HI IM SO SORRY! I ran into a mild writers block, not really a block but more like how do I order my scenes without rushing things. Anyways I'm back and I've decided!

First of all, thank you SO much everyone for the LONG reviews I was bursting with love and affection awh. I promise I won't give up on this story till it ends, so just bear with me if I go silent for a bit. Besides I owe everyone who took the time to review that much. I will address all of the reviews in the next chappie bc I'm rly sleepy rn and I wanna get this out before I go to bed.

Kind of a filler episode but it build the next chapter HEHEHEHEHE ur gonna love it trust me (or don't bc I might kill off someone)

WARNING: offensive language...somewhat.

The following morning arrived with the familiar roar of Brandon's ship leaving its perch beneath her balcony. The sound jolted Stella awake as she groggily faced her closed balcony doors. He had left without so much as a snarky remark, and she found herself standing by the balcony railing, staring blankly at the empty landing strip long after the ship had vanished.

This was normal, he would usually go about his military business. Back when he was only commander-in-training he would be away for weeks to months on end. She thought back to how long her naïve and childish self longed to see him every time he departed.

The sound of the Silver ship's propulsion lowering on the courtyard landing strip would send her heart into excited flutters. But now it only brought about dread.

Stella leaned her elbows against the stone railing of the balcony attached to her prison room. The day was particularly warm, mid-spring in season, as the sunlight gently blanketed her skin. The solstice was less than 5 months away and as far as she was concerned, the sceptre had not made a reappearance in the last 2 weeks.

It didn't make a reappearance when she felt rage against the high commander, and it didn't activate to protect her friends. Twice that it would normally force her transformation that the sceptre didn't respond to. Closing her eyes, she thought back to the look on Flora's face, the tear-stricken, terrified look as she accepted her death. The flashback of it made Stella's stomach clench and an unimaginable need to fight course through her, but her mark didn't so much as flicker.

Her mind spiralled back to that battlefield. Brandon's blade had swung down with terrifying precision. She had been certain Flora was gone—only to watch in stunned disbelief as he withdrew his sword at the last second. Relief had surged through her like a flood, but it left behind questions that gnawed at her.

The heartless High Commander she thought she knew would never have hesitated. Not that she wasn't thanking her lucky stars he decided to pull back, but it begged the next question – why did he?

She could see his face so clearly every time she closed her eyes. The expression he made when he stood over her father's corpse 4 years ago – evil and malevolent. The way his eyes held nothing but coldness when he spoke to her, forced her to fight, with not a shred of compassion as she choked on her own blood.

But the look on his face when she didn't swallow the replenisher and almost suffocated herself. She didn't notice it then, but there was something new in his guarded eyes. To the way his eyes widened when she accused him of killing Griselda, there was emotion. Albeit she didn't know what – it was there, a soft flicker of disbelief and something else foreign in his gaze.

Then yesterday, when he told her to fire the gun at him. The way his hand gripped her waist, and his face hung over hers, so close. His hands were so warm without their usual cold leather gloves, and his heartbeat was slow and calm in comparison to her wildly hammering one. She could feel his breath on her ear as if he was still right there. The way he looked at her - he wasn't taunting her, no, his eyes were…softer.

As if begging for an end.

Stella exhaled sharply, realizing she had been gripping her own waist as if mimicking his hold. Goosebumps prickled her arms, though the sunlight was warm. Shaking her head, she forced the memories away.

Just because she has suddenly begun imagining him with emotions like a normal person doesn't mean he's worthy of her compassion.

He was nothing if not a cold-blooded murderer.

Stella turned to walk back to her room, her eyes flickering to catch the dent in the stone his fist had caused that night on the balcony when she almost suffocated. She remembered the way he acted – disbelief in his gaze and a flash of something new. Was it guilt? Remorse? It couldn't have been.

But she couldn't deny it.

Something in High Commander Brandon Silver was different.

Getting dressed for the day, Stella slipped on her shoes and walked out of her prison room. From what she recalled during breakfast, Digit and Tecna had matters to attend to outside of the planet. Timmy didn't join them, and Riven was usually never present in the morning, so Stella assumed one or both had accompanied Brandon wherever he had gone.

The castle was bare today, aside from the few maids who walked around, cleaning and managing the place and the gardeners who were cutting the hedges along the pillars that held up the wrap-around veranda in the courtyard. It would've been the perfect day to head to the gazebo and sketch till the afternoon but Stella had other plans today.

She weaved through the shrubs and neatly kept bushes to the stream by the walls that she had discovered a couple of days ago. She needed to see that vision again, maybe find a way to extend it some more to see what else happened that fateful night.

She crouched down and stared at her warped reflection in the water, reenacting her steps that day as she listened and waited for the voices she had heard.

Silence.

Nothing but silence.

"Come on," she whispered, willing the voices she had heard to return. But the air remained still, the only sound the gentle rustling of leaves in the breeze. Frustration welled up. "Give me more memories, dammit!"

Nothing but the gentle breeze rustling the trees.

Her fists clenched as she rose, brushing off the dirt. She knew nothing about memory magic to even be trying this. Why did the memory end just moments after Griselda was killed?

Stella remembered herself vividly possibly an hour later, sitting in the crowd of an escaping ship on it's way to the trading outpost planet where she had met Noah. Her memory from that moment onwards was so clear she could remember everything she said and did in clear detail. But her memories before, even before the attack where she lived most of her life in the castle were patchy.

She had chalked it up to being young and simply not remembering every little detail – but now she wasn't so sure.

Finding futility in wasting her time by the river, Stella gathered herself and walked back to the palace. If there was one place she would go to when she needed more information – it was the Sun Palace's virtuous library.

A breathtaking sanctuary of knowledge, with its towering oak shelves adorned with carvings of mythical creatures, stretching up to a vaulted ceiling painted with shimmering constellations. Sunlight streamed through elevated stained-glass windows, casting vibrant rainbows over marble floors and reading nooks.

Crystal chandeliers bathed the room in golden light while rolling ladders and hidden compartments offered access to knowledge that past Solarian royalty had cultivated over the centuries. The air carried the scent of aged parchment and polished wood, a smell Stella never thought she'd ever miss.

Stella hadn't appreciated this place as a child, often resenting the hours Griselda had forced her to spend studying in here as part of her royal schedule. Now, she wished she had paid more attention.

The library was organised by topic, separated by shelves that divided each sub-topic for easier searching. The mahogany table sat in the middle of the room, and a magic chandelier hung over it, illuminating the books that were piled over it, opened and read but never put back.

It seemed the library was still being used for its intended purpose.

Tying her loose hair up into a bun, she walked along the shelves, her finger gliding along the spine of each book to find what she was looking for. Any books about memory magic would do.

Grabbing the first one she laid her eyes on, Stella flicked through the pages quickly. Finding nothing of value, she shoved the book back into the gap and grabbed another. None of these books even remotely mention memory magic and the former princess walked along the shelf, trying to figure out what she was looking for.

Taking a couple of books that seemed to briefly fit the type of book she was looking for, the princess walked back to the table in the middle, placing her chosen pile into some spare space on the mahogany table.

Taking a seat, she flipped through the books one by one, each one briefly mentioning memory magic before always concluding it has a myth. She scoured the library for more books, each leading to more dead ends than the last. There was nothing here that told her anything about lost memories, memory magic or anything of value.

The sun had set past the nightfall hour as the library's once brightly lit room became illuminated with the soft glow of the magic candles that hung on every wall. The chandelier over her head cast a faint glow over the books as Stella laid her cheek against the pages frustratedly.

She hated reading and all of this knowledge with nothing of value to her in this entire library.

The palace remained silent as usual, with none of the other platoon members returning despite being close to dinner. She could feel her stomach rumbling, voicing its hunger as she let out a sigh.

Deciding to put the books back as a gesture of neatness and goodwill she began placing them back between the hollowed spaces she had first slid them out of. One by one she put them back as she stared at the books boredly.

Her finger abruptly stopped as her eyes caught onto something wedged into the back of the shelf, placed inconspicuously over the top of the other book, out of sight and hidden.

Taking the books that were blocking her path into her hand, she managed to slide the book out. A dusty brown leather cover with worn-out font etched gracefully into the front.

"Archaic Solarian Magic," She whispered the title beneath the dust. Was this it? Placing the other books back, Stella walked back to the table in the middle of the library and took a seat.

She blew off the dust adorning the cover of the book, her fingers brushing over the golden sun and moon drawn around the title's border. It was the former Solarian emblem; she remembered it lividly on every flag and royal sash. She lifted the cover, her eyes scanning the pages that were tinted well with age.

Most of it was written in Old Solarian, an archaic language lost to the years, and despite Stella's frequent lessons learning it when she was a former princess, she could barely make out a few words.

She kept flipping through the pages, her eyes scanning the paragraphs and sketches for something that made sense.

Aurëla Sceptaris.

She knew this word. It was Old Solarian for 'The Sun Sceptre'. Her heart spiked as she flipped the page. A draw of the sun sceptre as she remembered it sat adorning the whole page with all its glory. She read what she could make out from it, information about the solstice, the power the sceptre bestows upon the current monarch. How it kept the peace of the realm.

Things she already knew. Her heart hammered as she kept flipping, hoping to find more information. Only to reach the next page that immediately switched the topic to moon magic.

What?

Stella furrowed her eyebrows, flipping back to the last page she read about the sceptre. That's when she noticed it. A tear between the pages. The next few pages were torn from the book.

Someone ripped these pages out.

If someone had taken the pages, it must've been to hide something important. She needed to know what it was. Gathering herself, the former princess shut the book, tucking it under her arm as she turned on her heel.

Deciding to retreat back to her room, she walked down the empty hallway. Her mind was consumed with the possibilities of who may have taken the pages. No one lived in the palace but the High Commander and his close band of elites. There was only Tecna, Timmy, Riven and of course the high commander himself.

She turned the corner, her thought train derailing as a familiar voice sounded from in front of her.

"Your Highness," Came a tone thick with mockery that she didn't need to see his face to know who it was. Her eyes met his dark green ones, a look on his face that made a disgusted chill run down her spine.

She hadn't seen his grotesque face in so long she was beginning to forget the uneasy sweep his presence brought every time she saw him in the palace when she was younger.

"Magnus Crowell," she replied, her voice low, her hazel eyes narrowing into a sharp glare. His lips stretched into a grotesque smile, and his eyebrows lifted in mock delight.

The faint sheen of sweat on his brow caught the light, and Stella felt her stomach churn. She vaguely remembered his greasy, opportunistic face among the crowd in Andreas's throne room the night of her capture.

The way he looked at her then, and now, was unmistakable: predatory.

Just what the fuck was he doing here?

Sometimes...I might be taking this story too far into the angst dimension.

BUT that's okay you all signed up for this when you favourited this story hehe.

I'll drop the next chappie real soon (cos I already wrote it HEHE)

Lots of love,

Star