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Lord Aroya, the retired Brosnian admiral whom Ged chose to command the Central Region and the defense of Atius, would soon arrive to join Rod from Thuriben. He had been originally summoned out of retirement to serve as a royal advisor, but the winds of war would now blow him back into active duty. Ged had already planned to send him, but the original plan had left Rod in charge, exerting Royal authority, for at least another week. He could no longer wait that long.
Ged selected him as the most trustworthy option. The septuagenarian had been King Owen’s mentor as a naval officer and then his First Lord of the Navy. Married to Owen’s only full-blooded sister Lydia, he had a long history of loyalty to the crown. He also had no bloodline entanglements with rebel lords, since he was a former commoner, a “Lord of Honor”, the Orestanian equivalent to a British Life Peer. Owen’s father had granted him that, and handed over one of his courtesy titles, so the admiral could marry his daughter.
Once he arrived, Rod would depart for Narses, my mother’s capital, to act as ducal regent, or southern viceroy, or whatever the title would be once Ged finished sorting it out with the Privy Council. Ged was of the opinion that Rod and I should immediately marry, so Rod could be the new duke, but Rod was balking at the idea, so I didn’t even have to mention my own hesitation.
The Rod who left the tent to go deal with matters of command and begin planning for a handover of command was a different man than the one who entered. He came in to check his fiancée and seek information from Lady Serera. He left bereaved of the girl he thought he was going to marry and stuck with me, an unreasonable facsimile thereof. He had also seemingly aged another five years.
Ged stalwartly adhered to his parents’ wishes and treated me as his little sister, or sister-in-law, or whatever he had seen the first Tiana as. But Rod had complex feelings to sort out before he could decide who I was and how he would treat me. After the new king signed off, he had sat for a while in thought, not saying a word as the royal knight mage packed up her crystal ball, curtseyed to us and departed. He only gave me a few brief words encouraging me to get better before leaving as well.
As Elianora made me lie down on the cot once more, I sighed with a bitter heart. I had long dreaded this situation, and now that I was here, I really hated it.
My funk came to an end quite abruptly, as Elianora shot to her feet and summoned balls of Darkness in each hand. I didn’t know what was happening, but in response to her actions, I hurriedly began preparing my own defenses. Then, my spiritual senses came awake once more. I identified the ‘threat’ and relaxed.
Astaroth detonating his demonic proxy had dramatically impacted everyone in the air. The mortal enemy bombers had suffered badly, mostly ending up on the ground, where the defenders made short work of them, and the enemy fairies had fled after the explosion killed the three enemy fairy warriors who had somehow brought the proxy to me.
Our fairy escorts had all survived, including Dilorè, who had been farther away from the proxy than me. It had blown her head over heels through the air, knocking her back a hundred paces, but she hadn’t suffered any serious injuries. Since then, she had been completely absent from my life, being busy guarding the skies over Langram alongside Oberon’s fairy warriors.
Lady Serera spoke from her cot before I could say it.
“You may relax, Doctor. My apprentice is merely dropping in for a visit.”
Dilorè had alarmed Aunt Elianora by dropping her stealth while already inside the tent. Considering she was seated on the same trunk where the HR Manager had sat during the night, I guessed she had not entered until just now.
Elianora pulled her mana back into her body rather than dispersing it, which tipped me off for the first time that she, too, was the owner of a blood core. She brushed her clothes back into position while noting with some irritation, “My Lady, if you were here while the prince was here, as a royal knight, I really must protest.”
“I apologies, My Lady,” Dilorè replied smoothly. “I had entered, intending to reveal myself, but His Highness appeared before I could. I decided it would be better to remain out of sight until he left.”
My cousin gave an embarrassed smile and a shrug. “Then all of that happened.”
My aunt glowered a bit. “Royal secrets were discussed here, My Lady.”
Dilorè gave her an airy reply. “I consider my cousin’s personal matters to be confidential, whether her secrets are royal or not.”
She then rose to her feet and gave my aunt a Dorian bow. “My Lady, I am Lady Dilorè of the High Forest. As my master noted, I am her apprentice. She is serving your crown in the service of her lord our king. Thus, I am bound by her chivalrous duty. You may have confidence in my discretion. Besides, I knew nearly all of it already, anyway.”
My aunt sighed, twisted her mouth and dropped the matter. Dilorè moved over to Serera and rested her hand on the still slumbering fairy knight’s shoulder.
“Master, I’ve returned, so please stop paying attention to us and rest properly. I’ll take care of things while you sleep.”
“Hopefully, she’ll listen to you,” Elianora muttered.
“Mm. Well, there’s been a bit too much happening around her, hasn’t there?” Dilorè responded as she moved over to my side and sat in the chair Rod had used earlier, then propped her chin on her fist while smiling at me.
“You have an expression like you’ve been sucking on lemons, Your Highness,” she commented. “It doesn’t go well with your pretty eyes.”
She reached out and cradled my cheek. “Rather than letting it curdle your heart, it would be much better to let it out. A crying woman is far more beautiful than a bitter one.”
I don’t know if it was her touch, her encouragement to let it go or just the fact that everyone other than these women I trusted had left, but the river began flowing.
The logjam of emotions had held back many different tears.
Tears for Mother, who had been the absolute rock of Tiana’s existence, the one sure thing she had believed would always exist. She had somehow, impossibly, disappeared from this world where she had been a presence for so many thousands of years.
Tears for my king, my one father figure in two lifetimes. Robert had never known his father, and neither had Tiana, but Tiana’s faith in the man who had served both that role and the role of her liege lord as a knight had been transmitted in full to me through this body. He, too, had disappeared. Being mortal while Tiana was non-mortal, she had known from the day she first understood such things that she would lose him some day, but it absolutely was not supposed to have been so soon.
Tears for the stony silence from my brother Rod, and my deep certainty that Ged would be giving me the same if he weren’t forcing himself to follow his surrogate mother’s wishes.
Tears from the gnawing fear that my sister Amelia would have the same reaction once she too learned the truth.
Tears for the horrible emotions I must certainly have visited upon my precious brothers, who were now where I couldn’t reach out to them as they dealt with the loss of their Tiana on top of the loss of their father and… it seems the loss of my mother would be a dramatic loss for them as well. Now that I knew why she had so often stood in as a replacement mother in their lives, helping with the motherly touch that Owen couldn’t provide his children, I understood why they had never seemed to resent it, and had in fact been filial toward her.
The worst of it was knowing that Ged and Rod were both saddled with the awful duty of their positions and didn’t have the luxury to go cry their hearts out, and that I had no way to help them.
I know that these losses were all properly the original Tiana’s losses, but I couldn’t help it. I could tell Ged and Rod that I wasn’t the little sister they grew up with, but I couldn’t tell me. Even though a sort of insulation separated my direct memories of Robert from my inherited memories of Tiana, with the Robert memories feeling more directly mine, my emotions and attachment somehow didn’t share that insulation. It was my brothers suffering and distancing themselves from me.
When I noticed, through my weeping, the arms folded around me, Dilorè had already long since bent down and embraced me, hugging my face to her shoulder as I bawled my heart out. She cradled me that way, then pulled me up into a sitting posture while continuing to hug me and pat my back.
“It isn’t fair,” I sobbed after crying for a long time. Then words tumbled out of me that hadn’t even formed in my mind until they formed in my mouth. “I can never see my mom or my sisters in my old world ever again, my parents in this world have gone away and the family I have left in this world don’t belong to me. They’re just the family of the body I’ve taken. I’m all alone now…”
“Shhh,” Dilorè coaxed, continuing to pat me on the back. She didn’t say anything else, and said nothing to stop my tears.
At long last, the tears stopped flowing so hard and the sobs became sniffles, but I kept holding her, the only warmth I could find. Even as I did it, I felt a thought deep in my heart that tried to sour it, that this wasn’t my cousin but rather the old Tiana’s cousin. She, too, might turn cold on me.
Once she decided I was done, Dilorè partially detached herself from me, then kissed my forehead.
“I have one bone to pick with you, Your Highness,” she said, suddenly prim rather than warm.
I settled back, sitting up on the cot, and wiped my cheeks, preparing to hear the rest with some worry.
“What is it?”
“You said you had no family in this world. As your cousin, I’m a bit hurt by that.”
I wrinkled my brow as I said, “The one who was actually your cousin died, though.”
“Oh very well, then,” she said, growing a bit huffy. “As your great-great-great-granddaughter, I’m a bit hurt. I know it’s a bit odd for mortals, but we fairies are quite accustomed to having our ancestors still about. You’re just one more generation from me than the Fairy King, you know?”
My mouth twisted, not able to figure out whether to smirk, smile or scowl. “It’s still pretty distant.”
“Technically, it’s less distant than our relationship as cousins, Miss My-Second-Cousin-Twice-Removed,” she stated while waggling her finger. “Mathematically speaking, that is.”
The humor in that somehow hit me despite my funk, and a short bark of laughter bubbled up out of me. With a wry moue, I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll have to take your word for that.”
“And your relationship to your fiancé is the same, you know?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“Queen Sylphana was my mother’s first cousin. She was one-quarter fairy, you know? Your fiancé is my second cousin and your previous incarnation’s great-great-great-grandson.”
My jaw dropped. “He’s what?”
