That would be much preferred, yes," Juliette replied in as mild a tone as she could muster.

Justine nodded, making no move to cover herself as she turned around, leaving the door open, and walked back into the chamber behind her as though she was fully attired. "Come in, then, and find yourself a seat. I'll throw something on and be right with you. It won't take more than a moment…"

Filing in behind her sister and making certain to close the door behind her, Juliette looked around at the parlour for one of the comfortable chairs even as Justine proceeded past it and back into the bedroom. Juliette did her best to put that entire exchange out of her mind, trusting that the issue would be resolved before long, and sat herself down upon her chosen settee in a folded position that allowed her to radiate a sense of composure that she did not feel; and yet even that did her little good, as shortly thereafter, Justine glode back out into the parlour with all of her effortless grace, having donned only a sheer black silk négligée to conceal the marble-pale flesh of her body, the lace hem of the garment resting halfway down her thigh. She lowered herself down upon the settee on the opposite side of the low tea table, half-sitting and half-laying, with her legs resting on top of each other and to one side, and while this thankfully prevented the awkward potential for unintentional upskirting, it was still a languid and decadent enough position for Juliette to sigh at the sight of it. "You are absolutely shameless."

"And why should I be ashamed of any part of my body, hmm?" Justine asked rhetorically, her tone playful in a way that it rarely was. She cocked a brow and smirked saucily at Juliette before continuing. "In case you haven't noticed, dear sister, I'm apparently rather fetching. But that's quite enough prattling about me, I should think. Tell me, Juliette, what troubles you?"

The comfortable mood Juliette had unwittingly slipped into, exchanging words with her elder sister, evaporated at that prompting; instead, she took a deep breath, and made a conscious effort to try and relax a bit before speaking. Though the situation itself, with all its relevant particulars, may well have been uncharted territory for her, speaking about similarly sensitive things with her sister most certainly was not. "As you may or may not have noticed last night, Heiress Stadtfeld and I… Well, to say we 'hit it off' feels like something of an understatement, given the circumstances, if I'm being entirely honest. I… She and I spent the night together."

"I see," Justine acknowledged, nodding patiently. "And yet I get the distinct impression that you're not here to seek my congratulations at having taken your first lover. Or am I mistaken?"

"You're correct," Juliette sighed ruefully.

"What's the problem, then?" Justine asked with a slow, lazy smile. "Was her prowess lacking?"

"Justine!" Juliette started, acutely scandalised for one of if not the first time in her life.

"It's a perfectly legitimate question," the raven-haired princess remarked, completely unapologetic.

"No, nothing of the sort," Juliette said, shaking her head. "The issue I'm struggling with has much more to do with the circumstances surrounding the coupling than the coupling itself…"

"And you hadn't taken the time to consider these circumstances beforehand, I take it?" guessed her sister, settling further into the settee.

"I hadn't, no," Juliette confessed, staring down at where she had her hands clasped in her own lap. "And that's what's perhaps most troubling of all. I had a moment, immediately after awakening, where I thought I'd repeated Guinevere's indiscretions, since the gap in status is so irreconcilably vast, but…Kallen didn't seem to see it that way at all; yet, even after I managed to acknowledge that truth, the general worry just…lingered. I just… It's not me, you know? It isn't me to just jump into these things without sparing any thought to the consequences. I'd entertained the thought that perhaps such things were beyond me, even, before last night… I'm not certain what to make of it, or even where we go from here…"

"Is it your desire for there to be somewhere for the two of you to go from here, then?" Justine asked gently. "Euphy has similar escapades all the time, and they're all meaningless. Oldrin and Marrybell, too. But that wasn't what this was, was it?"

"I…I don't know," Juliette sighed, shaking her head. "I know I shouldn't be, that this should have only been a dalliance, if only because any future that might come from this is doomed—the sheer level of disparity in station alone would be enough to doom it absent any other factors—but I can't help but feel at least a small desire to see where this might go…"

"I see," Justine replied pensively. "I believe I understand. I might even have a solution for you, as it happens. Killing two birds with one stone, as it were."

"How do you mean?" Juliette asked, cocking her head—it was a much less avian gesture than when Justine did it, she'd been informed, but otherwise it was the same tell.

"Well, given that he is now my Knight of Honour in an official capacity, there will be certain duties that Jeremiah will be expected to fulfil; spoken plainly, it's simply not feasible to expect him to be able to both do his job and ensure your security at the same time," Justine began, gesturing with a few vague but fluid motions of her hand—it was beyond odd to see her hands naked these days, having grown accustomed to Justine's constant wearing of her black gloves on all occasions, and Juliette couldn't help but notice that the one making the gestures was the one with the black nails that turned into claws. "A princess of the realm and her Knight of Honour growing closer than their respective social standings would ordinarily allow isn't entirely unheard of; with unpromised princesses, it could even be argued that it's fairly common. Heiress Stadtfeld has shown quite a remarkable degree of potential already, to the point where, with a bit of training, she might even be worth Lloyd designing a custom Knightmare based off of her own data. That kind of talent deserves to be honed, Juliette; and what better pretence is there for such a shift in her status than the need to train her to become a fighter worthy of the title of Knight of Honour?"

"So, your solution to this problem, if I understand you correctly," Juliette paraphrased slowly, "Is to assign her to be my bodyguard?"

"It's quite ingenious, if I do say so myself," Justine chortled into the back of her hand.

A knock on the door resounded throughout the parlour, interrupting whatever response Juliette was going to give next in the process—not that she could honestly say she knew what such a response would have been, which was more than a little concerning. Justine, seeming to recognise this particular knock, leaned her head back and bade the new supplicant, "Enter!"

The door swung gently open, then, and in came a smiling Taliesin, carrying a silver tray with a full tea service arrayed upon its polished surface, together with a steaming basket full of baked goods. "And a very good morning to you, my lady; you're practically glowing. I thought that you and Milly might like a spot of breakfast once she awakens."

"Why, thank you, Taliesin," said Justine, smiling softly. "That's very thoughtful of you."

"It's really no trouble at all, I assure you," Taliesin replied warmly, and Juliette bearing witness to this by-play reminded the younger princess, in a manner that was at once both very sharp and very timely, that the majordomo was Justine's servant first and foremost, and his service towards Juliette herself was in her capacity as a member of her sister's household, with no greater loyalty behind it. Perhaps there was merit, then, to the idea of Juliette selecting her own Knight of Honour as soon as possible, especially given how quickly both of their lives were sure to change in the coming months. She thought of the adage warning against the folly of mixing business with pleasure as a possible concern, of course, but only for a moment before she recalled the fact that her sister Friederike lived and worked within the bounds of a similar sort of arrangement to the one Justine was proposing that Juliette settle into with Kallen Kōzuki-Stadtfeld…

"Now, as to your second point—to return to the matter at hand," said Justine, thus drawing Juliette's attention back to the conversation as a result. Taliesin poured her a cup of tea, and Justine made a gesture to offer some of the pot to Juliette, but Juliette put her hand up, begging off; she'd tried taking her tea the way Justine preferred it, and she sometimes swore she could still taste phantom bitterness lingering upon her tongue to this very day. "Juliette, the substance of your concern, it seems, is due to the fact that in the company of Heiress Stadtfeld, you witnessed yourself performing behaviours of which you would otherwise never have thought yourself capable. But I'm afraid that I, on the other hand, cannot honestly say that I share your worries to any appreciable degree, dear sister. On the contrary, I would argue that 'tis only natural for those for whom we have some affinity to bring different parts of ourselves to the forefront. You have noticed the difference between how I act when I'm around Milly and how I am inclined to conduct myself in any other circumstance, have you not? I'd imagine the nature of our uncharacteristic behaviours share that fundamental factor. And even were that not the case—you owe it to yourself to see this through as long as you can bear it, Juliette. Rest assured, dear sister, that I shall support you in any way that I can, whensoever I may. So please, do try not to worry about it so much, okay? I for one can't imagine there's much harm in living a little—within reason, of course."

With that, Justine lifted the cup and the saucer to her lips, and drank from it, letting out a pleasured little subvocal hum in response. "Mmph~. Wonderful as ever, Taliesin. Thank you."

"My pleasure," Taliesin replied with a bow, the teapot still in hand.

Then, the door that led to the bedchamber burst open, and through it came a tall, curvy, well-built figure with golden hair, her body laden with an impressive amount of toned, lean muscle, and clad in only a silken tea-coat, with nothing else under it. She crossed the threshold while stretching, her arms held high above her head, and let out a moderately-sized yawn as she padded onto the carpeted floor of the parlour in her bare feet. "Good morning, Taliesin…"

"Good morning, ma'am," Taliesin greeted with a nod. "Shall I pour you a spot of tea?"

"Please," Milly groaned, coming up behind the settee where Justine was attempting to conceal her widening grin behind the rim of her tea cup. Milly, however, saw through it, wrapping her arms around her bride-to-be and plunging her hands—Juliette very pointedly looked away as the blonde openly began to grope her elder sister's chest—and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Good morning, my love…"

"Good morning, darling," Justine replied without a hint of either hesitation or shame; and not for the first time, Juliette got the distinct impression that she'd somehow managed to stumble her way into the vicinity of a very intimate morning ritual between the two young women. "Did you rest well?"

"Of course," said Milly with a bemused lilt in her tone, as though the answer to that question ought to have been abundantly clear from the first. "I always do, whenever you're there to warm my bed~."

"I suppose that's one more reason to look forward to the honeymoon, then~," Justine replied with a soft smile that in any other context would have looked quite thoroughly incongruous. "Just you and I, no?"

"Mm. Promises, promises," Milly teased, vaulting over the back of the settee to settle into place right alongside Justine. Then, as Taliesin finished pouring her a cup of tea, and handed it to her, she looked up, finally deigning to acknowledge Juliette's presence amongst them. "Ah, Juliette! Isn't it a touch early for you to be up and about like this?"

"And a good morning to you, too, dear good-sister," Juliette replied with a sense of confidence born of a dance, the steps of which she had long since mastered by rote. "The day is indeed young; and yet, as it so happens, I had cause to consult my sister for advice with all possible haste, all the same."

"How curious," Milly remarked with a smirk. "And intriguing. Do tell."

"It would be unbecoming of my station, I'm afraid," Juliette countered. "Rest assured, I don't doubt that you will know aught in good time, circumstances being as they are."

"Have it your way, then," sighed Milly, the gesture exaggerated for dramatic effect. "Though, may I suggest that you don't tarry overlong? After all, redheads are somewhat notorious for possessing choleric temperaments, are they not? I know that I would simply hate to discover that my soon-to-be sister-in-law has managed to run afoul of such an avoidable folly~."

"And that's quite enough of that, thank you," Justine declared smoothly. Juliette sighed and nodded, while Milly put her hands up and leaned back into the settee, and that was the end of it. "Thank you. If both of you would kindly refrain from snapping at each other in my presence in the future, that would be greatly appreciated. I have a great deal of trouble discerning the playacting from the genuine vitriol, as you ought to know very well by this point…"

"Of course, Justine," Juliette nodded, duly chastened. "My apologies."

"For you, my love," Milly sighed, her expression twisted as though she'd just bitten into a lemon.

"Very good," Justine sighed, sitting up anew with an ease that belied her position on the furniture. "Now, Juliette, I daresay you have quite a great deal to get done today. I won't have you using my wedding as an excuse to your professors for tardy or lacklustre work."

Juliette couldn't help but scowl; but she knew her sister was right, and only had her best interests at heart, and so she nodded nonetheless. "Yes, sister."

"Be sure to grab something to eat from the spread before you go. I should think I would be remiss were I to release you to go about your labours on an empty stomach," Justine continued without so much as missing a beat, her eyes trained not on Juliette herself, but the steaming tea cup she was nursing on. "And if you happen across her this morning, feel free to tell Heiress Stadtfeld that I shall await her presence in the yard. Milly has told me a great deal about her, but I would take her measure personally, all the same."

"I understand," Juliette nodded, her mind already turning to the matters of her coursework even as she spoke. "If you will excuse me. Good morning to you, sister, Milly, Taliesin."

"And a good morning to you as well, your highness," Taliesin replied with a little half-bow. Justine nodded and shooed her off with an airy, fluid gesture, and Milly waved at her as Juliette rose from her seat and moved towards the table, unwrapping the cloth covering the insides of the basket to peer inside at what was arranged therein. Immediately, her eyes went wide, and her cheeks flushed pink.

There, positioned front and centre amongst a deliberately-chosen arrangement of both Milly's and Justine's favourite pastries and confections, were two round, puffy discs, coated all over in powdered sugar and leaking a bit of gelatinous reddish-orange paste from the side—cinnamon apple jam.

As swiftly as she could, Juliette snatched both jelly-filled doughnuts from the basket, and turned to the other three occupants of the room, daring them to say anything. Taliesin was smiling, but Juliette could pick out an edge of knowing that lined the expression; Justine seemed wholly unperturbed, but otherwise fond, as though she expected no different; and Milly was visibly biting her tongue, though whether that was to suppress laughter or to restrain herself from saying something disparaging, Juliette found that she neither knew nor cared. Gathering up what remained of her dignity along with her shameful bounty, then, the Sixth Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire strode swiftly towards the door, and let herself out into the corridor beyond that threshold once more.

---

It was very firmly midmorning when Kallen awoke from where she'd crashed into her own bed, in her own assigned room, well out of earshot of Naoto's quarters, but still in the same wing of the manor. Much like in the early morning, when she'd awoken in Pri—in Juliette's bedchambers, it was the sun coming through the window that roused her fully, once she'd begun to surface from her rest. Of course, she had no idea why her curtains were drawn in the first place, since she thought she distinctly recalled them being closed over the large window when she'd returned just past dawn, discovered that she was more tired than she'd given herself credit for, and went right back to sleep upon her own sumptuous mattress. To add on to the oddity, there was a tray set out upon the surface of a writing-desk on the other side of the bedchamber, its contents still steaming with heat, which meant that it had to have been left there relatively recently; and yet Kallen, who had gotten quite good at this sort of perception, could not detect any details, besides those two, that in any way suggested that anyone had been in here while she was asleep between dawn and what now had to be at least half past ten, given the position of the sun in the sky.

This in mind, she slid off of the bed and onto her feet, and padded over to the tray laid out upon the desk, her nostrils filling with the strong, unfortunately very familiar scent of nattō in her nose. Her mother had always insisted she eat plenty of it growing up before the war, lecturing her at some length on several different occasions that 'a growing girl needs her strength'; it had once been a guilty thought, perhaps, that at the very least, the war and the sundering of her family meant she never had to eat it again, and she was mature enough to realise that for the most part, it still was; all the same, while she'd learned to stomach the (allegedly) very healthy, pungent food over the years of her girlhood, she doubt she'd ever come around to fully enjoying it the way that Milly had in the past off-handedly mentioned that she did (which was its own can of worms, and one Kallen was more than content to leave the lid on, herself). Still, as she drew closer, she saw that there were packets of bonito flakes alongside the bowls of rice and nattō, and the dish of shoyu, so she knew that whoever had left this here in her room was at least more merciful than the woman who had been born to the name of Kōzuki Minase.

With a resigned sigh, Kallen pulled out the chair set at the desk, and sat upon it, hissing as bare skin made contact with cool wood, but otherwise restraining her discomfort enough for her to be able to settle in and get herself situated properly. There was also steaming tea in a porcelain cup, and chopsticks set to the side of the bowl; and while she was no more certain now of how she felt that her mother, for as kind as she could be, wouldn't have hesitated before holding up Milly, a Britannian duchess, to her own half-Japanese daughter as an example to be followed because she ate nattō without complaint as she was when Milly had admitted to having grown fond of it, she was at least appreciative that there was still something here to remind her of the land of her birth—even if it had to be nattō, of all things. She grabbed a packet of bonito flakes, then, and got started.

She was halfway through eating her breakfast when she noticed the note laid upon the silver serving tray, written in a neat, slanting hand—immaculate penmanship that was perfect for filling out ledgers—that she did not recognize, printed in restrained pen-strokes upon fine stock that she did. Curious, and with her mouth full of some of the food she was wolfing down (she'd discovered very quickly that what she'd done last night happened to work up one hell of an appetite, and she was famished), she let her bright blue eyes scan across what was written there.

To Ms. Kōzuki-Stadtfeld, upon the event of her awakening and breakfasting:

Her Royal Highness, Justine vi Britannia, Fourth Princess of the Realm, cordially requests your prompt appearance in the yard no later than half past the eleventh hour. She advises that you expect some measure of physical exertion, and thus to dress appropriately.

Signed,

Taliesin Blackwood, majordomo,

Penned on behalf of Princess Justine.

Kallen stared at that for a few moments, idly chewing, as her mind ground to a halt, only to then be very slow indeed in starting up again. In the time it took her to understand exactly what it was that she was currently reading, a single brow crept further and further towards her hairline with every moment that came and went as she struggled to comprehend the full magnitude of the message on display here. Was Princess Justine requesting her presence to give her a shovel talk, or to execute her? The thought occurred to her for a moment that perhaps this had nothing at all to do with having just fucked the woman's little sister, but that was dismissed almost as soon as it came as a hope that had no basis in reality. How stupid could she be that she hadn't realised that deflowering Juliette was a surefire way to get onto her (quite frankly) scary-as-shit sister's bad side?

A few wild fantasies occurred to her of escaping this situation, of choosing life and running for the hills, but…even if she could get away for a few days, which was extremely unlikely, given that she was for the most part surrounded by people who had no loyalty to her and wouldn't hesitate to assist in her capture, the idea that she could even get her shit and get off the immediate grounds within the hour she'd been given before she was expected, given how huge the compound that made up the Ashford Estate was, was nothing more than a childish fantasy.

With that in mind, she sighed, and went back to eating. She knew that there was no way she could possibly get out of 'facing the music,' so to speak; and if she was about to meet her end, there didn't seem to be much sense in doing so on an empty stomach. If she was indeed bound for the gallows, then she'd at least take the drop well-fed.

It took asking one of the guests from last night where 'the yard' in question was for Kallen to make her way there (the one she was talking to, a pretty, petite girl, with violet hair that was styled into a tousled bob cut and maroon eyes, just so happened to be headed in that direction anyways, fortunately enough), but Kallen knew at least that she wasn't late when she stepped out into a tiled courtyard open to the sky above, dressed in a pair of black compression pants, well-loved crimson tennis shoes, and a white cotton shirt, something long-sleeved and loose-fitting that she didn't particularly care about getting messed up or soiled with sweat, on the off-chance that she wasn't actually walking to her death—which her laconic guide didn't really seem to think she was.

There was warmth in the tiles she stepped onto, Kallen noticed; it might have taken her a moment, dazzled as she was by the fact that the area was open to the sky and was merely pleasantly cool rather than the bitter coldness she'd expected, and indeed felt on her way into the estate, but it became readily apparent in short order that the floor was artificially heated, lending an easy equilibrium to the area that might have otherwise required more robust climate controls.

The next thing she noticed was the fact that her guide immediately departed from her side, and went to stand at one corner of the very large and expansive courtyard, alongside a gathered crowd of others. All of them were members of the wedding party that Princess Justine herself had invited, according to Milly's brief explanation when she and Naoto and the Student Council arrived, and they were all dressed similarly to how she had chosen to clothe herself before coming here—though the clothes they wore were all black, and had bits of what Kallen could recognise as protective gear strapped overtop them. Also of note was the fact that almost all of them were carrying some manner of weapon that was strapped onto their person—she saw a number of different varieties of sword, a few different spears, and there was even one person with an axe that she realised after a moment or two wasn't, as she'd first been given to assume, part of the group who counted themselves as Princess Justine's friends from the military academy she'd apparently attended since she was thirteen years old; no, that was instead Rivalz, of all people, who was carrying a hafted battle-axe as he chattered animatedly with a feminine figure with long, bound-back forest-green hair, a long knife in a scabbard at the small of her back.

He didn't look like he'd noticed her entrance, of course, but his presence alone was very reassuring to her on its own merits; she took a deep breath, then, and let the tension of thinking she was perhaps not to walk away from this meeting with her life bleed out of her shoulders and back. That moment of realisation, then, allowed her to divert her attention to what was actually going on in the middle of the courtyard: there was Princess Justine, her raven hair tied back into a high ponytail, in black leather breeches, polished black leather boots that reached her knee, a black silk blouse with cuffs of fine lace, black gloves that fit quite a bit more closely to her hands than almost any other type of comfortable gloves Kallen had ever seen, and a corset of matte black leather that was secured around the exterior of the blouse itself. Her eyes were closed, and a tachi of all things was held loosely in one hand, while three girls in black athletic clothes circled and shifted about her, as though they were searching for an opening.

The pretty blonde and the auburn-haired tomboy both held a spear in their hands, shifting and prodding, while the third member, who sported blue-black hair that she'd tied up, seemingly almost in imitation of Princess Justine, wielded what looked to be an uchigatana of her own in a stance that Kallen recognised from what she'd seen of kendō, with both hands upon its hilt, trained on a single target to attack without hesitation. At the other side of the courtyard from the crowd, then, was a single woman, tall and willowy of frame, who, like Kururugi Suzaku the night before, wore garments that were in a traditional style that made her look like she'd just stepped out of the Edo Period, or even the Warring States Period immediately before it, save for the fact that those clothes were an immaculate white. With her long, straight black hair unbound and cascading down her slender shoulders, and a gloomy cast to her face that was visible to Kallen even at this distance, she gave an impression of presiding over what was transpiring here, this sparring match that had just recently hit a lull, given how three out of the four on the main arena on the floor seemed to be sweating already.

She swept her gaze back to Rivalz and the crowd, and in so doing caught sight of someone stepping forth from the black-clad mass, waving her over. The woman in question was tall and lean and brawny, and she was dressed like she was trying to play the part of a particularly rough-and-tumble yōjinbō, wearing the lower half of a suit of Muromachi-era armour below the waist and a black kimono embroidered with red spider lilies above it, though it hung unfastened and open to expose the layers of white silk wrapping around her chest, binding it in a sarashi style. Her chestnut hair was about as untameable as it had seemed the night before, though it was drawn back to be tied into a thick leather-corded knot at the base of her neck, and her eyes, which shared a hue with imperial jade, sparked with a barely-hidden wildness as she looked directly at Kallen and beckoned her over with a sharp, blade-like smirk that would be more fitting on the face of a non-traditional depiction of Susanoo-no-mikoto, and a jerk of her head.

Since this was the closest thing to direction she'd been given since her arrival, and keenly aware of how extremely fraught her situation could be, even if it wasn't already, Kallen chose to consider discretion to be the better part of valour, and complied with the unspoken command, taking care to stay well-clear of the sparring match that was going on in the middle, and circling around the edge of the courtyard to stand alongside the woman who could only be Kururugi Suzaku, who was perhaps the most notorious of those their shared countrymen considered traitors and defectors—the girl who, it had eventually come out, had killed her own father, and had given over information that had led both to the capture of all the heads of the Six Houses of Kyoto, as well as to the surrender of the last of the Imperial Japanese Army at the Battle of Narita. As the original and very first formerly-Japanese Honorary Britannian, Kururugi Suzaku had been demonised and vilified in practically every way that one could defame a person back in the immediate years of the viceroyalty, before Milly's grandfather and she had gotten their policies and reforms underway in earnest, and so it was a fair bit beyond the point of surreality for Kallen to come to stand besides a woman whom she'd heard in her childhood spoken of as though she was a tokusatsu villain.

And yet, here she was, all the same.

"Oi! You're just in time," Kururugi greeted as Kallen drew close, her cutting smirk broadening into a grin that was only just this side of feral, as she spoke in a rough drawl that Kallen could only think of as the closest thing to a direct transliteration of Kansai-ben that she'd ever personally encountered or heard in recordings—and she'd spent a significant portion of her early adolescence as a runaway in the company of ex-yakuza (who were now current yakuza once again, she supposed). "I'm swearin' to ya, this's gonna be the best part."

Kururugi threw an arm around Kallen once she was close enough, and pulled her in closer, her gaze dancing with excitement as the brunette stared at the ongoing match. "Any second now, that tension you're seein's gonna break. Watch."

Kallen had just enough time to register the presence of two swords pressing against her side, carried presumably in Kururugi's obi, before the stalemate broke—just as she'd predicted.

Princess Justine, who had seemingly been content to wait on her opponents, burst into motion, her eyes snapping open as she surged towards the sword-wielder, dealing out a lightning-fast blow that the girl deflected successfully, but only just; she was on the back foot now, the trio's encirclement broken.

The two spear-wielders wasted no time closing in, then, making good use of the natural advantage of spear-over-sword to perform a pincer attack, one of them striking for the neck while the other aimed for the belly: Princess Justine pirouetted to face the one aiming to gut her, the tomboyish girl, and brought her tachi up behind her, catching the blonde's spearhead without looking and deflecting it; while at the exact same time, she leaned to sidestep the gut-spear, and with a raised leg, she planted her foot just behind the head of the spear and slammed it down to the ground, instantly neutralising the reach advantage, and with a necessary level of precision that Kallen would never have thought humanly possible (and would never have believed save for the evidence of her own senses), turning it into a hindrance of leverage.

In a fluid motion, she swung her tachi up, the blade flashing a cut into the back of the auburn-haired young woman's hand to make her drop the spear, and then turned to face the blonde spearwoman, just as the black-haired swordswoman recovered and rejoined the fight.

"In a fight with multiple opponents, you gotta make sure to keep track of every opponent at once," Kururugi explained, leaning in to speak to her with such excitement that Kallen elected not to tell her that this was all stuff she knew already, even as they both watched the swordswoman close in to strike from the back, taking the princess's direct attention from the remaining spearwoman as the blonde began to move to try and secure a cheap shot in her opponent's blind spot. "And that's basic shit, ya know? A kid could figure that out. But Justine's got sharp instincts. Ain't never seen her lose track of an opponent for so much as a moment, even with her back turned. She's got basically no blind spots, 'cause she ain't usin' just her eyes."

The swordswoman fought strangely; at no point did she commit to a hit, never putting any real level of cutting power into her attacks. But she moved and manoeuvred in a way that consistently demanded the princess's attention, even as the spearwoman found her opening and struck.

"And them three, right there?" Kururugi continued, pointing to the trio, now reduced from three to the two who still fought. "They're learnin' that lesson the hard way."

Instantly, Princess Justine side-stepped the spearhead, catching the shaft bare-handed, and yanking its wielder forward, right into the princess's clotheslining elbow-strike, knocking her on her ass. The last of them, having hesitated for a moment, attacked with a swift fury that was entirely too late. Princess Justine dodged and wove and deflected, and with a move taken from European fencing, she swept the sword aside with just the right leverage to disarm, and nailed the swordswoman in the chest with a palm-strike that sent her staggering, though she kept her footing.

Princess Justine nodded, without a hair out of place. "Good. Marika, no notes. Liliana, remember to secure your footing before committing to an attack. I shouldn't have been able to uproot you like I did. And Odette, what do I always tell you?"

The swordswoman, Odette, seemed to visibly deflate, and scowled as she muttered a colourful oath under her breath. "'Hesitation is defeat.'"

Princess Justine nodded again. "That's right. Hesitation is defeat. And what did you do?"

"I hesitated," Odette replied, without pause.

"Yes, you did," said the princess, smoothly sheathing her blade in a sequence Kallen recognised as noto. "Your technique is flawless, no notes on that. But I've reached the end of what I can teach you. To get past that block, that hesitation, you'll have to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

"That's why I've asked Lady Izanami to be here, to observe," the princess continued, addressing all of them at once. "She was the one who trained Suzaku and myself; and as you've all acquitted yourselves so very handsomely of late, I've asked that she lend you all her instruction—alongside Suzaku and I, of course. It wouldn't do for any of us to grow complacent with our current level of skill, after all, lest we one day soon find ourselves getting rusty."

That prompted a collective chuckle from the assemblage of people clothed in black, save for Rivalz, who understood the joke no more than Kallen herself did, even as Kururugi, who still had a sun-kissed arm corded with muscle slung around Kallen's shoulders, started shaking with mirth. Princess Justine, herself, even gave a small, sharp smile, and a short chuckle at her own joke, whatever it actually meant.

"Now, I could say more, but there is, as you've likely noticed, a newcomer amongst us, and I would see her properly looked after, so…" Princess Justine continued, turning to pin Kallen where she stood with her hard, gem-like amethyst gaze. Kallen felt herself stiffen, then, and it was as though her limbs no longer owed her their allegiance, because she suddenly couldn't force herself to move. Then the princess pivoted with a speed and grace that Kallen knew she'd only get dizzy attempting to replicate, and lowered her head into a bow towards the woman in white. "The floor is yours, sensei. And Marika? This way, please. I'll see to your hand…"

With that, Princess Justine stepped back, the woman in white stepped forth, and it was as though the very air weighed more than it had just a few moments ago. The woman, with her long, straight, inky-black hair that seemed to cascade down her back, and the luminous, piercing blue of her eyes, lidded and gloomy even while the remainder of her face was set into a serene, peaceful smile that would not have looked out of place on a statue of the Buddha from one of the monasteries Kallen had seen when she was young, made her seem like something distinctly inhuman, as though Kallen was standing face-to-face with an onryō or a jorōgumo, and had just had the severe misfortune of having caught its attention.

At the very least, Kallen had no trouble understanding the woman's namesake…

"I am Izanami," the woman began, with a presence and a gravitas that was difficult to describe, and brought to mind old Shakespeare-inspired Kurosawa productions. "And I was expecting to bear witness to a much more miserable spectacle. At the very least, my students have done their best to train you all well. I cannot help but feel vindicated in that, you know.

"Eight thousand styles I have mastered, of sword, and of spear, and of bow, and of staff, and of fist, in my time," she continued, her expression unchanging, but the air shifting around her every word in some indelible way that seemed to communicate inflection without inflection, for all that that didn't immediately make any sort of sense to Kallen even within the confines of her own mind. "I have neither the time nor the inclination to teach them all to you, but I daresay I'll know at least one style you reprobates can manage to learn. At least, well enough to avoid embarrassing my students."

For some reason, the group shared another laugh at that remark, leaving both Kallen and Rivalz out of what was apparently another inside joke.

Izanami lifted her head, then, and swept her cold, deathly gaze along the line of them, alike in age, but (as Kallen was coming to believe) wildly and perhaps irreconcilably divergent in their experiences. "It is well that you are all in such good spirits about this. Your mistress, too, walked into Hell with a smile, saying that she was willing to do whatever it took. I should hope that your resolve ultimately proves worthy of her own, and that your loyalty is as steadfast as you imagine… Now, brat, to the fore."

"That's my cue," Kururugi almost seemed to boast, grinning at Kallen before releasing her from her arm around her shoulder, clapping the heiress on her back harshly enough to risk making her stumble. "Be sure to loosen up a bit, Kōzuki-chan~. Justine doesn't bite—at least, not without provocation, ya see…"

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Kallen muttered as the brunette sauntered forth to heed her teacher's call. Absent the subtly oppressive aura that lingered about Kururugi, then, Kallen had a moment to breathe; but it was only a moment, for Princess Justine was quick in dressing the wound she'd inflicted upon the auburn-haired spearwoman, Marika, and before Kallen would have even had the time to count backwards from ten, the princess approached Kallen's other side, slipping into the space between the redhead and the door she'd entered from. Suddenly very much reminded of the reasons for her misgivings upon entry, then, Kallen saw fit to break the silence as best she could, before her ears could ring with the phantom squealing of wooden gallows. "Good morning, your highness."

"Is it, now?" the princess replied with a teasing lilt and a hint of a chuckle. "Well, I suppose it must be, at that. How are you finding the amenities, Heiress Stadtfeld, hmm? If they are in any way unsuitable, I should like to know, so that the requisite adjustments may be scheduled posthaste."

"They're great, thank you," Kallen replied cautiously, unable to dispel the sensation that she was to some degree walking on eggshells here.

"I'm glad to hear it," said Princess Justine, turning to eye Kallen up and down with her unnerving amethyst gaze, which made Kallen feel like she was being peeled apart, layer by layer, perhaps even down to the very core of her spirit—she felt exposed under those eyes, like every bit of her innermost truths were laid bare before them, with every attempt she made to conceal the most meagre scraps of herself amounting to nothing. "Hmph. Yes, I think you'll do rather nicely, after all."

"…Excuse me, your highness?" Kallen couldn't help but ask.

"You're very much excused, Heiress Stadtfeld," Princess Justine replied. "I've wanted to take your measure personally for some time now, I confess. I'll be entrusting the life of my closest friend to the machine that you yourself have been selected to test through the latter half of its development, you see, and so it was in my best interest to ascertain whether or not you could produce results worthy of the Lancelot. I will state for the record that I had no particular reason to believe you would prove unsuitable; but if one must make a cut, it never hurts to measure thrice."

"And now?" Kallen prompted, her anticipation fuelling the sense of impatience that she was certain she was only somewhat successful in concealing.

"And now, my sister Juliette, my full-blooded kin, finds herself in need of proper security befitting her station," said Princess Justine, turning to face the lesson that Izanami had struck up as they spoke. "She needs a Knight of Honour, Heiress Stadtfeld. And I'd like for you to fill that position—provided, of course, that you're amenable to the proposition."

Kallen, poleaxed, could only stare at the princess, her jaw agape. The princess, in turn, shifted her glittering gaze back to the redhead after a few moments of silence, her full, haughty, naturally-pursed and plum-painted lips quirking upwards into an expression of bemusement. "Is it truly so shocking that I would ask this of you?"

"Wait, do you actually mean that you didn't call me here so you could threaten my execution over fucking your sister…?" Kallen blurted out, cursing the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, but nevertheless powerless to prevent herself from verbally digging her own grave.

Princess Justine went still, then, her expression of bemusement turning brittle for a few beats before subsiding as she blinked owlishly, her head tilting in a gesture of confusion that looked weirdly avian. "I'm afraid I don't understand. How, exactly, would you have come to that conclusion?"

"I mean…" Kallen began, growing ever more confused by the princess's own confusion. "So this isn't even going to be, like, a shovel talk, or something?"

"What on Earth is a shovel talk?" the princess asked, audibly bewildered.

"You know, the whole 'if you hurt my little sister, I'll put you in the ground' type talk," explained Kallen. "Aren't older siblings supposed to do stuff like that?"

"That certainly sounds like a…quaint custom, I must say," the princess remarked, blinking again. "I should hope that your brother has more sense than to attempt such a thing with Juliette. I daresay such an act is sure not to yield the result he might desire from the event… But no, in answer to your question, I have no grounds to disapprove of your union with my sister, Heiress Stadtfeld, however long such an arrangement might last. I'm not inclined to infringe upon Juliette's territory, not when she's perfectly capable of handling such matters herself, and especially not as it relates to her personal, romantic, or sexual life, as the case may be. And you may rest assured, if you break her heart, for whatever reason, she has no shortage of creative ways to make you regret being the cause of her anguish. At present, I see no cause for me to involve myself, especially when my aid in such matters has not been solicited. Should that change in the future, however, I assure you, Miss Kōzuki-Stadtfeld, you shall surely be among the first to know…"

"Well that's comforting," Kallen huffed, shaking her head and raising a hand to nurse her temple. "So, I'm sorry, but what was all that about a Knight of Honour?"

"I am asking if you would be willing to fulfil such a role in Juliette's service," said Princess Justine, as she returned her gaze to the ongoing instruction. "My own knight, Margrave Jeremiah, has been pulling double duty, so to speak, for several years now, but from the perspective of optics, now that his position is ratified in an official capacity, such an arrangement is to be considered wholly unbecoming in the eyes of Britannian society, and is therefore untenable. My sister, Princess Juliette, requires a knight of her own, and as she trusts you enough to surrender her maidenhead to you, for whatever reason…"

"Please don't call it that…" Kallen groaned, cringing at the elder princess's phrasing.

"…and seeing as your martial prowess has already been deemed sufficient to qualify you for the position of the designated test pilot for the Z-01 Lancelot, an experimental seventh-generation Knightmare Frame which has been calibrated to my friend Suzaku's combat data," the princess continued as if Kallen hadn't interrupted, "you, Heiress Stadtfeld, seem to be something of an ideal candidate, so to speak."

"So, what, is she going to move to Tokyo, or something?" Kallen asked, half-sarcastically.

"I admit that the logistics have the potential to become…complicated," Princess Justine replied. "At the moment, she is in a unique position of flexibility, and she will remain such so long as her enrollment at King's College proceeds apace. But I do not imagine one of you wholly submitting to the needs or wants of the other: consider this, if you will, a facilitation and endorsement of your…entanglement, that you would be well-served to discuss such matters amongst each other. Juliette and I are 'partners in crime,' as it were; I trust her to manage her affairs, just as she trusts me to handle my own. Although, in the interest of your full informed consent, I should notify you that, in the event that you accept, I've arranged for Lady Izanami to furnish you with as much of her tutelage in the arts of combat as your aptitude shall allow. I suggest you consider it food for thought, if nothing else. And, in any event, welcome aboard the great ship vi Britannia, Heiress Stadtfeld."

"I…" Kallen began; but she stopped, considering what Naoto was seemingly always chastising her for her failure to do, and in an act motivated in large part by fraternal spite, she thought before she spoke; she had nothing of consequence to add, and so she let her jaw click shut, and she nodded. "Thank you, your highness."

"Oi! Justine!" came Kururugi's crowing voice from the centre of the floor. Kallen turned her gaze to the other girl, and saw her standing in a neutral combat stance, with none of the academy graduates around her, while she held a full-sized uchigatana in each hand, perplexingly enough. "Ya know, we never did get 'round to sparrin' in front o' the Royal Force, did we?"

In that moment, the princess's imposing demeanour shifted, becoming every bit as imposing, but in a different way entirely. "I don't believe we ever did, no."

"Whaddya say we set that right, eh?" Kururugi called, throwing her arms wide and grinning as the other academy graduates chuckled at the developing situation. "Give 'em a proper show to remember, eh? Motivate 'em to improve! Get their asses into gear!"

The princess's stance shifted, her hip jutting out while she stood with arms akimbo, the harshness of her stark features adding an extra edge of alluring menace to her answering smirk. "'Give them a proper show,' you say? And can you still dance as jauntily, my friend, with two swords to tangle instead of one?"

A collective 'ooh' rose up from the black-clad graduates, who seemed to collectively agree to play the part of the peanut gallery at a pro-wrestling match. Kururugi rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck, her grin broadening into something every bit as toothy as a shark, and twice as bloodthirsty. "Why don't ya get your fancy ass over here, and find that out for your own damn self?"

"You really ought to know better than to threaten me with a good time by now, Su-za-ku~," Princess Justine teased back just as playfully, stepping forth from her position beside Kallen, seeming to deem their conversation concluded in the process, at least for the moment. She made a show of adjusting her gloves as she approached, each step deathly graceful in a rolling, swaying, almost seductive way Kallen could only look upon with naked envy, lethal in its gliding, seemingly weightless, prowling motion, but she closed the distance, with their teacher presiding over them as they drew together. "But since you don't seem to remember that lesson, I suppose I'll just have to remind you, so that this time, you won't forget~."

"Ooh, I like that," Kururugi shot back, and while Kallen remained fairly sure they weren't actually flirting with each other, the tones in which they taunted back and forth certainly made it sound as if they were. Kururugi twirled both of her uchigatana—live steel, no less—with a roll of her wrists, then, and Princess Justine took her position opposite her friend, one gloved hand sweeping up and around as she lowered her stance into a quick-draw pose, slender fingers hovering over the hilt of her tachi.

Izanami, their teacher, looked to each of her disciples in turn, a tense silence settling like a calfskin stretched over the head of a war-drum.

Her cold blue eyes darted back and forth, once…twice…thrice…

Then, she swept back.

Upon her vacant lips was a single command:

"Tatakae…"

---

"I wonder why she wears that thing…"

C.C.'s muttered musing caused Taliesin to look up from the letter he was writing. They were seated at a windowside table in the vast main library of the Ashford Estate, a chamber as large as a ballroom and three stories tall, as the brief afternoon began to wane to the pitch-darkness of the premature winter night; across the way, Justine sat in an upholstered leather armchair, plush and comfortable, having taken two hefty volumes with her. One sat closed on the table beside her, and the other sat open in her lap, as she read from it with the assistance of the gold-rimmed monocle she wore in her right eye. C.C.'s own forays into mainland China in the past had seen her picking up a few chronologically distinct versions of the languages native to the region, so it was a simple enough matter to decipher the titles of the pair of monumental tomes—Strategies of the Warring States and Records of the Grand Historian respectively—but while she could imagine that Marianne's eldest would have a secure enough command of the languages to read them in their native tongue, as Justine was doing, it still didn't explain to C.C. the princess's anachronistic choice in eyewear. Taliesin's smiling response, however, drew C.C.'s attention fully back to him. "I'm sure I have no idea what you mean, Miss C.C.. You wonder why Her Highness wears what thing, pray tell?"

"The monocle," C.C. elaborated with a shrug. "It just seems a little old-fashioned, is all. Why resort to that when more modern iterations exist?"

"Ah, I believe I grasp the issue," Taliesin nodded, his smile shifting from out of its usual courteous pleasantness and into a more genuine, fond expression as he thought upon their shared curiosity. "It is not, you must understand, a deficiency of sight that begets this issue; rather, while both her eyes are in perfect health, one of them is noticeably sharper than the other, and that disparity has been the cause of headaches on several different occasions in the past, whenever she was reading with a significant degree of focus. The monocle, then, is meant to help bring the affected eye into line with the other, so that she can read without undue discomfort."

"That's…a unique issue to have, I suppose…" C.C. considered.

"Yes, well," said the manservant. "Princess Justine is hardly the first daughter of a royal line to find herself saddled with unique challenges, I believe you'll find, Miss C.C.. Should you think to inquire after the health of the late Tsar Nicholas the Second's son—or perhaps even something as simple and as banal as picking a member of the House of Habsburg out of a hat—it might prove to be illuminating on the matter."

C.C. pursed her lips and nodded, duly chastened. "Point taken, I suppose."

Taliesin nodded once, authoritatively, before going back to working on his letter, while C.C. turned her attention back to reading through a collection of poetry written in Welsh that she'd found on a shelf she had chosen at random elsewhere in the library. But something about being here in the silence with her own thoughts as a conversation partner unearthed in her mind a recollection of a talking point that she'd heard mentioned in passing a few years past, and suddenly prompted her to ask the elder immortal, apropos of nothing, "What is the BlackFrost Corporation, anyways?"

The light scratching of Taliesin's pen against the stationery of his letter came to an abrupt halt, and he looked up at her, bemused, a mirthful twinkle in his crimson eyes that C.C. didn't trust one bit. He raised his free hand and adjusted his pince-nez with his fingertips, and remarked, "Well, I suppose Izanami owes me quite the princely sum, now. She'd wagered it would take you another three years to think to ask that, at the absolute least. But then, she's never been the best judge when it comes to the impulses of others. She's a killer, and a damned good one, but she is neither a leader nor a merchant. Still, I suppose it remains my win regardless…"

"So, you're not going to answer?" C.C. prompted, raising a quizzical green eyebrow.

"Oh, I most assuredly am," the manservant assured her. "I'm simply taking a moment to gloat over having won that wager first, that's all.

"But to answer your question, Miss C.C., the BlackFrost Corporation is the name of a collective of honest merchants and legitimate businesspeople, backed by the combined assets of the House of Hoarfrost and the House of Blackwood. Hence the name," Taliesin replied, setting down his fountain pen and tenting his interlocking fingers as he spoke. "That is, to say, my family, consisting of my sisters, Mara and Rhiannon, and myself—though, these days, it's just Rhiannon and me."

"And…what is it that you sell, exactly?" C.C. pressed.

"Why, we deal in just about anything and everything!" the manservant said with a chuckle. "But our primary product isn't something you'll have heard of, I daresay. Though we may be able to boast a rather vast clientele, quite a lot of our main money-maker is sold to the community almost exclusively through intermediaries. But, as you haven't heard of it, telling you would be less than useless, I'm sorry to say. I do apologise that I can't provide a more complete answer. If it helps, though, I can tell you that its sale has made us rather fabulously wealthy as a result…"

"And…what use could you possibly have for fabulous wealth…?" C.C. asked, privately very much mystified. "It's not like we have any subsistence needs…"

"Well, it gives us something to do, for starters," Taliesin replied conversationally, leaning forward. "But having these resources to hand allows us to quietly nudge things in the direction we intend for them to go, whensoever the mood may strike us. If we should, for example, deem it to be advantageous to our goals to front the development of the Tokyo Settlement a sizeable sum of pounds through various intermediaries, we have that option open to us, to be put into effect in a timely fashion."

"Sounds…convenient," remarked C.C.

"And it is increasingly so, as the horizon shrinks back and everything within its view is bought and sold," said Taliesin, reaching to pick his fountain pen back up and scratch a few more lines of spidery text into the stationery like he was filling out a shipping ledger. "Being able to more directly affect the levers of power in such a way is a great boon to practically all of our designs, and has proven as much in the past…"

"And is that to whom that letter you're working on is meant to be addressed, then?" the immortal asked her elder. "Your sister, Rhiannon, perhaps? Or one of the Hoarfrosts of whom you've told me nothing?"

He looked up at her again, and to her credit, she did not feel the impulse to flinch under the renewed intensity of his scrutiny. "You are a sharp one, aren't you?"

"I certainly like to think so," C.C. returned acidly.

"We immortals are in part products of our experiences," Taliesin sighed heavily. "You of all people should be able to understand that. My apologies if I have given offence, nonetheless."

"…You know, I almost fell for that," said C.C., nodding as she realised she was being misdirected. "I'm impressed. Usually I'm the one pulling that trick."

"Hence how you become blind to it being used on you in the first place," said the manservant with a nasty little smirk. "But yes, this is addressed to my sister. I do not correspond with the sisters Hoarfrost: we work in different fields, for all that it is the same enterprise."

"…Well, I suppose it's good to keep abreast of family matters, at least—so long as such a thing can be helped," C.C. opined with a heavy huff. "Not that I would know very much about that, of course…"

"I suspect that if you were to allow it of yourself, you'd find you'll come to know quite a bit more about it than you give yourself credit for," Taliesin replied cryptically. He looked up from his unfinished letter once more, and shot the book of poetry in her hands a significant look. "Which one are you currently on, if I may ask?"

"Right now? The Battle of the Trees," C.C. answered, her brow furrowing, but electing to take this as being of little greater import than a pleasantry.

"Ah, Gwydion's battle against Arawn," Taliesin nodded. "That one gave me a devil of a time. It's a shame that it's faded into relative obscurity ever since. For all the difficulties its composition gave me, I am very proud of the finished product…"

C.C. blinked at the man, uncomprehending, for several seconds. "You mean to tell me that you were Taliesin the Bard?"

Taliesin shrugged, and winked at her, like it was some sort of schoolyard gossip that the man was admitting to instead of something that was (to put it lightly) more than a bit of a cultural bombshell, to the extent that even C.C., who was a Frenchwoman by birth, was floored by the implications of the revelation, so glibly given. "Hey, everyone needs a hobby every now and again…"

C.C., unable to form coherent words, very pointedly did not gape at Taliesin like a fish, and instead stared at the older immortal with a very dignified jaw-closed expression indeed. Then she thought for a moment, and shrugged. "Yeah, well, I suppose I don't exactly have much room to talk, either…"

Taliesin hummed noncommittally, returning his attention to the work at hand and graciously leaving their conversation on the matter at that.

"I'm sorry, am I interrupting something?"

Both of them started—C.C. genuinely so, though she personally couldn't be certain if Taliesin's reaction was sincere or exaggerated for a humanising effect—and then turned to regard a tall, willowy princess with hair like flax and a bemused expression upon her elegantly beautiful face. The prime minister of Britannia was dressed down somewhat, attired in a pair of trousers and a thick white jumper with long sleeves and a high neck, but even in such a state of relative undress, carrying what looked to be a thick folio bound in brown leather in the crook of one arm, she radiated an aura of importance and class, like a well-to-do socialite on a ski vacation in some prohibitively expensive resort.

But then again, even in such familiar company, Princess Friederike never let herself look anything but her best.

"Not at all, your highness," said Taliesin with a genial smile, setting down his fountain pen. "I was just leaving, at any rate."

"There's no need to get up, I assure you," said the Second Princess with a wry grin, the lavender of her eyes bright with vigour that C.C. hadn't even noticed the prior absence of until this exact moment. "I'm not intending to stay for very long. Justine just asked me a question a day or two ago about a certain paper she recalled having come across, inquiring as to whether I could procure a copy for her perusal; and while I would ordinarily give it to her directly, I'm loath to intrude upon her current pursuits…"

"You could leave it with us," C.C. offered, marvelling internally at the wonders a decent few nights of rest did for Friederike el Britannia's already legendary appearance. "We'll make sure it gets to her."

"If it's not too much trouble, I'd appreciate that greatly, thank you," agreed the Second Princess, her grin broadening and brightening in the process. She shifted her posture, then, producing the leather-bound folio from beneath her arm, and sliding it onto the table. "And with that, I have a million and one things to take care of before the night's out, so I must bid you both a good evening. Farewell, for now."

With that, the prime minister beat a swift retreat, off to tend to the half dozen fires she had to either begin, or, as was becoming more and more likely these days (to the best of C.C.'s understanding, at least), contain and extinguish. Curiosity regarding the folio's contents seized her almost immediately, leaving the bookful of verse inadvertently by the wayside as she warred with herself over whether or not she should pry, all to the rhythmic backdrop of Taliesin's pen scratching across the expensive stationery as he put what seemed to be the finishing touches onto his correspondence.

Abruptly, then—or so it seemed to C.C. in her conflicted state—Taliesin stood himself, moving to gather his materials and fold the letter up in preparation for transport. He sighed heavily, clear in his intent to secure her attention, and she gave it, snapping her honey-gold gaze up to his erect stature. "Loath though I am to forsake the pleasure of your agreeable company, Miss C.C., I have duties that must be attended to, not the least of which being arrangements for the evening meal. I leave the business of the folio in your capable hands. If you will excuse me."

"Oh, certainly!" C.C. exclaimed, surprised by the suddenness of the statement. She stole a glance at Justine quickly, and saw that the princess was every bit as engrossed in what was surely one of the driest reads that C.C. could personally imagine as the girl had been what had to have been hours ago; in returning her gaze to Taliesin, the verdette caught his pleasant smile and a bow, and then watched him briskly stride out of sight.

The remaining immortal lasted perhaps thirty seconds unobserved before her curiosity got the better of her, and she surreptitiously pried open the folio to take a peek at its contents. Eagerly, she swept her eyes across the title page—

On the Dynamics of a Gefjun Field, by Rakshata Chawla, PhD.

C.C. blinked once.

She blinked twice.

"…What."