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.

31. Moonlight Sonata

Imperial Capital of Pendragon, February, a.t.b. 2015

Kallen remembered how bewildered she'd been watching Kururugi Suzaku and Princess Justine spar. At the time, she'd considered how they moved and fought to be beyond the scope of what someone could accomplish with a lifetime spent in dedication to the most gruelling training regimen known to man. She'd gone through some of the hardest, most physically demanding courses of conditioning that Kiryū-sensei, by his own admission, had ever given to anyone, himself included; and because of that she'd thought she had some inkling of what that imagined lifetime regimen might entail.

She wasn't certain whether it had been a lack of imagination or a surfeit of youthful arrogance that the past few weeks had seen beaten out of her; but either way, the Kallen of today, groaning and limping, half-blind with sweat and seemingly more bruises than bare skin, could not help but think that if the process she was now suffering through was anything like how Kururugi and the princess had been trained over the years, it made far more sense to her that they'd have reached such a level of seemingly impossible proficiency.

Across the court from her, as her lungs burned and the back of her throat tasted of blood, was none other than the architect of Kallen's suffering.

The immortal (and wasn't that one hell of an adjustment process to get used to) who had introduced herself with the name 'Izanami' was a far cry from the onryō Kallen had seen that first day, after she'd woken in a princess's bedroom and been called for an afternoon chat by that princess's older sister and surrogate mother (which was still a topic she was firm in her dedication to avoiding entirely). At first it had hardly been noticeable, the change which stole upon the immortal when her students, Kururugi Suzaku in particular, if Milly and Juliette were to be believed, left to go fight a doomed war in a faraway territory of the Empire; but as days turned into weeks and time began to wend on, the inky black colouration of her hair began to bleed out in a manner that Kallen recognised as the way of hair dye, and in its place, her locks became the colour of bleached bone. In acknowledgement, seemingly, of this change, she'd eschewed the white traditional wear in favour of attire that looked too much like the truth that Kallen had been dressed to imitate for her to truly believe it was a coincidence, especially given what then transpired.

"That cannot be the measure of you, girl," the slave-driver of a woman called out, the soft leather of her knee-high laced-up brown boots creaking quietly with each step, though Kallen knew the sound was, in truth, deliberate; it kept an opponent from being on guard against a silent approach. The black trousers she wore above them were looser than the style that Princess Justine favoured, and the deep blue, stiff-collared overcoat, as well as the scarf-like sash she'd tied about her waist, were of a style that would have seemed more at home on a ship during the Golden Age of Piracy than a Britannian court function. Her waistcoat, which was so deep a shade of red it seemed almost brown, did nothing to combat this image, and indeed, her ruffled white jabot did everything in the world to attest to it, turquoise brooch or no. A stiff leather mantle settled itself around her shoulders, leading to a long half-cape, and in her hands, covered in brown leather gloves that seemed almost like gauntlets, were clasped a set of two silver weapons, a dagger and a cavalry sabre, that Kallen had had to learn were actually one weapon the hard way. The lidded dispassion of her piercing blue eyes set into that shockingly pale face adopted a different effect in the wake of her allowing her hair to go to its (apparently) natural colour, especially since she'd taken to tying it back into a tail that was bound at the base of her neck, but it was no less unsettling an effect for it. "Get up."

Kallen, who was currently cursing whoever had thrown her into this lion's den for training to be an underhanded sadist, groaned aloud, but reached for her own weapon, a basket-hilted rapier, and did her best to stand, staggering to her feet and bringing her rapier into an en garde position that she knew even then was nothing but an ill-balanced, clumsy mockery of the stance. It was, however, the best she could do, with rivulets of blood and sweat stinging her eyes as they fell, her chest heaving as her lungs struggled to get air.

Izanami, her disaffected expression all but inscrutable besides, rushed Kallen at a shockingly swift, but unmistakably mortal speed, knocking aside her attempt to guard herself with a level of ease that Kallen would have called 'contemptuous' from anyone else, and flicked her sabre to put its point directly beneath the aspiring knight's chin. When Izanami spoke, it was as before, but it felt nonetheless different, in some way that Kallen wouldn't have been able to articulate even if she hadn't been so brutally beaten that joining two thoughts together was proving an impossible task. "If you had not risen, girl, I would have killed you where you lay. But you did well. We're done for the day."

With that assurance, Izanami drew the tip of the blade from Kallen's throat, and stepped back, with not a single hair out of place, even after thrashing Kallen up and down the training ground repeatedly, for however long they'd been at this since morning. "Justine and Suzaku were far beyond you at this same stage of their training, but theirs is a unique genius; you've done better so far than I had any reason to expect."

"Thank…you, I… I guess…?" Kallen gasped out, as she struggled to get her breathing under some measure of control.

The immortal swordswoman nodded, sheathing her dual weapons at her sides, and turned to walk to the other side of the courtyard. "We begin again here tomorrow morning, before dawn breaks. There will be supplements that I provide you, of my own devising, which are intended purely to aid your body in avoiding the muscular deterioration and eventual organ failure that this training regimen will otherwise inflict upon you. It is incumbent upon you to remember to imbibe them; my instruction is not meant for the likes of mortals, and doubly so for those devoid of the resolve or the self-discipline to manage at least that much. But if you do as you're told, and you put in the work I place upon you to my satisfaction…I see no reason why you cannot reach such heights as those which make you worthy of my previous students, if not their equals."

Kallen nodded sharply. It was a familiar enough spiel, and any doubts she might have harboured as to whether training with Izanami was worth it or not had suffered a miscarriage, as the exhibitions that both Kururugi and Princess Justine had put on in early December had killed them in their nascence. This woman was the real deal, in every sense of the term, and Kallen would just have to grit her teeth and keep her chin up; experience had taught her, in no uncertain terms, that the second day would be worse in every way than the first, as the aches and pains she'd cultivated today would return in force on the morrow. Already, there was a feeling of dread that crept up the back of her spine at the prospect of facing training the next day, but she'd long since mastered that feeling training under Kiryū-sensei—for all that his instruction had fallen far short of anything that gave her an edge under this new master of hers, she was immensely grateful for the foundation of conditioning he'd given her nonetheless.

The glint of the mid-morning sun on glass snapped Kallen right out of her recollections, and with nary a thought, her hand lashed out and snatched the small phial out of the air. The glass was clear, and inside was a pale green fluid, which seemed almost independently luminous at first glance. The stopper was on tight, for all that it was little more elaborate than a cork, and she looked up at Izanami quizzically. The immortal then pointed to the phial, and in her soft, ominous voice, she said, "Drink that. It will help."

Shrugging, with the knowledge that Izanami had far more immediate and far more surefire methods of ending her life as a foregone conclusion in her mind, Kallen unstoppered the phial as best she could, her hands still trembling from the exertion she'd just come out of the ass end of, and knocked the contents of it back without a moment's hesitation. The taste was like nothing Kallen had ever encountered before, at once bitter and brackish, sweet and salty…but at the very least, it was a thin enough fluid that, upon swallowing the contents of the phial, they went down her throat easily, for all that it left behind the distinct aftertaste of cough syrup. It was a cool rush that flooded through her body (which, given that the fluid had been just shy of lukewarm when she imbibed it, was somewhat odd), and almost immediately, breath came a little easier to her, as the throbbing, shooting pains began, slowly, to subside into pulsing aches. "What is that? It doesn't look like any pain medication I've ever seen…"

"A simple palliative draught," Izanami explained, as she walked back over to Kallen, her stride long and loping seemingly even when she didn't explicitly intend for it to be. "And the first day's supplement. It adjusts your body to slowly acclimate to the strains that training will put upon it. Suzaku has been drinking such things since she was nine years old, so it's perfectly safe."

Kallen nodded, and then pondered for a moment at something she'd suddenly noticed, cocking her head slightly as she tried to find the most…tactful way to phrase what she was about to say. "You're a lot softer than I'd expected…"

A bone-white brow arched at that. It was darker than the pallour of her flesh, which she apparently wore make-up to disguise, Kallen had learned, but it was still odd for the teenager to see that expression on that kind of face. And yet, it was perhaps the closest thing to actual emotion Kallen had managed to pry out of Izanami throughout the duration of this first training session. "You have not yet proven yourself to be worthy of my harsher nature. Demonstrate that you are strong enough to handle how hard I can push you, and that is what you will get; and yet, I've been asked to make you into a capable fighter, not a corpse. You are neither Justine nor Suzaku—where they flourished, you are more likely to wilt. And so a more patient approach is required."

Kallen winced involuntarily. If this was the patient approach in Izanami's eyes, then she was quite certain she never wanted to encounter the harsher version. No wonder Kururugi and Princess Justine fought like they'd stepped out of the pages of a battle manga, if their experience training under this woman was so much more extreme than her own!

"I had sworn never to take a student before I encountered Suzaku," Izanami volunteered, her glacial blue eyes, cold like death, flickering up and down her body critically. "And then she came to me, followed by Justine. Perhaps it was a foolish decision on my part, to think so highly of my own skills that I neglected to learn the discipline of pedagogy; be thankful that I learned so much from teaching both of them. Else, I cannot guarantee that you would have survived today's instruction."

"Pray, pardon my intrusion," called another voice, familiar and male—Taliesin, the majordomo, her memory supplied after an embarrassingly long moment. Kallen pivoted to regard the man, and there was a brief flash of gratitude, not just for his interruption, but for the fact that the act hurt significantly less than it might have a few moments prior. And sure enough, there he was, in his impeccable black suit and without a hair out of place, pince-nez perched immaculately upon the bridge of his nose. He was smiling pleasantly, of course, but that did nothing to put Kallen at ease; for all that she was grateful that he'd come in time to rescue her from the increasingly strange turn this conversation was taking, there was something about him, something off, subtly but distinctly wrong, about the man, beyond even his immortality, that irked Kallen's senses rather fiercely. It was like the world bent strangely around him, like there was something fake about his existence that wasn't at all the case with Izanami's… She shook her head, clearing her mind of those sorts of thoughts; it was by no means likely that Princess Justine's majordomo could smell the suspicion on her the way it was sometimes said that aggressive dogs could smell fear, but by the same token, until fairly recently, Kallen had also thought of immortality as being 'by no means likely' to exist. And so she was, in the interim, deciding to trust her paranoid instincts until she learned to parse which ones should and should not be listened to.

"There's nothing to pardon. We're done here, anyways," said Izanami, nodding towards Kallen, as she turned on her own heel, and began to prowl off of the courtyard. "She's yours to do with as you please until tomorrow morning, Blackwood. Rejoice."

Pivoting directly away from that ominous-as-fuck statement, Kallen turned her attention away from her new combat tutor, and directly towards the approaching manservant. "You need me for something?"

"Just so," Taliesin replied, stopping a few paces away from her and getting straight to the point. "As it happens, Princess Juliette asked me to retrieve you. Princess Carmilla is moving into her new chambers, and Princess Juliette said that she, and I quote, 'categorically refuses to face this process alone.' I believe it is safe to conclude that your aid as moral support has been solicited."

Kallen sighed, rolling her shoulders as the fatigue settled into them—it seemed that there was only so much that 'palliative draught' could accomplish in one go. Lucky her. "Alright, just…let me get decent, and I'll go join her…"

"Very good, ma'am," Taliesin acknowledged with a nod and a pleasant smile that still looked eerily false—more so than most servants' pleasant expressions usually did, at any rate. He turned halfway toward the corridor that led back into the interior of Belial Palace, indicating the way with a flourishing gesture of his hand. "I hope you won't mind too terribly, but I took the liberty of drawing you a bath, and of arranging your garments for you."

"Um…thank you…?" Kallen said tentatively; for all that she was technically born into a Britannian noble house, and for all that the past few years of her life had been, at least in part, consumed with getting herself acclimated to what that meant and what that entailed, the whole thing that highborn Britannians had with servants still felt more than a little strange to her. Having a stranger draw her a bath, or rifle through her wardrobe to pick out clothes for her to wear, was difficult enough to adjust to when she'd asked for it; and while she was aware that Taliesin's capacity for anticipating the needs of those he served was a quality that made him an exceptional servant, in Britannian terms, it had nonetheless never once failed to catch her flat-footed. Awkwardly, she made to remove herself from this increasingly uncomfortable situation, with her pointing towards the corridor she'd need to take to get to her own rooms in Belial Palace and saying, "I'll…just go…do that now…if it's all the same…"

"Of course, ma'am," the manservant nodded, with one arm crossing his chest as he bent halfway to his waist—an observance of etiquette that still startled Kallen, seeing it outside of the pages of some old handbook her father had sourced for her (Naoto and she were still in disagreement over whether or not this was the same handbook their father had used during his youth) as she was. More than ready and quite a bit more willing to leave the courtyard behind than was perhaps really all that fair to the immortal majordomo, who by all accounts was doing an excellent job of whatever his position entailed (Kallen had yet to commit such peculiarities to memory), she power-walked out of the courtyard and up the stairs to where her ensuite bathroom lay in wait for her.

Once she'd shucked her sodden work-out clothes, consisting of a ratty t-shirt she'd nabbed from her brother, the kind of thing she'd maybe paint a wall while wearing, and a pair of black spandex spats, socks, and trainers, and soaked in the bath to emerge feeling quite a bit more human, and significantly more comfortable in her own skin, she made her way to her own bedroom, to find clothes hanging from a divider in the corner of the chamber. She and Juliette hadn't really slept together since that first night, and so she'd seen a great deal more of this room than she'd expected when they touched down and disembarked Milly's private jet almost two weeks ago, but Kallen was in no real rush; when it came down to it, she was no more knowledgeable on how this sort of arrangement was handled than her…lover, she supposed? And there was also the fact that Juliette was hard at work, seemingly around the clock, her time consumed with her doing various courtly, princess-y tasks that apparently had a great deal to do with the dizzying, and perhaps even purposefully overcomplicated, intricacies of Britannian politics…

The clothes that had been selected for her weren't too different from what she might normally wear, for which she was grateful; she had no idea how Juliette made it through the day in all those long, flowing dresses she garbed herself in on a daily basis. Though, of course, seeing as this was Britannia, and she was the companion of a princess of the realm, her own garments were still ludicrously lavish, with tan breeches and black-and-brown riding boots, a lacy white poet's blouse, and a forest-green double-breasted waistcoat overtop it. And here, in this situation, she could properly give thanks to Taliesin's expertise, for the fact that she didn't have to fret over whether she'd be expected to wear a jabot or a cravat or whatever the Hell kind of neckwear was in fashion this season. This was for daywear, to be worn around the house, and it was a bit of a comfort that such qualifiers meant she didn't have to dress all stuffy.

After a few moments that she spent in front of a mirror attached to the vanity she'd been provided, running her hand through her crimson hair and ruffling it to arrange it into the 'down, but not fully tamed' style that she favoured nowadays, she took a deep, steadying breath, and then left her chambers (and how weird was that, that the plural was more than just a vestigial allusion here) to go face the music.

She knew the way to Milly's chambers by now, and even if she didn't, she could have let herself be guided by the sound of a building commotion, and gotten about the same result. She shook her head at the thought, as she rounded the corner, and—

Inwardly, she sighed at the fact that seeing Juliette in a new outfit kept leaving her dumbstruck; but in her defence, the elegant gown of rich royal blue silk in which she'd attired herself, high in the waist and with a neckline that scooped low, together with how her sandy blonde hair had grown since their meeting to reach shoulder-length, was a portrait-worthy image—the kind of scene that a lay person could quite easily be forgiven for thinking never came about naturally in real life. The beauty of her face was softer than her scary sister's by a wide margin, with her high cheekbones only seeming to feed into the heart-shape of her countenance, her brow delicate, her lips full and kind… Juliette was the spring to her elder sister's winter. Kallen's eyes roved over her body almost involuntarily, beyond the scope of the viscountess's control, but they calmed when they fell upon her lover's violet gaze—a gaze which, while seemingly happy to see her, was nonetheless tight at its edges with mild distress. "Good morning, Kallen."

Kallen almost bowed, but stopped herself just in time—it hadn't taken her very long to deduce that any indication of Kallen's acknowledgement of Juliette's status would make her profoundly uncomfortable, and so she made an effort to do nothing of the sort. As she strode forth again to join her lover, the aborted bow was turned into a nod, and if, in so doing, Kallen was less discreet than she hoped she was, Juliette was at least kind enough not to notice. "Good morning to you as well, Juliette. You need my help, I'm told? Something about unpacking stuff and 'moral support'?"

Juliette sighed, and it was musical like a lullaby. "Yes, something like that. Milly's gone to receive Euphy, who's stopping by for the day, what with Marrybell and Oldrin being gone, and then we're going to go into the bedroom she and Justine are going to be sharing, and helping her move in and decorate."

"Mm," Kallen hummed, nodding in acknowledgement. Then a question sprung to her mind, and she gave it voice. "We've been here for two weeks already. Why hasn't Milly unpacked before now?"

"Because the rooms she was staying in before the wedding are not the same ones she'll be calling home afterwards," Juliette explained patiently. "Until now, Milly lived in a set of apartments in a different part of the palace, for the sake of propriety. Not that that stopped Justine from leaving her own chambers to sleep in Milly's over the past few months, or really vice versa, but…"

She shrugged to punctuate the statement, a small thing, barely more than a rise and fall of her pale, creamy shoulders.

Kallen shook her head to dispel the mental image of 1) Milly Ashford (or vi Britannia, she supposed was more accurate now) and Princess Justine, two of the most terrifying women she'd ever met, fucking regularly, and 2) exactly how Juliette was so knowledgeable about the nitty-gritty details of the shared sex life of her older sister/surrogate mother and sister-in-law, with mixed results, before focusing on what was really important right now. Speaking of which…"Okay, so why now?"

"Because I was robbed of my honeymoon," came the bitchy, demanding alto of the woman who ran Ashford Academy as a dictatorship, however benevolent, echoing slightly through the corridor as she came around the far corner. "Thanks to persons who shall remain unnamed, my wife and I have quite a bit of lost time to make up for. I don't intend to wait for a single moment longer than absolutely necessary once this business in the south finally reaches its resolution."

And sure enough, approaching them rapidly was none other than Milly vi Britannia, dressed in a red button-down plaid shirt and distressed denim shorts that were so short that they left around ninety percent of her lean, muscled thigh completely bare. Her long golden hair was left unbound and lustrous, bouncing with each decisive stride that were just shy of stomps, her own trainers tracking a path directly towards them; with cotton-candy-haired Princess Euphemia at her heels, dressed in a manner practically identical to Kallen's own attire—though in the princess's case, everything except her own blouse was jet black, up to and including the ribbon she bound said cotton candy hair back with.

Juliette sighed, exasperated and long-suffering. "I fear I will never understand your fascination with wearing commoner clothes, Milly…"

"Well, besides the fact that I'm none too fond of wearing dresses, they're simple enough to don and doff without much of a fuss," Milly shrugged, taking a wheeling path around Juliette to come face-to-face with the door to her own marital chambers. "You might have come to enjoy it as I do, if not for the fact that you have an image to maintain."

"Somehow, I doubt that," Juliette chuckled sceptically, raising a brow.

Milly shrugged again. "Fine then. Suit yourself."

"Good morning, Princess Euphemia," Kallen bade the rosette, purely for the sake of allaying the sudden sensation of being a third wheel. "How do you do?"

The seventh-born daughter of Charles zi Britannia smiled at Kallen, cordial but genuine, and with a degree of sympathy that Kallen, frankly, wasn't quite certain how to interpret. "I'm doing very well indeed this morning, Heiress Stadtfeld, thank you. And I certainly hope the same is true of yourself."

"Honestly, that kind of remains to be seen," Kallen sighed, her smile rueful in the face of her lover and the woman who was technically her boss bickering back and forth, like characters on a bad sit-com.

Princess Euphemia's indigo eyes went wide at Kallen's candour, but after a moment, she chuckled under her breath, shaking her head ruefully. "I'm afraid I know the feeling…"

"If you two are quite finished with the pleasantries," Milly's 'taskmaster' voice, as Nina had aptly begun to refer to it, snapped, cutting between the brief conversation the two third wheels (third and fourth wheels, perhaps? No, that would defeat the purpose of the idiom… Maybe third and fifth? Yeah, that was more fitting) very neatly in half. "We've got work to do. Come on, girls, we're burning daylight."

With that, Milly pushed the double doors to her marital chambers open with a flourish of her wrists, and the threshold yawned wide before them.

"I asked Taliesin ahead of time to handle the furniture, so I'm not going to have to ask any of you to do any heavy lifting," said Milly, as if it was a mercy she was offering—and honestly, knowing her, it very well might have been. The Mythic Bitch of Ashford Academy was, by all accounts, a fair and effective leader, in Kallen's experience; but by that same token, she also knew Milly to bea demanding hard-ass. So, unwilling to look the gift horse in the mouth, Kallen proceeded into the parlour that was the antechamber to the bedroom, and saw a variety of reusable cardboard boxes of various sizes and dimensions arranged in a few piles around the room. The walls of the parlour had been painted a shade of grey that managed to seem full-bodied instead of oppressive, the carpeting beneath her boots was a deep blue that was difficult for her to distinguish from black at first glance, and the bookshelves and tables were all of a rich, dark wood, with a few layers of stain and varnish that really brought out the beauty of the grains and whorls, with a number of decorative carvings inlaid with gold for good measure. This was especially visible on the bookshelves, towering and bare things that they were, but the low table that was positioned in the direct centre of the arrangement of settees, armchairs, and chaise lounge that made up the sitting-room's furnishings was by no means any less intricate than the shelves. Even the few filing cabinets she spied around the room prompted a double-take, because at first glance they all looked like chests of drawers (the only distinguishing detail being the size and shape of the drawers themselves).

The bedroom was positioned towards the north side of the palace, and so it did not surprise Kallen that the right side of the parlour was the only wall that had windows—positioned directly above the filing cabinets that looked like chest of drawers, reaching halfway to the ceiling, and flanked on either side by a set of gold-embroidered black curtains. The sunlight poured in through it, illuminating the room, as well as the light fixtures strategically interspersed around the chamber, each of which was figured to look exactly like a gas lamp, for all that Kallen was certain that these were electrical. All of this was very lovely and elegant, especially when she took into account the high-quality black leather that upholstered all the sitting furniture in the parlour, but…none of it looked very 'Milly.'

It seemed Juliette was of a similar mind when she noted, "This is all very…Justine…"

"That was the intent," Milly replied with an insouciant shrug. "So I'm glad it came across."

"Don't you want to leave some markers of your own around here…?" Kallen asked hesitantly.

"Why would I?" Milly asked, throwing a furrowed brow over her shoulder as she strode towards a pile of boxes at the far side of the parlour. "That's what the bedroom is for."

Juliette's eyes went wide, and she coughed into the back of her wrist suddenly. Kallen didn't blame her one bit; whatever fucked-up relationship she might have had with her sister, having Princess Justine be confirmed as a bottom was probably extremely low on the list of things Juliette wanted to know about her older sibling.

"As if there was ever any doubt about that," Euphemia chuckled, and Kallen suppressed the urge to whirl around, having almost forgotten that she was there. "What with how eerily well Justine plays the part of the glamorous trophy wife…"

"On that note," Milly said, grabbing a brown cardboard box from the top of the pile she'd just come alongside and lifting it with no visible effort, "We're doing said bedroom today, girls, so pick a box to take in and get a move on. This parlour is nothing you all won't probably see half a million times over the next couple of years."

"Sure thing," Kallen sighed, walking over towards the pile Milly had pulled from, and attempting to take the second box in the pile into her arms—only to find it much more difficult than she'd expected, what with how she'd been thrashed up and down the way just a few hours ago. Kallen's beaten biceps, deltoids, and quads screamed in protest as she, with a grunt, managed to pry the box in question off of the top of the pile, before moving out of the way to give space for Princess Euphemia and Juliette to circle the third box on either side, attempting a joint carry. From the gasps and the curses behind her as Kallen turned away, the second box securely, but unhappily in her grasp, their endeavour was met with success, however mixed. It was enough of a divergence from what she'd expected, given the initial reassurance, that she felt inspired to say, "Fucking Hell, Milly, what did you fill these with?! Cinder blocks?!"

Milly whirled around and looked at her like she'd just drooled on her shirt—while, in a move that would have had Kallen's arms crying out for mercy even if she was fresh, shifting the box she'd taken so that she could hold it with one arm, balanced against her hip. "What, did you have a brain tumour for breakfast? Of course not, you pillock. Even if, for whatever reason, I had a use for cinder blocks, I certainly wouldn't have put them in a cardboard box. That's just a recipe for disaster…"

It occurred to her just then that really, Kallen only had herself to blame for judging the weight of the boxes' contents by how easily Milly carried hers; her time at Ashford Academy should have taught her by now just how stupidly strong the student council president was, but in her defence, that was a fact that was shockingly easy to forget—especially given the fact that Milly had at least a solid ten centimetres on her in terms of height these days. "Alright, fine, but still, these are really fucking heavy…"

Milly rolled her eyes and huffed, even as she reached out with her free hand and firmly pushed open the doors to the bedchamber beyond. "Fucking invalids, the lot of you…"

The first impulse Kallen registered upon seeing the bedroom's interior, besides her embattled arms pleading with her to please drop the box that was causing them so much pain, was that there wasn't all that much of a difference between the parlour and the bedchamber—which was what went through her mind the moment she saw that the large, king-sized bed was covered with lavish black silk sheets; but as she stepped into the bedchamber, with more and more of it coming into view, that perspective changed rather abruptly.

First, the bed-frame itself wasn't made of wood, but rather of reinforced black metal. It was figured decoratively, of course, but there was no mistaking the fact that it had been built with structural integrity in mind, first and foremost. It was as sturdy as it was elegant, with thick bars and flourishing inscriptions, and Kallen figured that if she dropped a Knightmare on top of the frame, the worst it would do was buckle.

Off to the side, then, there was an array of exercise equipment, for anything from pull-ups to bench pressing, and a rack with an assortment of weights was flush against the wall—dumbbells on top, while the bottom was occupied by large cast-iron bumper plates. On the other side of the room, the one facing to the west, there was an open door that led to the sumptuous full ensuite bathroom, and there was another set of doors that led into what looked like a room for a walk-in wardrobe. Against the wall adjacent to the door, a large vanity was arranged and ready to be filled, and a chaise lounge mirrored the exercise equipment to the other side of the very large metal-framed bed. The same carpeting adorned the floor, but a spot for large black marble tiles had been cleared beneath the exercise equipment, presumably for the sake of traction.

On the eastern wall were also large floor-to-ceiling windows, such that the morning sunlight came pouring into the room, which was itself flanked by gold-embroidered crimson silk curtains, and to the left of the bed, a smaller window (not that that was saying much) gave a more or less unobstructed view of the mountains to the north of Pendragon, beside which was another bookshelf of an even darker wood than the furnishings in the parlour. The walls were painted a deep maroon shade, and wherever a bookshelf did not sit, there were instead spots for weapon mounts, and other kinds of shelves made specifically for the sake of display; and elsewhere on the same wall, there were hooks that were by no means sufficiently spread out enough to be for the purpose of mounting weapon racks, the intended use of which Kallen could only guess at.

There was a trunk at the foot of the bed, as well—an oblong black box, which at a glance appeared to be of the same wood that was used to make the shelves, decorated with silver ornaments in the shapes of serpents with bat-wings, bearing flecks of ruby for eyes, and every so often for a central bevelled gem. This theme's meaning, which found itself repeated in the nightstand tables to either side of the bed, was at least readily apparent to Princess Euphemia and Juliette, both of whose eyes shot almost comically wide at the sight of it; and not for the first time, Kallen felt as though she was in fact the only one here who was not in on the joke.

This trunk was the one that Milly sat her own box down upon, with a thump that suggested that the newlywed's burden was by no means inferior to the ones they themselves bore into the bedchamber. Kallen put her own down next to Milly's with a grunt of relief, which heralded little more sympathy than another roll of her piercing diamond-blue eyes as the lady of the house passed Kallen to go grab another box, and in short order, Kallen moved to the side to allow Juliette and Princess Euphemia to set down their own load before going back to get another.

All in all, it took the better part of five agonising minutes to move all of the dozen cardboard boxes from the parlour and into the bedchamber, and by the end of it, everyone but Milly, whose derision at their perceived weakness was unrelenting, was surpassingly glad to be done with that part of their task.

"You know, I expected this sort of thing from Euphy and Juliette, but I'm surprised at you, Kallen," Milly remarked without much in the way of inflection. "I would have thought you might find this about as easy as I did…"

"Yeah, well…you…didn't have to…go through," Kallen heaved as she caught her breath, and did her best to roll out her shoulders so that she didn't regret being born even more tomorrow morning. "What I did this morning… I think that…anyone would have…noodle-arms…after the training session from Hell that…I went through…"

Milly arched a brow and pursed her lips ever so slightly, an expression that was enough to send any cowering student at school into a frenetic panic; even Kallen felt herself quailing a little under its weight. "I have seen both Suzaku and my wife walk off their own training sessions and then go about the rest of their day without impediment when they were twelve. I have no idea what you're being so dramatic about…"

"Yeah…well…" Kallen sighed, doing her best to pull herself together in spite of what wound up being her next retort. "How about…fuck you, too."

"If you've got enough of your breath back to curse me out, you've got enough of your breath back for us to move on," huffed Milly, rolling her eyes in exasperation yet again as she produced a box cutter, seemingly out of thin air, and slashed apart the first few boxes. "C'mon, girls, let's get our asses into gear."

The first few boxes, thankfully, were not all that physically demanding, filled with innocuous items like novels and ledgers. There were a lot of novels and duplicate ledger books, of course, which had given the boxes their weight, but individually, and even in small groups, they were relatively painless. They even worked out a system, whereby Princess Euphemia, Juliette, and Kallen would work meticulously to divest the boxes of their contents, and Milly would then take said contents and move them to precisely where she wanted them. And in retrospect, her first warning ought to have been when they moved away from books and into cosmetics, that the contents they were unpacking were escalating in the intimacy of their nature.

Unfortunately, that didn't prepare her for what happened shortly thereafter.

"What is this?" Princess Euphemia asked, cocking her head quizzically as she pulled out a series of black leather straps secured together with buckles, like a collection of interlocking belts. And attached to a part of it that must have qualified as its front was a flat black leather plate, with a metal ring fused to it.

"Oh, that?" Milly called out casually over her shoulder. "That's a harness."

"…A harness for what?" asked Juliette, even as she reached her hand into her own box, emerging with a large, stiff, tapering, vibrantly red tube of silicone a moment later—which bore an increasingly suspicious similarity to…

"For what you have in your hand, actually," Milly supplied, as she turned away from the book she'd just placed onto an upper shelf and approached Juliette, who stared at the red length uncomprehendingly. "It's quite simple, you see: the flat end goes into the harness, and the tapered end goes into your sister."

A soldier holding a live grenade could not have dropped their offending object faster than Juliette did hers. "Oh, merciless Hells…"

Princess Euphemia popped her head over Juliette's shoulder to take a gander at it, and Kallen was in truth transfixed with morbid fascination; it was certainly the right shape, now that she'd finally put two and two together, but by the same token, it was just so…

"Big," Princess Euphemia remarked bluntly. "And brutal…"

Juliette stepped away, waving her hands in the air as if looking to cleanse them, her face a pinched rictus of discomfort and mortification. Kallen could certainly sympathise.

"Thirty-five centimetres," Milly supplied, and Kallen didn't even need to look at her to have a clear image of the exact sort of malevolent, sadistic grin she was wearing. She sighed wistfully. "Let it never be said that my wife is not a demanding woman, in her own way…"

"That's exceptional craftsmanship…" Princess Euphemia goggled in admiration. "A custom order, I take it?"

"Most assuredly," was the answer.

"Could I get the maker's contact information…?"

"We are moving on!" Juliette declared shrilly.

Kallen turned her head quickly enough to catch Milly mouthing 'later' to the pink-haired princess, but it seemed as though peace was restored.

…Right up until the next item that was pulled forth wound up being a leash.

"Excellent source of leverage, that," Milly informed them maliciously. "Though, of course, her hair is leagues better in that regard…"

"Can we please talk about anything else? Anything?" Juliette pleaded, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed with the mortified horror of being party to all of this.

"But Juliette," Milly protested in an obviously faux-innocent tone, pressing her hand to her chest in a mimed pearl-clutching. "We haven't even gotten to the handcuffs yet! Let alone the chains!"

"…Chains?" Kallen found herself asking before she could think better of it.

"Well, you didn't think the hook I had installed into the ceiling was meant to hang a chandelier, did you?" Milly asked rhetorically.

What hook…? Kallen thought to herself, before looking up—and sure enough, there on the ceiling, amidst a mural seemingly depicting the sky of a particular night (astronomy was not a field Kallen knew all that much about, and certainly not enough to identify which night this was at a glance) was a large hook of gleaming, polished metal, seeming certainly strong enough for a person the same size as Princess Justine to be hung from without significant issue. It was positioned so that whatever was hung from it would dangle no more than an arm's length from the chaise lounge, she couldn't help but notice. Still, she felt obliged to mention, "Oh, that hook… I hadn't noticed it was there…"

"It's fairly rare that people in general think to look up, worry not," said Milly dismissively.

"Euphy, dearest," Juliette interjected, her composure straining more than Kallen had ever seen it, at least outside of the bedroom. Not this specific one, mind—the one that was a euphemism for sex. "I cannot help but notice a distinct lack of a certain companion of yours. What's become of Mycroft between the day of the wedding and now?"

Princess Euphemia, who had seemed until this point very much like she wished she had a pad and a pen to take down notes with, was momentarily diverted. "Oh, Mycroft?"

"Yes, Mycroft. Your unofficial bodyguard," stressed Juliette, her tone growing increasingly insistent as this situation continued. "Mycroft Darlton, the boy you've decided to knight when the time comes. That Mycroft. Do you recall what became of him such that he's not here? Guarding you?"

"Oh, that," the pink-haired princess replied with a flippant wave of dismissal. "I granted him leave to go with his father and visit his family on holiday for a while. He should be back by around the middle of the month—I told him that I wouldn't be undefended because Oz could guard both Marry and myself in his absence, and I had to promise that I'd come here whenever they were off doing other things. So, here I am. Oh! Sorry, Milly, I didn't mean to get distracted…"

Milly, for her part, easily waved off Princess Euphemia's contrition. "It's no matter. I'll give you a list of where I got my tools from later on today."

"What's this I hear about tools?" came a teasing, habitually nonchalant contralto, as in through the open doors came a lithe, young-looking woman, with her long, lime-green hair cascading down the back of her maroon tea gown, her dark amber slippers padding across the floor, as her honey-gold eyes danced with mirth at someone else's expense. She was beautiful in a cool, almost autumnal way, the way an orchard and a field of turning leaves could be, with the impassive chill getting ready to give way to winter, and she did not hide her appreciation as those same honey-gold eyes flicked up and down Kallen's body. "And my, my, does someone here clean up nicely indeed…"

"Good morning to you, too, C.C.," Kallen sighed, standing fully from the crouch she'd sank into as she and the other girls worked away at unpacking for Milly. She brushed some imaginary dust from off of her breeches, and then stepped away; something about C.C. rubbed Kallen the wrong way, as well, but in a manner that was completely different from her discomfort around Taliesin—it was the same sort of unease, she might imagine, that accompanied an unspoken statement that insisted on being an elephant in the room, and Kallen wasn't terribly sure of how to navigate something like that; so she'd chosen to avoid instead, for the moment at least. "We were just helping Milly unpack and decorate…"

"While also having fun at Juliette's expense, I see," C.C. observed with a quirk of her lips, a sort of half-smirk that the youngest of the immortals in the building was quite proficient with. Her eyes darted up, and then snapped back to the ceiling, as she adopted a pose of consideration. "How heavy?"

Kallen had no idea what was being asked with that half-question, but it seemed as though Milly was able to pick up on it immediately. She wiggled her hand in a gesture of approximation. "Planning for about seven hundred fifty to eight hundred kilos, chains and all."

C.C. nodded in approval. "Then yes, that'll do it. I would have advised installing extra supports in the ceiling if you were expecting to get up to around eight hundred fifty or nine hundred…"

Milly scoffed. "I'm certainly not going to be the one chained there…"

C.C. smirked, shifting to position herself with arms akimbo. "No, I suppose not…"

"Was there a reason you came to join us, C.C.?" Juliette sighed heavily.

"Taliesin asked me to swing by, as it happens," the verdette replied, walking around all of them to sit herself on the metal-framed bed with a brief gasp of surprise. "This is very comfortable, Milly…"

"Only the best," the blonde replied, smirking in fierce pride.

"I can certainly see that…" C.C. purred, flopping down onto the bed on her side. Batting her lashes at Milly, she asked, "Any chance you're looking for a third~?"

"C.C.," snapped Juliette, her violet eyes flashing in irritation.

"Yeah, C.C., not cool…" Princess Euphemia muttered. Milly's eyes flashed, but she said nothing.

C.C. rolled her eyes. "Alright, fine, whatever. Spoilsport… Taliesin sent me to tell you that the girl from HCLI called you back. She said something about the Savile, at half past three."

"Thank you," Juliette huffed; then, she turned to Princess Euphemia, exasperated. "And Euphy, for the hundred thousandth time, stop sleeping with commoners! I don't care how vigorously this scullery maid or that housekeeper batted their eyelashes at you!It's indecent! And more than that, it's a security risk!"

"Who says I haven't?!" Princess Euphemia exclaimed defensively, standing as she did so.

Juliette folded her arms beneath her chest incredulously. "Oh, really. And since when have you used 'cool' to refer to something other than the weather, hm? Not even Suzaku uses the word like that, Euphy! You had to have picked it up somewhere!"

In that moment, Princess Euphemia resembled nothing so strongly as a child caught with her hand elbow-deep in the proverbial cookie jar. She blinked twice, looking caught; and then, all at once, she confessed, "…Alright, in my defence, she's in my Economics 101 class, and she offered to make me coffee afterwards!"

"Euphemia li Britannia…!"

"It was really good coffee!"

---

The Savile, as it happened, was a high-class restaurant that commanded a highly-coveted central location in Pendragon's Red Light District (which Kallen had since learned the proper name of, and agreed with Juliette on 'Red Light' being less ridiculous), where only the appetisers cost below three figures, and a reservation could take months to secure without the proper connections. According to Juliette, the Savile was well-regarded not just for its fine dining during the day, but also its shift from restaurant to bordello at night, where courtesans regularly charged five figures or more per hour in Britannian pounds sterling; and these bits of information swirled around fruitlessly in Kallen's mind as Taliesin deftly handled the Panther De Ville through the shockingly clean streets of Pendragon. She hadn't even seen the place in anything but her mind's eye, and already Kallen felt impossibly underdressed to set foot in that kind of establishment.

Now, granted, Juliette had been the one to pick out how Kallen dressed for this—Juliette, who never looked inappropriate in whatever context she was present in, Kallen had learned by now. Her paramour (the proper term, Kallen had learned when Juliette explained the plan here) had claimed to be a socialite as well as a politician, since in Britannia, both roles were so very closely intertwined; and it was a title that she put effort into making sure she lived up to. She'd chosen a cerulean and sky-blue dress for this outing; it was a high-waisted silk gown, what with it still being winter, and with the season being on to boot, with pagoda sleeves and ungathered white lace 'engageantes' (the word was still unfamiliar to Kallen) that was worn in a few layers, alongside a pair of sheer white lace gloves that went only to her wrists, and no further. The gown itself was decorated with silver brocade, and though Juliette's light brown hair was short enough that it was by no means considered unduly aggressive or overly sanguine for her to wear down, she still brought a broad-brimmed straw hat to wear, with a long tail feather from a peacock tucked into the band, alongside a sturdy royal blue shawl she drew around her shoulders (also decorated with silver), and a powder-blue parasol decorated with white lace embroidery.

In contrast, Kallen's own attire had changed very little since that morning; the ruffles at the neckline of her blouse were elaborate enough for her to forego proper neckwear (and it was apparently something of a fashion statement in and of itself), and she now wore a moss green tailcoat, a chestnut brown garrick coat, and a pair of brown leather gloves atop the garments that she'd had laid out for her that morning. When the outfit had been revealed to her in her own reflection before they left Belial Palace, it had taken Kallen a bit to recognise herself in the mirror, but in the time since, the spell had worn off more and more, and she felt a bit frumpier and more ridiculous with every minute spent in the vehicle bearing them to their destination.

"We'll need to get you fitted for a corset," Juliette remarked, apropos of nothing; and at that, Kallen snapped out of her spiral of compounding self-deprecation, startled at the suddenness of the comment, and at last catching Juliette's violet eyes flicking up and down her chest in frank appraisal. "And by the looks of things, the sooner the better…"

Kallen was so taken aback by this that all she could really think to say in the moment was, "I'd like to be able to breathe, thanks."

Her paramour's brow furrowed in confusion. "Why would you not be able to breathe…?"

"Well, you said corsets," said Kallen, becoming a little confused herself in the process. "Don't those restrict your breathing and stuff?"

Juliette looked at her flatly. "Kallen, Justine has worn a corset since she was twelve. The same is true of Marrybell, and Oldrin, and even myself, to some extent or other. Trust me when I say that they don't actually restrict your breathing. If you're wearing a corset and can't breathe properly, you're either trying to wear one that doesn't fit, or you're wearing it incorrectly."

That ran counter to everything Kallen had heard about corsets when she was little; but of the two of them, Juliette was the one who had grown up in a culture that more or less normalised their use, so perhaps her own knowledge was closer to the truth than the E.U.-produced historical fiction movies from Kallen's childhood years. "Okay, so…why do I need one, though?"

"Because every so often, your brassiere flashes through your blouse," Juliette replied honestly, still in that mode of frank assessment. "And it makes you look a little wanton. Not to mention, as far as your chest is concerned, corsetry is actually regarded as the superior option for the…generously endowed, shall we say? In comparison to brassieres, at any rate. It also lets us be quite a bit more daring with our shoulders than we otherwise would be, since there are no straps to worry about. They're good for your posture, too."

"And…why are they considered better for girls like me?" Kallen sighed.

"Well, for one, the weight of your chest would be distributed across your waist and hips, instead of being left to hang from your shoulders," Juliette shrugged. "And don't think I haven't seen you rolling your shoulders at the end of the day, Kallen. This could help alleviate that."

"Fine, we'll do it your way…" conceded the redhead, letting her head loll back against the backseat of the Panther De Ville.

"Very good. I'll make the arrangements," Juliette nodded; she fiddled with her folded parasol for a bit, and then added, "Not to mention, you can sew puncture-proofing and ballistic armour plating into them with relative ease. Justine's corsetière will know how to do that—we'll take you to her."

"So, your sister's just rolling around with a knife-turning bullet-proof vest on her body, twenty-four seven?" Kallen asked, cocking a brow. There had to be a story behind that, she figured—that, or Princess Justine was just incredibly paranoid. Either could be true, she supposed, though it seemed like it would be an odd type of paranoia to have also put Kallen, someone who she barely knew, in a position to protect her younger sister, whom, at the time, Kallen had recently deflowered…

"Yes, she does," Juliette answered, though the corner of her mouth tightened minutely even as she spoke the affirmation. "My sister isn't the sort of person who makes the same mistake twice. She only had to get stabbed once when she wasn't expecting it for her to think to take preventative measures against any future incidents. No doubt Lord Jeremiah breathes a sigh of relief for that fact alone…"

"I imagine Milly feels the same way," Kallen chuckled, and then sighed. Though, thinking about the relationship between her boss and her boss's wife presented its own hazards: it got Kallen thinking, namely about the nuances of her own relationship with the girl who sat across the Panther De Ville's cabin from her right then. She knew that neither of them knew how to navigate this situation, of course, but just then, with Milly on the mind, Kallen realised that if neither of them chose to take the first step to allay that awkward feeling that lay between them even now, then it might never disappear on its own. That thought inspired in her the same peculiar courage that had provoked her to take Juliette out on the ballroom floor the night they met, at Princess Juliette's birthday party-cum-bridal shower, and so she ventured to ask, "Um, Juliette?"

"Yes, Kallen?" Juliette replied, and immediately the full weight of her attention fell upon Kallen, as if she had suddenly somehow become the most interesting thing in the world. It was a heady feeling, but it wasn't enough to stop her, certainly not when she was feeling like this.

"Don't take this the wrong way—I certainly don't want to push you into anything you aren't ready for, of course, and not just because I'm pretty sure your big sister would feed me my own intestines if I so much as considered pressuring you into doing anything…"

"As if you even could," Juliette interjected, with her mouth quirking up into a nasty, superior little smirk that made Kallen want to wipe it off of her face—but in a way that was somehow every bit as affectionate as it was aggressive. Kallen…honestly wasn't entirely sure where that had come from, or how to process that feeling, and so she elected to ignore the interruption for the time being.

"I guess I'm just wondering why we haven't…you know…had sex since the first night," continued Kallen, her phrasing much more direct than she'd meant it to be, before Juliette got that smirk on her face that made dark, undiscovered parts of the redheaded heiress roil in aggressive, devouring want—the same part of her that got a euphoric little kick of satisfaction from how that expression immediately evaporated. "I mean, I get that neither of us know what we're doing here, really, and I wouldn't really think twice on it otherwise, but…Juliette, do you realise that we haven't even kissed since we woke up in bed together? You said that you wanted to make something of this, and I believe you, then and now, but… I guess I just feel like I'm getting mixed signals, is all…"

There was a tense moment of silence that followed Kallen's declaration, and upon recollection, she would probably later conclude that the tension most likely made the moment seem as if it lasted for a much longer span of time than it actually did, during which time she found herself unable to tear her gaze away from Juliette's suddenly utterly illegible expression, but that tension broke when Juliette averted her eyes and gave a little exhale that was halfway between a gasp and a sigh. "I see… Then I believe I owe you…an apology, of a sort… The truth is, I haven't invited you back to my bed for a number of reasons, very few of them having much to do with you, personally, and rather, more with you as an abstract concept…"

"I'm not sure I understand…" said Kallen, electing to be candid.

"I'm not a good person, Kallen," Juliette said bluntly, swinging her eyes up to meet Kallen's once more, and resolutely this time. "My sister calls herself a monster because that's what our mother taught her she was. She's embraced that title in an attempt to remove its sting, that it may never again be used to hurt her—and only time will tell if it's a misguided effort or not. But I am not my sister. When I call myself a monster, Kallen, I want you to believe me when I tell you that I do so because that's what I am. I enjoy what I do. I take pleasure in the pain I inflict on others.

"The night that I orchestrated the desolation of my half-sister's family, purely to get her executed, purely to hurt my eldest half-sister, for the sole reason that, years ago, she bad-mouthed Justine in my presence, was the best night of my entire life, right up until the night we met. I rejoiced in her destruction. I thought nothing of using others, who in this matter if not in others were innocent, to get precisely what I wanted. In fact, I thought the pleasure I took in it was sexual, until you taught me otherwise. I am, at heart, a product of this nation and its excesses every bit as much as His Majesty is—a sublimation of its values just as he is their embodiment. And yet, for all of that, I find that…I do care about you, Kallen, in a way I thought it was impossible for me to care about anyone other than Justine. I'd long since given up on any chance of romantic fulfilment, especially once I understood the truth of my own nature. And…it's because of that, Kallen, that I don't want you to go into this with the wrong idea, either of what being with me will entail, or of the kind of person that I am. For all that I may be, I'm not the sort of person who'll let you get close to me unless you're entirely aware of what it is that you'll be getting yourself into.

"Make no mistake, Kallen. If you choose to stay with me, I'll drag you down until you're no better than I am, and your heart is every bit as black as mine," Juliette said with a shuddering sigh. "I know, deep down, that I could find it in myself to love you, Kallen, and that… That terrifies me in ways I can't yet fully understand, let alone articulate. I'm just…not so certain that you could learn to love me. The real me, that is. And that…that is what has stayed my hand thus far."

The cabin fell silent once again in the aftermath of Juliette's speech; Kallen's eloquence, such as it was, was robbed from her, her mind and heart caught in a mélange of dark, squirming emotions from deep, uncharted parts of herself, emotions that she didn't know the first thing of how to interpret or interrogate in the slightest. She wasn't sure how she felt—only that she was aware of how she was supposed to feel, and that that was decidedly not the way she actually felt… And yet, for the sake of not accidentally giving her paramour, Juliette, the wrong idea with her silence, she felt obliged to say, albeit pensively, "I see. Thank you for telling me."

Juliette was silent, seemingly at an uncharacteristic loss for words herself, for a few long moments. Then, she sighed, heavily, the force of it shuddering through her shoulders once more. "Look. Kallen. I… The last thing I want to do right now is make assumptions on how you must be feeling, let alone then to go and act upon said assumptions. So… So you're going to be coming with me today. I want you to consider all that I do and say in the context of what I have just told you, and if, after all of that, you decide that you want out, that you want nothing to do with me, or with all of this…then tomorrow morning, I'll go and have a talk with Milly, and you'll be on a flight back to Area Eleven as early as can be arranged. I'll never darken your door ever again.

"But, if you see all that I am today, with the curtain of my deceptions drawn back…" she continued, closing her eyes to take a steadying breath. "And if, even after the truth that lies at the core of me has been laid bare to you, you decide that you can find it within yourself to stay with me—that you might even one day find it within yourself to love me, as I know I can you—then… Then you should know that the door to my bedchambers won't be locked; not this night, nor any other. If tonight, you seek to avail yourself of me, to…to partake of me…then I shall know, too, the truth of your heart, in this matter as in all matters. And we shall go from there."

Juliette's cheeks flushed crimson even as she delivered that unhappy proclamation, and something lurched in Kallen at the sight of it. Just like that, she knew innately, deep down inside herself, that in truth, there was no conflict, that her mind had already been made up, the decision settled…

…She just didn't know what that decision was just yet.

"A-Anyways…" Juliette stammered slightly, shifting in her seat and closing her eyes as she began to pull herself together in record time—almost before Kallen knew it, the regal mien she was so familiar with was firmly back in place on Juliette's face, with so little indication of the nature of the conversation they'd just had that if Kallen hadn't been a participant, she never would have known it happened at all. A moment later, Juliette cocked a brow, favoured Kallen with a half-smile that was charming enough to make anyone looking on feel their heart skipping a beat, and said, "It seems that we've arrived."

And sure enough, the Panther De Ville slowed to a stop, pulling up in front of a grandiose edifice of whitewashed stone that stood apart from its fellow establishments, taking up a full block all on its own. The sign affixed above the large double doors, gold lettering against a grey background, proclaimed its name to all who looked on, as if the building's prodigious size wasn't enough of an indication of that.

Taliesin put the vehicle into park, and then got out of the driver's seat, circling around to open the back door and let them out. He stood there, all in black and in full uniform—gloves, double-breasted jacket with seeming-gold buttons, billed cap, and polarised goggles—and the sight of him standing there, straight as a ramrod in his posture, only exhumed the worries Kallen nursed about seeming underdressed, buried in a temporary sense only by both of Juliette's proclamations on their way here. Still, she did her best not to let it get to her, and stepped out first, her coat protecting her against the bracing chill of the winter wind. It was a reminder, perhaps, to not take for granted the gusts that came in from the nearby Gulf of California.

Once she had both feet firmly on the sidewalk, she turned back to the vehicle, and reached out for Juliette, before aiding her in disembarking. The sun was out and high in the sky, strong enough that Kallen imagined they'd both be snowblind if this was in the wake of a blizzard, so Juliette wasted no time at all in prying her parasol open, protecting herself from the sun as she led the way for them to enter the venue.

"Once we're in, Kallen, remember that your job is basically just to sit there and look intimidating," Juliette instructed, her tone entirely businesslike—a flawless deception. "Otherwise, just follow my lead."

Kallen, electing to keep her tongue still now that they were nearly on the clock, nodded mutely; and Juliette, seeing this, nodded, taking a fortifying breath, and gestured for Kallen to open the door for them. She folded her parasol as she crossed the threshold, and waved at Taliesin in the Panther De Ville, before at last sweeping into the building in a flutter of fine fabrics.

In Britannian high society, dates for luncheon were usually scheduled for precisely one hour before the appointed time they were to meet their contact. To Kallen's mind, that meant that the lunch hour would still be in full swing by the time they went; and yet, as they stepped into the lobby, with the black marble of its flooring and the warm light casting ominous shadows all around, the ceiling high above them, concealed in the darkness that enveloped that upper level, and beheld the corridor leading to the dining area, there was a distinct lack of traffic that she could see, and it startled her a bit; but she rolled with it, and kept pace with Juliette's flank as she went to be received by the maître d', who awaited them with apparent anxiety.

Juliette flashed a disarming smile in the man's direction; he was a tall, rail-thin specimen, his nose a beak in every way that mattered, his chin weak, his brow fine to the point where it seemed aquiver even at rest, beady black eyes, and slicked-back brown hair featuring a dramatic widow's peak. His lips were every bit as pale as they were thin, his face painstakingly clean-shaven, and yet his high hairline revealed a broad forehead that, even under these relatively dim lights, appeared to be beading with sweat. He took out of his lapel pocket a white handkerchief, nondescript and without decoration, and wiped his brow with it, before secreting it away; a memorable man in many regards, though not for any great comeliness (Kallen couldn't help but notice how oddly small the man's ears were), he wore a finely-tailored three-piece suit, but he did not wear it well at all. For all that it must have been constructed for him in this position, he seemed to resemble nothing so keenly as he did an improperly-secured scarecrow, caught up in a stiff wind, from how he held himself, such that even if his immaculately-tailored clothes in fact fit him perfectly, as they very much seemed to when given more than a cursory look, the effect was such that he portrayed the image of a man whose fastidiously clean garments were swallowing him whole. But Juliette's smile seemed to bring him some measure of calm; his trembling subsided momentarily, and it was with a reedy, nasally sort of voice, entirely lacking in gravitas, that he declared, "Your highness, it is of course an honour to host you at our fine establishment—as well as your…companion. Tell me, if it please you, how may this humble servant be of help?"

He punctuated the statement with a bow that Kallen was almost certain wasn't actually necessary, and his lips, now halting their quivering, set themselves into a sort of resting simper. It was an expression that engendered in Kallen's mind much more in the way of disgust than dislike, for it became immediately clear that this man gained his position not through any skills he may possess—and indeed, he may possess a great many, for all that Kallen knew—but through his ability to appear servile and obsequious beyond the boundaries of what was considered the letter of Britannian 'civil conduct'.

"Ah, and I presume you are Mister Firmin, then?" Juliette prompted, her smile broadening; and she was immediately absorbed by her role to the point where even Kallen, who knew for a fact that this was in all ways an act that she was putting on, could not discern where the mask ended and the face beneath began in the midst of Juliette's soothing playacting. "Your establishment does come highly recommended, I must confess, but…I'm afraid we're here by invitation. I'm sure you understand. But if you could escort us into the presence of another patron, Miss Hekmatyar, and her companion, Miss Velmer? I would indeed be most grateful for your aid."

Firmin's beady black eyes shot wide for a moment, and instantaneously his handkerchief was back in his hand as if it had never left in the first place, just swiftly enough for him to stifle a small, wet cough into it. "A-ah, yes, Miss Hekmatyar. She requested a private room to dine in, and did mention that she was expecting guests… Though, that such a guest should be none other than Britannia's Rose…"

"If you could escort us promptly, Mister Firmin," Juliette interjected, gently but firmly (for all that Kallen imagined for a moment that she might have seen a spot of pink brush across the princess's cheeks), and flashed another smile to further blunt the sting. "I do apologise for my discourtesy, but I should hate to be anything less than perfectly punctual, and thus give Miss Hekmatyar offence. I'm sure you understand."

The maître d' smiled, his simpering lips splitting as though he'd found himself entrusted with one of Juliette's most embarrassing secrets, and was attempting to assure her he'd remain discreet. "Of course, your highness. If you and your companion will please follow me… and if I may take the lady's coat?"

He held out his hands, enough for Kallen to see that they were pale, bony things, their backs dusted with a smattering of wispy, pale hair, and his knuckles seeming almost knobby with how taut the skin was pulled against the skeleton of his grasp; it took her a brief moment to realise that she was being spoken to, as of the two of them, only she wore a coat, and when she did, she gasped. "Oh! Yes, of course, thank you."

Juliette had elected to pursue a sort of cordial politeness with the maître d', and Kallen did as she'd been bidden, following her lead; thus, her garrick coat was off of her shoulders and, in a flash, it was folded immaculately upon the man's spindly arm—he reached out to the corridor, and said, "Please, follow me."

Without further acknowledgement, Mister Firmin led them deeper into the restaurant; as if in some kind of indirect response to Kallen's unspoken accusation of sycophancy, Firmin's speed shocked her, and so did the deftness of his light step, such that he unerringly charted a course that ran across the steady flow of servers striding to and from the kitchens without obstructing them in any way. He was a quick, spry sort, as became obvious when he was in motion, and Kallen felt abruptly a bit guilty about judging the man so harshly, so quickly. When at rest he had seemed a scarecrow at the mercy of the vicissitudes of the winds, now he resembled a spider, scuttering deftly across the manifold threads of its gossamer domain. Quickly, both Kallen and Juliette had fallen behind, but never too far, the man seemingly possessing a sort of sixth sense when it came to knowing when they were and were not following closely enough.

And yet, the distance conferred a measure of privacy, for which Kallen was grateful; eager to break the sombre mood that had been set in the car, she leaned closer to Juliette, such that those people who even now passed by all around them could not hear what she said. "'Britannia's Rose,' are you?"

Juliette surreptitiously swatted Kallen on the shoulder, trying to scowl while keeping the mask she was wearing up; the effect was something much closer to a pout, and Kallen, knowing as she now did the nature of the hesitance that kept them apart from one another, had no compunctions about considering it to be quite adorable indeed. "Oh, hush, you… Blame Clovis for that development. Apparently he's made sure that I'm very well-liked, for reasons that are, sadly, not at all beyond me…"

"Somehow, I feel as though blaming His Highness the Second Prince for anything might be a very dangerous proposition for me…" Kallen teased her paramour.

"Certainly not," Juliette huffed; and even though this was an expression that was much less affected by the necessities of the pleasant, benevolent mask she maintained, it remained nonetheless one of the most endearing things Kallen could remember seeing. "Clovis is about as soft in the heart as he is in the head, of that I can assure you. The one you want to watch out for when it comes to things of that nature is our eldest sister, Guinevere, the First Princess; and there is no living member of the Imperial Family who possesses both prominence of any sort, and any measure of affection for her."

The connection snapped itself together in Kallen's mind, and Juliette did not fail to notice it; when it was clear that no one's attention was even tangentially related to their direction, Juliette risked a breach of her outward-facing pleasant mask to flash Kallen with a sly sort of smile that was all malicious glee. In that moment, Kallen found herself struck with the realisation that if the sadistic grin on Juliette's face was a peek into the black heart that the princess claimed to lay at the core of her, she could not imagine there ever coming a day when she could learn to hate it.

What that said about Kallen, and about her moral character—or perhaps even her lack thereof—was a question she didn't particularly feel prepared to interrogate right this second. And so she let it go, for the moment at least. There'd be time enough for that miniature philosophical crisis later on in the day. Right now, she was alongside a beautiful girl, and so she let herself find it easy to laugh along with her, and left any and all questions concerning the kind of person she was for another time.

Juliette seemed gladdened by Kallen's reaction for a split second, but only that long; by the time it came for Kallen to take her next breath, the flash that Kallen had glimpsed was gone, and the pleasant mask was a seamless whole once again, as if it had been wrought anew.

At last, they came upon a flight of stairs that took them up to the second level, where those of high birth who wished privacy while they ate would be able to find it (the private rooms on the first floor being, as they were, for commoners of means); below was a dark, cosy space full of warm woods and dark floors and low light, and here above, the atmosphere was wholly different, with splashes of vivid, striking colours thrown into sharp relief among pillars of natural light from huge windows, thrice the height of a man and about four to five times as broad; these lined the corridor they went down, which wrapped, it seemed, about the exterior of the building, until they came at last to the door to a private dining room with a bronze plaque that proclaimed its number to be '626' on the wall beside it. The maître d' moved immediately to the door with a key in hand, his mouth engaged in idle chatter as his hands danced deftly through the motions. "My apologies for my earlier disquiet, your highness; Miss Hekmatyar insisted that she had an appointment with a peer of the realm she wished to host here, and thus that she should have a private dining room here, upon the second floor, which is highly irregular. But knowing now that it was your estimable personage she was expecting to meet here, I cannot help but feel quite silly indeed… Ah, here we are!"

A latch cracked softly in the door, and the maître d' pushed it open slowly, turning to them as all of this was happening. He gave them another smile, tepid but genuine, and said to them, "The servers shall be up through the servants' entrance very promptly; I'll take care to make certain of it personally. Otherwise, your highness, my lady, I hope you enjoy all that we here at the Savile have to offer."

"My thanks, Mister Firmin," Juliette acknowledged with a nod and a kind smile. "I'm quite certain that we shall endeavour to do so."

The man grinned, bowing from the waist, and then ushered them into the private dining room, with the main door closing behind them. There was a click and a whirl that emanated from the door, then, and Kallen was left to conclude that they'd been locked in. She looked questioningly at Juliette, who, guessing at once the source of her confusion, explained, "A measure against eavesdroppers. Every private room here on the second floor has such a mechanism, as well as copious amounts of soundproofing."

"Are you sure they're not just saying that?" Kallen asked cautiously. "Or that this isn't bugged?"

Juliette shook her head. "The proprietor of the Savile is a commoner, albeit one of means; it exists only by the indulgence of the highborn classes, and even those of such blood who might find that they have much to gain from the purchase of the information this sort of place could potentially be gathering through such a tactic would never condone the practise. It's a blade that puts entirely too much power in the hands of the commoners, which sets a dangerous precedent, from their perspective; and so, it would be the ruin of this place, first through reputation, and thus through the material harm that would naturally come to follow, if its reputation as a non-partisan establishment was not ironclad and beyond reproach. That, and I had a few of Milly's agents sweep this place beforehand. We're clear."

"Well, that's certainly a relief," came a clarion contralto, throaty and coquettish; and it reminded her that Kallen and Juliette were not alone in this dining room, and indeed that there were two others they were hoping to meet here. "I had my people conduct their own sweeps, but it never hurts to be double-sure."

"On that, we can agree," said Juliette, with absolutely no indication in her face, her voice, or indeed her bearing, that she'd been surprised or taken off-guard by the sudden interjection at all, let alone to the extent that Kallen had just been. "And may I say, it is a pleasure to at last be able to meet you face-to-face."

In a room that was walled in dark, lacquered wood, with elegant, dark, and immaculate carpeting on its floors that was kept at an almost unnatural level of immaculacy, a table that was far smaller than those Kallen had come to associate with the dining rooms of Britannian highborn residences, but still more than large enough to seat twice as many people as were currently in the room, both comfortably and without any real chance for knocking elbows to boot, took up the central role in the chamber's décor. It was crafted of a rich, expensive wood (which Kallen knew was, for financial as well as for legal reasons, taken from trees explicitly grown for this purpose), varnished and polished to a fine mirror-sheen, for all that a table-cloth of a thread count Kallen would probably be given to consider both unconscionable and incredibly excessive for the purpose the linen served, concealed and protected most of it; and at this table before them, which bore four place-settings with table service that Kallen would venture to guess was wrought from pure silver instead of the pewter common in most commoner households with the means to care for such things, there were two women, seated and awaiting them.

The first one Kallen took note of, not because she was the most striking but because she was here to act as Juliette's unofficial bodyguard, technically, and this woman seemed the more capable threat, was tall even for a Britannian, and built like a walking tank, to such a degree that Kallen would be inclined to give her even odds against the Knight of One based on physicality alone. 'Amazonian' was perhaps too small a word for her, to the extent that the two-piece black suit she looked to have been more or less stuffed into seemed to struggle to contain all of her musculature. Her features were strong instead of sharp, which only added more questions that Kallen could not immediately answer, with an intense but not especially heavy black brow, thick eyelashes around a single large eye, which was so light a brown that it bordered on amber, a strong jawline, and a set of full, pale lips, her skin bearing the same complexion of Izanami when she was trying to blend in—a handful of shades darker and rosier than albinism territory, that is; where her other eye ought to have been was instead an eyepatch of black leather, embossed with an elaborate golden design that seemed to be a winged fist that was wrapped around the hilt of a knife; and all of this was framed by shoulder-length jet-black hair, heavy and thick, which was kept in a certain style which Kallen was astonished to recognise as a hime cut, of all things. But for all that this woman had but a single eye, it seemed to miss little; she caught Kallen's assessing gaze quite quickly, favouring her with a once-over of her own, before nodding amiably.

The more striking of the pair, however, was the one who had spoken; and where her companion's complexion was fair to the point where it fell just shy of toeing the line of albinism, this woman looked for all the world to have cleared that same line in a long jump. She was shockingly pale, far past the shade that Kallen had seen in the skin tones of photographs of actual albino people (though still not to the point where she shared a skin tone with Izanami, not even close), and her hair, which was shorter than her companion's for all that it was in almost the same style, at chin-length instead of shoulder-length, was just as pale—white as bone, in fact, fully devoid of pigmentation. And yet, startlingly enough, instead of the pinkish-red eye colour Kallen had read came along with the condition that made skin and hair this pale, the woman's eyes were a bright blue, lapis lazuli instead of Kallen's and her brother's own inherited sapphire. They twinkled with mirth but revealed nothing; and when Kallen looked down the delicate, fine features of her long face, which gave off the impression of spun sugar—her arched brow, high cheekbones, and thin lips encircling a relatively long mouth—she came upon the fact that the woman was built like a twig, rail-thin, and without even a hint of the curvature that her companion, for all her musculature, seemed to possess in spades. Her garb seemed to lean into this dichotomy, this play of opposites, a skirt-suit that was stark white in contrast to the black that her bodyguard (presumably) wore, and her bare hands, long-fingered and delicate, tapped errantly against a cloth that now seemed not nearly so far removed from her skin tone as it ought to have been.

"I could say the same of you," the pale woman replied genially. "It's not every day that one gets to meet a member of the Imperial Family, let alone the People's Princess…and her companion…"

"Of course," Juliette nodded, indicating Kallen with a flourish of her hand. "This is Viscountess Kallen, Heiress to the House of Stadtfeld. Kallen, may I introduce Miss Koko Hekmatyar, Director of the Logistics Division of HCLI, and a woman whom I presume to be her partner, Miss Sophia Velmer?"

"Correct on both counts," the pale woman, Miss Hekmatyar, confirmed with a nod of her own.

"Miss Hekmatyar is the daughter of the co-founder and president of HCLI, Floyd Hekmatyar. Her elder brother, Kasper, is the Chairman of the Board of Directors, and her direct superior. They were both of them born into the company as it rose, and though they're mostly amiable, they're still technically locked into a competition to see who will succeed their father," Juliette continued as she approached the table; in a moment of realisation, Kallen rushed after her while doing her best to conceal that that was what she was doing, pulling out a chair for Juliette just before she reached it. She sat with a grateful nod, doffing her hat, her shawl, and her gloves, all of which she handed over to Kallen alongside her parasol; then, she put both of her elbows up upon the table, and threaded her fingers together before her mouth. "Meanwhile, Miss Velmer is a decorated officer who began her career in the State Army of Finland, before transferring to the National Army of Europia, reaching the rank of major in its Africa Corps, 222nd Airborne Division, before retiring following a mission that has since been sealed and declared 'highly classified.'"

"…You've certainly done your homework," said Miss Hekmatyar, with most of the previous mirth now absent from her gaze. She folded her arms upon the table, and leaned forth; Kallen found a station for hats, coats, and umbrellas, placing all the garments she'd been handed into their proper places before doing her best to return to the table before the sudden tension that began to layer upon their gathering broke. "It's enough to get a girl wondering about your intentions…"

"I simply wish to know the people I mean to deal with, particularly those with whom I mean to deal in good faith," Juliette replied, the statement half a sigh. "Her Excellency the Prime Minister, my sister, is, after all, of the mind that you can be trusted to be dealt with in such a fashion; and I am not, as it happens, in the business of disregarding her counsel without ample cause."

"Well, I'm glad that Her Excellency holds us in such high esteem," said Miss Hekmatyar. "I take it that the matter you wish to discuss with us is of a sensitive nature? And that you'd prefer it to be handled with discretion?"

"My, my, you do certainly catch on quickly," sighed Juliette—and she did so fully this time.

Miss Hekmatyar shrugged. "As you said, I grew up in this business. This isn't my first rodeo, so to speak."

"Indeed; I should think an adolescence spent running guns in the Middle Eastern Federation might have done an adequate job in teaching you to make quick and accurate judgement calls," Juliette mentioned off-handedly, punctuating it with an airy wave. "Or was it selling missiles in the Philippines and the South Pacific that was the better instructor…?"

"You certainly seem to know quite a lot already," Miss Hekmatyar said at length.

Juliette gave another wave, this one gently dismissive. "Well, you said it yourself, Miss Hekmatyar: I've done my homework."

"Please, call me Koko," the pale woman bade, her thin lips and long mouth splitting into a sinister, vulpine grin of her own, conjuring in Kallen's mind recollections of children's stories of kitsune, foxes with as many as nine tails, powerful and terrifyingly cunning creatures whose mischief, in the stories where they were the villains, rarely boded well for those mortals who found themselves caught up in the mix. "All of my friends do."

"…Are we friends, then?" asked Juliette, and Kallen knew she was taken aback, even if she was hiding the extent of it incredibly well.

Koko tilted her head slightly, and the low light made her blue eyes glint malevolently. "Aren't we?"

Juliette stiffened beside Kallen, all at once, and she focused the whole of her attention at once upon her paramour and charge; yet, there was only the blank look that hid dawning realisation upon her face; and then, as if called forth, the false-face faded away, and the same malice that Kallen had seen in Juliette's grin on the way up here emerged to take its place, unbound and in full flourish. "…Yes, I suppose we must be."

"Koko," Miss Velmer grunted, her voice resting in almost the same feminine register as Hekmatyar, though perhaps a bit higher, for all that her diction was gruff and direct.

Koko Hekmatyar sat up stiffly, red blooming brilliant across her pale cheeks; then, she nodded, duly chastened, and said, "My apologies, your highness. While getting comfortable with one another is all well and good, we seem to be drifting a bit afield of the point—whatever that happens to have been."

"If we are indeed friends, call me 'Juliette,'" Juliette bade, leaning forth in her seat but keeping her posture immaculate. There were calculations aplenty behind those violet eyes, threaded through with a joy and pride in the cruelty those calculations wrought; all the oiled, smooth clinking of gears and machinery, with none of the impartiality—an intimately personal malice that operated on a deeply human level. "And, as friends, I believe there are certain things that we can offer one another, you and I."

And just like that, the fox was back, all grinning fangs and glowing eyes; and Kallen could sense it looming about the room, the spectre of nine tails, unseen and intangible, but nonetheless deeply felt. "Oho? Please, then, Juliette, my new friend—do tell me more…"

---

If there was one constant that Milly felt she could rely upon when it came to her life, aside from the obvious, it was that whenever a single issue was addressed, it would herald three more problems that would spring forth, as if out of the ground, to take its place. In this case, a single problem was worth three: that, in the tradition of the so-called fourth law of thermodynamics, no sooner had Marrybell been appointed to the position of Minister of the Interior (by way of forms submitted in triplicate, as tended to be the case when it came to such things), than had one of Sayoko's shinobi carried a message to both Friederike and her, which confirmed that outside forces had a potent hand in the hasty pronouncement of the rebellion that had stolen her promised honeymoon from her—namely, the Chinese Federation.

That they had done so through deploying the most deadly mercenaries money could buy out of their protectorate, the Kingdom of Zilkhstan, was both worrisome and fortuitous—the presence of displaced combatants being far more difficult to conceal than indirect cash transfers, especially when diplomacy was involved, according to Friederike; but she cared exceedingly little for any of that. She'd busied her hands as best she could to distract her from the fact that she woke up to an empty bed every morning—that her wife, the woman she loved, was risking her life abroad at the behest of one who wished her ill—but she was now fresh out of tasks she could address (an unenviable position if ever there was one), and the vacant chill that had taken her wife's place in her bed denied her any manner of true rest.

The night was no longer young when she gave up wholly on slumber; her father would be abed by this hour, and even if he were awake, he would not have understood how she felt. Neither he nor Sayoko, in fact, had ever loved as she loved; her anguish was alien to them, and so it would have been a waste of time to seek either of them out—and while she loved her grandfather dearly, theirs was not, by any means at all, the sort of relationship where she might go and seek comfort from him. He was neither cruel nor distant; it was just not the way of them, Milly and her grandfather. And so it was alone that she donned her tea gown in silence—it had been a gift commissioned by she who was now her wife, a vibrant garment of crimson and scarlet with gold trimming—and wandered out of the apartments that she'd begun to move into earlier that day, content as she was by necessity to meander alone through the darkened halls of Belial Palace, solitary in her thoughts save for the silent company of the full moon.

The silver light among the darkling stars came through the windows that lined the corridors in thick shafts of pale illumination; and even in the darkness between them, Milly's feet knew even where her eyes faltered, finding their way across the chequered floors and the half-lit portraits, with her slippers stepping light enough that not even sound disturbed the stillness of this peculiar chiaroscuro. She wandered down a flight of stairs, or perhaps several; an hour had not nearly passed when she came upon the courtyard where her wife, her Justine, and Suzaku had trained tirelessly, drawn, perhaps, by the yearning of the distance that she so resented—yet, she had not fully stepped into the moonlight when she realised that she was not alone in this place.

She was reminded of a night that seemed so very long ago now, as she beheld the sight of she who was Milly's companion of happenstance. Izanami sat upon a curb at the far side of the tiled courtyard, clad in the garb she'd donned shortly after Milly's wedding night, her white hair bound at the base of her neck, and a tricorn hat sat firmly atop her head, decorated with a single pale feather. She seemed only as material in that moment as a spectre might, an apparition of forgotten misery—a phantasm of bygone woes—and it struck at Milly, the sight before her, somewhere near her heart, enough that she heaved a sigh and resigned herself to the immortal's company.

No sooner had she decided to approach, halfway through taking another step into the yard, than did Izanami seem to sense her presence, turning her hooded, haunting, deathly-blue eyes towards her as though to pin her to the spot from across the way; but Milly would have none of it, determined as she was in that moment to be suffered. She took that step, and then another, and another, and something about how the pale immortal sat communicated a sense of respect, that Milly had not quailed and fled. It struck her that she did not know the swordswoman who'd trained her wife very well at all, and that perhaps that was an oversight that might warrant redress; and it was with this intent in mind that she called out to her. "Sleep eludes you as well, I take it?"

"The undying have little need for such things," Izanami replied impassively, her tone neither wholly inviting nor entirely dismissive.

Not that it mattered much to Milly whether it was either. "'Little need' is not 'no need.'"

Izanami chortled mirthlessly as she approached, and returned her gaze to the moon. "Touché."

"So, then?" Milly prompted anew, folding the cloth of her gown beneath her and choosing the tile under her feet for her seat. She was within touching distance of Izanami and had not been warned off; to the extent of Milly's knowledge, that was as good as an enthusiastic welcome from the blademaster, and Milly entertained the thought for a moment that perhaps they were alike in their acceptance of the companionship they had to offer one another—to the extent that such a thing existed.

Izanami sighed; it was unexpectedly heavy for such a soft sound. "You are correct; rest takes flight when I approach."

"Mm," Milly hummed in acknowledgement, turning her own gaze up towards the moon. "I assume that you've heard?"

"They won't die, not to those arrogant children," Izanami said by way of reply, a coarse and biting disdain coating the final words. "'The Land of Warriors,' indeed. They lay claim to an inheritance that was lost long ago; that which was buried ought to have the decency to remain dead."

"I have every confidence in them," Milly agreed. "But it will take some doing; and in that, it will be longer before their return…"

"Aye, that much is true," Izanami conceded with a nod. "But I have waited for her already, for ages of this world beyond the reckoning of men; a little longer should not be too much of an obstacle."

There was a note to that statement that Milly recognised. She looked over at the immortal, her white skin unnaturally alight beneath the gaze of the moon, and smirked without mirth. "And who is meant to be swayed by such a statement, hm? Me? Or perhaps yourself?"

Izanami stiffened, and Milly looked on without feeling the slightest stirring of fear. "You are…more right than you know, perhaps… It vexes me when it should not…"

Milly nodded knowingly. She was well-aware, of course, that Izanami loved Suzaku every bit as dearly and more than Suzaku adored her mentor; and when she spoke again, it was motivated in equal parts by a desire to be kind to this woman who had done so much for her Justine, and by a desire for some form of solidarity, to speak with someone—anyone—who might understand at last how she felt. After a moment spent considering her words, and all the shapes that they might take, she opened her mouth at last. "My late mother, Lady Cassiopeia, had very particular ideas about how a child of hers ought to comport herself. She cared, in her way—or at the very least, as nearly as she was able, for I remain unconvinced that she ever loved anyone, herself included—but what she wanted from me, I do not believe she herself knew. What she tried to mould me into, as near as I can tell, was a perfect facsimile of herself: failure was met with disapproval; success was only ever met with resentment. It was as if she saw every mistake she had ever made in her entire life reflected back at her whenever I was able to mimic her successfully, but her vanity would not tolerate diversions from that mirror image. It was, I think, a particularly destructive exercise on her end; but the servants did their best to make up for what she lacked—Sayoko in particular.

"I was young when she let it slip that my playmate, Empress Marianne's eldest daughter, was meant to be married to me, and would have been were she born male. When I learned that, I was as yet too young to understand the fact that Marianne's own image of what her children would be was every bit as exacting as Cassiopeia's was for me, and perhaps even more," she continued with a sigh. It bemused her to cast her mind back to think on those days now. But she pressed on with her recollection nonetheless. "What I knew, what I could understand, was only that she was meant to be mine, and that through no fault of my own, she was stolen from me. That was where it started, really; that was, in truth, the first form of what I felt for my Justine—possession. She was mine, to do with as I pleased, and I resented any attempt to curtail that right. I'm sure I was quite the terror in those days, such that she even came to dread the times we might spend together, playing, in the way of children…but for all of that, she was never discourteous. Not once did she have a foul word to throw in my direction: she bent when I pushed, and for a while, that pleased me.

"When I grew a bit older, I began to notice things I could not before, and for the first time in my life it seemed to me that the framework of possession would not suffice," Milly said, her eyes flicking over to the still, moonlit form of her companion. Izanami was impassive, her expression and bearing unchanged, as if they'd been carved from marble, but Milly knew, somehow, that the immortal was listening. "It was little things, at first—Marianne took care never to leave marks where they would be visible, more for the sake of her own reputation than any true affection—but I would notice that sometimes she would wince when she was touched. Juliette was barely more than a year younger than her, but the two sisters couldn't have been more different from one another; where my Justine was quiet even on her best days, and followed the letter of proper manners at all times, Juliette was…well, 'a brat' would be among the most charitable ways that I could describe her. She tormented my Justine, was jealous of her attention, and was imperious in all things back then, but my Justine smiled at her whenever she could, no matter what she did. I resented that, really; how dare she have the expression for free that took me so much effort to pry out of her? She was mine…

"And then, one day, I came along when His Majesty chose to visit his favoured consort."

Milly took a deep, shuddering breath, leaning her head up to the sky and closing her eyes. It was the first time she remembered feeling the writhing, slithering emotion of hatred for another person, and as what felt like a consequence of that, the memory was almost unnaturally sharp, as though it had been branded into her brain wholesale. She fortified herself, while Izanami listened in silence, attentive but not expectant. In a way, that helped.

"Lest you get the wrong idea, His Majesty was never inappropriate with my Justine," she prefaced, aware at once of how her last words might have been interpreted. "In fact, it seemed he tried very hard not to acknowledge that she existed at all—though he paid at least a token acknowledgement to Juliette. Perhaps it was simply that she was not the one who had derailed Marianne's conception of her ideal family that she would give her lord husband. But in any event, whenever he found the time to come around to Aries Villa, and thus to visit Marianne, Marianne made sure to dismiss all of the servants. The maids, the manservants, the gardeners and cooks… All of them were not to be on the premises when His Majesty visited. Marianne, in turn, focused the whole of her attention upon her royal husband on these occasions—and so, for both of their sakes, my Justine taught herself to cook. By the time that most children first learned to read with any proficiency, she had devoured dozens of pilfered texts as if it was a matter of life or death, and put that all to work so that both of them would be fed. She dressed them both, she bathed them both… To Marianne, her children ceased to exist when her husband came calling, and my Justine took it upon herself to make up the difference as best she could.

"On this day, Juliette was being especially petulant," Milly said with a smile she did not feel. "She was, I think, at last old enough to comprehend the scope of His Majesty's true disregard. I was not here for the beginning of this event—Juliette told it to me a bit later, in between her tears—but as I know it, Juliette elected to express her displeasure at this dawning realisation by demanding that my Justine make her jelly doughnuts (a perennial favourite of hers, much to her shame); and so she marched herself into the kitchen, a smile on her face, and went about the process of baking the confections to the best of her ability, while Juliette made herself into an obstruction… She told me later that she wanted to get my Justine into trouble, perhaps to get the approval of Marianne and His Majesty; and she was successful, at least in part. They made such a clamour that, when I came in at the tail end of it, it had drawn the attention of both of them.

"Marianne was livid," she recalled with a shudder, not of fear, but of the boiling sting of past hatred. "My Justine was a mess, covered in flour and sugar and jam, with frying-oil splattered upon the floor. I was in the corner, out of sight and hiding—the servants dropped me off but did not accompany me very often at that age—and I still remember how Juliette cowered in terror, and my Justine shielded her as best she could with her body. She could have told Marianne what had happened, but instead, she said that it was she who, in truth, had wanted the doughnuts, and had more or less press-ganged Juliette into helping her, that Juliette was trying to stop her. And my Justine was even then a spectacular liar, a skill honed out of necessity, as I learned then and thereafter, so Marianne believed her in full.

"Marianne struck my Justine across the face with such force that she was sent clear off of her feet," and here, she could sense some flare of protective anger from Izanami, that the girl she'd taught might have found herself in such circumstances. It was a comfort to Milly, that her wife had managed to worm her way into the heart of yet another person, and it saddened her in equal measure that her Justine likely had no idea that there were so many who loved her, in one way or another. "I don't think I will ever forget what she said in that moment. 'Insolent child. I did not bear you so that you could debase yourself like a common peasant. And that you had the gall to do such a thing today, of all days? I will not have you shame me with your willfulness, not a moment longer…' And then, she took my Justine by the arm, and dragged her over to the fryer that she'd just spilled, and…"

Milly knew from experience that she couldn't bring herself to explain what had happened, that she could not be brought to describe how her wife's blood-curdling screams had been wrenched from her lungs, how they now rang in Milly's ears even still, years later—not without having some manner of living thing nearby that she could rip and tear and murder… She'd satisfied that need when she was a girl with the lives of small animals, but now she was old enough that she knew to avoid the subject entirely. "She wore long sleeves for the next six weeks. That's about how long it took for the burns to heal enough to risk display. For years, you could still see the irregularities they left behind if you knew where to look; nowadays, I suppose only the one remains. I have you to thank for that, albeit indirectly… Still. That day was a turning point, both for Juliette, and myself.

"Juliette changed almost overnight. She began standing behind her sister, began looking to her for the approval she'd otherwise been seeking from Marianne or His Majesty. It had always been the case, really, that my Justine smiled purely for Juliette's benefit, that on some level she wanted at least one of them not to feel neglected, unwanted, unloved—and it has been an enduring source of friction between Juliette and myself that it took the…Jam Incident for her to realise it. But for me, it was then that I realised that my feelings for my Justine had grown more complicated than a child's simple possession. I… I wanted, more than anything else, to protect her, however much she might have protested that there was no need, that she could protect herself, that she was a princess and so deserved no protection if she couldn't secure it for herself, all of Marianne's nonsense… But there was a limit to what I could do; even if Cassiopeia stood behind me, as she never would have done, not even for a far smaller infraction than what I considered time and time again, I could not have stood against Empress Marianne without bringing the fullest extent of His Majesty's wrath down upon me in the process, not in any way that was significant enough to matter. It was for my Justine that I learned how to treat cuts, scrapes, burns, contusions… Every time I had to put that knowledge into practise, she said that she'd been a bit clumsy, or that she'd been inattentive, that this was all in some way her fault, and I pretended to believe her, because that was what I had to do, even though I knew well that all I was doing was making her feel all the more isolated and alone… The weight she'd taken upon herself was going to crush her, and I knew that there was nothing I could do…

"And then came the night that Marianne was killed," she recounted at last with a heavy, heaving sigh of relief, happy to at last come upon a memory that made her smile, even now, all these years later. "I hadn't gone to sleep then, and it was a night much like this one—a full moon, silver and brilliant… I was not meant to be awake at that hour, nor to overhear what I did; but I grabbed Sayoko and told her to rustle up any of the servants who could drive me to Aries Villa… My mother came upon me, then, and I refused to be stopped, having as I did the servants' full loyalty, and full authority to command them, courtesy of my grandfather; so she did the next best thing in her mind, and came along. We found her not at Aries Villa, but instead at Friederike's Saint Darwin Street residence, and…there she was.

"Princess Friederike resides at Malebranche Palace; and in Malebranche Palace, there is…a room, I suppose you might say, where she keeps her collection of vinyl records and a record-player to enjoy them with. It has a large window that's open to the night sky, and in the dark, on nights like these, when the full moon pours down from on high, it fills the room with silver light… I found my Justine there, having sought solitude, with music playing from the turnstile, the moonlight illuminating her as she danced, clad only in a nightgown splattered with blood… She was dancing, I suppose, to the certainty of her own destruction, but in that shining moment, she was abruptly the most beautiful thing I had ever seen…" This memory was a great deal kinder, and just as thoroughly seared into the forefront of her mind, and so she took a moment to be silent, and to luxuriate in the joy of that image of the past, that moment captured forever in her mind's eye, before she concluded her tale. "That was… That was when I knew that I loved her; and that, even if she hadn't been promised to me before she was born, I would have no other. I swore then that I would put no one else above her, and that…that she would be mine for all my days, and that she would be happy. That I would do all that I could to make her happy, in a way that I don't think she'd ever been before. That the spectre of the bitch who nearly destroyed her now threatens her safety and intrudes upon her life once again… It's beyond galling… There is now, as there was then, nothing I could do…

"But I will tear down the empire, and slaughter every last soul that exists within it, before I allow us to go back to the way we were then," said Milly; and it was not a vow so much as a simple truth. "I love my wife, more than anything, more than life itself; and if Britannia demands that she must suffer and die, then Britannia will burn."

There was a stunned but respectful silence that followed her proclamation; and perhaps this ploy of hers to get to know Izanami better was working, because in that moment, Milly felt like she could taste in the air all of the emotions that were absent from the immortal's face. Then, after a bit, Izanami turned to her and asked, "…Why, exactly, are you telling me this?"

Milly shrugged, as if she wasn't certain herself. It was a clear, facetious gesture that neither she, nor the immortal she was sitting alongside were particularly willing to mistake as genuine. "Maybe I thought it might provide some context for you. Maybe I thought you needed to hear it. Maybe…maybe I wanted the first time I told that whole story to be with someone who gets it, who loves as I love. Who's to say?"

"So, your supposition is that I love Suzaku just as you love your Justine," Izanami surmised, and the taste of her bemusement was a heady tang upon the tongue.

"And what of it, hm?" she challenged in return, throwing her head forth and meeting the glittering, icy cold gaze of the ageless and the undying. "Am I wrong?"

Izanami paused; and then her hooded eyes slid closed. The swordmaster shook her head, chuckling to herself, before she deigned to speak anew. "No, I can't say that you are…"

"Well then, there you have it," Milly declared with a flowing gesture. "And so I wouldn't be all that worried about whether or not you have a right to be as vexed as you are. I believe that the answer is a firm and unambiguous yes; but even if it weren't, just who's going to be dumb enough to say otherwise, eh? The Heavens? Ha! I'd like to see them try…"

"Heh," Izanami chortled fondly."Yes, I imagine you might…"

They sat there in the next few moments, swaddled in a companionable silence; then, a light went on in a window on a higher floor, overlooking the courtyard. Milly spotted it, and asked Izanami, "Any idea of what that all's about?"

"Kallen and Juliette," Izanami replied, the air thick with the feeling of her certainty. "The light went on for the first time about an hour after nightfall; it's popped up a number of times since. I'd imagine they fall asleep and then awaken again each time…"

"Oh, merciless Hells, finally," Milly groaned, her chest heavy with relief. Well, heavier, at any rate. "It was getting old, watching the two of them prowl around each other like they didn't want to shred each other's clothes…"

"Yes, well," Izanami sighed bitterly. "Now I owe Taliesin a sum of money… I suppose it's my own fault; I should have known by now never to bet against a Blackwood."

"Oh? What currency?" Milly asked casually.

"Banliang," replied the immortal with a huff. "From the Han Dynasty."

"Ah," Milly spoke in recognition; her wife had expressed an interest in diversifying her knowledge base before the wedding, and because Milly personally made it a point to remember everything her Justine said about everything she ever expressed an interest in, it only took her a moment's recall to ask a salient question. "Pre or post-Contention?"

"Post," said Izanami. "Close to the start of the Three Kingdoms, back around when I was living and fighting there. Late second, early third century."

"And where were you before then?"

"Spent some time in the Indian Subcontinent," she shrugged. "I was due to check on the state of one of the Thought Elevators in the region… I wound up staying there for longer than I meant to, missed out on Himiko's war in what I guess is now Area Eleven in the process… Still, it wasn't all bad, and there was a great deal for me to do in the area for a number of decades afterwards—enough that I kept the money as a sort of souvenir thereafter."

"And now you've gambled it away on a wager," Milly nodded, understanding at last.

"Indeed I have," Izanami sighed. The silence that followed was tense, but mercifully short; Izanami stood from her seated position and reached her hand down, as if gesturing to help Milly up. Milly, though she wasn't certain of where this was going, didn't hesitate to take the offered hand, and was hauled to her feet for it. "But I have a feeling that I've gained more than I've lost this night; I fear I might actually be in danger of beginning to enjoy teaching, odd though that thought may be."

"Oh? How so?" Milly asked, arching her brow quizzically. "Or rather, what do you mean?"

"What I mean is," and here she jerked her head towards the weapon racks that had been put away in the dark corners of the courtyard, well out of view of the tiled arena and shrouded in shadow. "Go over to the rack and choose your armament. I've never called anyone 'friend' who couldn't handle a weapon, and I don't intend to start now; and certainly not when I could simply train you in its use."

Comprehension dawned upon Milly quite quickly; she grinned at the thought, already picturing in her mind's eye a hafted piece that had called out to her when last she'd been down here in the courtyard the other day, for all that she'd thought nothing more of it at the time. Without another word, she did as she had been bidden, and delved into the darkness, returning with a blunted, double-bladed battle-axe in her hands, testing its heft. She knew a little about weapon-handling from her training with Majima, but images of both her wife and Suzaku played out in her mind, and she was at once excited, not only to be face-to-face with the real deal, but also for this to be another bit of distance closed between her and her Justine. Channelling the stance that she'd seen Suzaku using with a similar weapon in hand, she found that her body slid into it with far greater ease than she'd expected, and when she looked up from her battle-axe to see that Izanami had taken up her own weapon, split into two, she felt herself filling with determination and glee.

"Izanami, my dear," Milly laughed, rolling her shoulders. "I think that this may well be the start of a beautiful friendship…"

Izanami's deathly smile was her only answer.