I’ll be posting one chapter a week, on Mondays, for the rest of March, meaning I’ll be unlocking one chapter per week as well. Hoping to go back to two per week in April.
§
If a juicy steak, seared to perfection and at a doneness perfectly to your preference appears in front of you and asks you to partake of it, you will have difficulty refusing, too.
I gaped at the maid bent over in a ninety-degree bow in front of me until I noticed my jaw hanging open and snapped it closed.
She claimed to be twenty eight, but looked perhaps twenty at the most, and of course she was pretty, since she was one of my father’s victims, swept up in one of his searches for the choicest young females of his duchy. She explained her unusually young appearance as a side-effect of the blood bond, which had extended her youth.
I would have to ask Aunt Elianora about that. In the meantime, I needed to sort this situation out. Because I had been in mysteriously frequent need of blood since waking up, and this woman was offering herself when I was nearing the time for more.
I grew in need of blood and fed on Mireia the first evening after my wedding day, and found myself hungry again during the next day, even though it would normally take me weeks before I needed it. Then, despite feeding on Lady Ceria, I again needed blood the day after that, which Melione provided me. I had rationalized the first repetition as an effect of the coma, and I had been trying to pretend that the second repetition was the same thing, but I couldn’t deny the twinge of hunger and the tingling in my fangs that the sight in front of me inspired, and this time, I knew something was strange was happening inside me.
But first, I needed to stop this woman from making it worse by leaving her exposed nape right in front of me, begging to be bitten.
Reaching out and stroking her hair, I told her, “Please raise your head, Miss Syl. I’ve heard your offer and I’m happy to receive it, but this isn’t the place for it.”
She stood, opening her mouth, then closed it and wrinkled her brow.
I told her, “Please tell me whatever it is that bothered you just now.”
“My Lady, it was an inappropriate thought,” she stated primly. “After all, you are not your father.”
In my mind, I ran through what she said and what it could mean and put together, “Don’t tell me you fed him right here in his office?!”
Her eyes bulged and she ducked her head, not meeting my eyes.
I put my face in my hand. “Dear Heavens. I didn’t expect that.”
Through my fingers, I could see her dimpling slightly. We seemed to have reached a comfortable atmosphere, and my hunger, which was only a slight prick, was now safely in check. I put down my hand and smiled at her.
“I truly am happy that you offered, Miss Syl. However, I should tell you that I normally hire prostitutes to feed me. Wouldn’t it bother you to be providing the same service as such women?”
She smiled and shook her head.
With a sigh and nod, I decided, “Then I shall keep your offer in mind.”
§
While gazing down on the strange airship that landed during the night in the South Bailey Courtyard from the vantage point of my balcony, I fought back the temptation to find my husband and demand we cancel the plan. At the same time, I was also feeling left out, because the Hero’s Party would be boarding, leaving me behind. Intellectually, I knew they had been traveling without me for three months, but for the first time in my memory, I was experiencing it first-hand. It was a very lonely feeling.
The curtain walls were too high for the dawn to light the yard, and the sun was not yet high enough to drive off the dark overhead, so the ship sat in shadow. Its deck lights provided most of the illumination needed for the passengers to board and load their gear.
Three of my Servants were among them. One of them was probably still a bit drowsy, as she had fed me rather than Miss Syl, but she seemed to have taken my place as the royal knight in the Hero’s Party, so she stood beside Ryuu, waiting to board.
A small squad of royal knights, Pendor house knights, Lady Ceria and her sister and the Hero and his party would hardly be enough strength for this mission. I had to trust my husband’s word that he had met the conditions I apparently set, as preposterous as they sounded to me now.
Had I truly made such an outrageous demand? Had I really insisted that the Fairy King send more of his knights?
And the Fairy King had really agreed?
As crazy as it had sounded, Dilorè assured me that I was a fairy princess and the granddaughter of that supernatural being from ancient legends. I was actually a person who could make such a request.
Given Mother’s nature and strength, I could just barely believe it, but it was hard to accept that he would send fairy knights to Kasar to reinforce my Pendorians, simply because I asked.
Yet she also insisted he had accoladed me a fairy knight himself, and had declared me a royal knight of his kingdom as well as Uncle Owen’s. And she assured me that he really would respond to such an extreme request from me.
It was true that he had detailed not only his royal knight Lady Serera but also a squadron of fairy warriors to support me. I had to agree that this fact at least constituted substantial supporting evidence.
Even so, such an amazing thing was a little too much to contemplate.
At least, when my husband was explaining what I had demanded and how the expedition would proceed, I was able to notice one possibility and put my foot down, issuing an additional demand.
“You are not going with them!”
Rod wasn’t looking into my eyes as he scratched his cheek and noted, “I didn’t say that I was?”
“I know you too well, Dear Husband,” I insisted, refusing to be swayed. The way he was looking away was too damning. “You’re planning to find some excuse to tour Kasar and then encounter them and invite yourself along.”
He sighed. “Ti…”
“No!” I retorted, strongly. “That’s final!”
He had a sour expression, but he nodded.
“You’ll remain in Narses during the operation!” I clarified, just to be sure.
“I…” he started, possibly about to push back, then he stopped and his shoulders dropped. He answered, “Yes.”
Gazing down on the airship, I grew a slight smile while thinking back on the exchange, and Rod’s defeated final response. My husband was down there at the moment, to see off the final members of the expedition as they flew off to join their compatriots in the Kasar Pass. I was about to descend as well, to do the same while also making sure he didn’t slip on board, but I had paused here first to collect my thoughts.
Resting my hand over my tummy, I thought about the lives that now dwelt within, and reminded myself that some things would have to wait. Especially, things like going along with the expedition, like I also wanted to do. But, since waking up four mornings ago, I had floundered around, just trying desperately to catch up to a reality that had suddenly jumped three months into the future. I couldn’t continue with such a weak bearing.
That exchange with my husband had been the first moment that I felt like myself again. It reminded me, I was a royal knight.
Yes, my armor and sword were shut away in a closet and yes, I would be on detached duty as long as I served as duchess, but I remained Lady Tiana Pendor, a King’s Hand and a member of the Royal Knights of Orestania. I remained Fele Tiana of the High Valley, a proud knight of Faerie.
Although I was prepared to stay here for the sake of the babies, I would not be passive anymore. One way or another, I would act.
The previous day, the maids had dressed me in a gown which provided a drape from my shoulders to hide the exposed back that allowed me to grow my wings– apparently it was something I had insisted upon during the three month gap– and I had told the maids to dress me in another of these a short while ago.
After a breath to reinforce my resolve, I grew my wings and rose into the air, gently descending upon the courtyard below. As long as I kept my legs folded into a kneeling position until near landing and kept one hand tightly bunching my skirt, it would not be too indecorous. And if it still seemed that way, I would resolve to ignore the problem. These people had to get used to the new Lady of the Castle at some point.
§
The training was Hell Incarnate, and I honestly thought Rhea was lying when she told me that only three days had passed since the wedding. She had simply laughed and reminded me that I had not been that strictly tied to Huade’s time.
I didn’t think that it was the years that it had felt like, but what she meant was, it didn’t have to have been only three days in my subjective timeline. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.
“So, I’m finished?” I asked, hopefully, as we rested in Fan Li’s tea pavilion, which had become a home base of sorts.
‘I’ was a variable term. All incarnations familiar with Tiana on Huade had been involved at some point, as I passed what I learned over to them after mastering each skill literally channeling them while remaining myself. After Tiana learned a skill, a combined Tiana/Sirth would repeat it until Sirth could handle it on her own, then a combined Tiana/Fan Li, a combined Tiana/Daq and a combined Tiana/Kwelabi would have their turns. Even Lhan and Rugau took part, and discovered more of their unique abilities as well. Lhan was even learning things about her innate abilities and her potential that her short life did not give her a chance to learn.
Only Lydia did not get the joint training. She had to remain ‘pristine’ for now, learning only about our relationship to her and why what we were doing was so important. Her training was unique to herself.
Fan Li had simply wanted me to be able to maintain the barrier, but we were doing much more, because the problem was much more.
Fan Li’s ‘spirit core’, the surrogate golden core she had assembled from the broken fragments of Senhion’s spirit vessel, or at least the ones that had not attached to Kiki, was an unexploded bomb that would destroy Tiana on Huade if it reattached to her spirit body and merged with her new vessel. When Gaia expanded it to give Tina the ability to combat Trisiagga, her vessel had reached the absolute limit that she could manage with her living body and her blood core at the time.
It had more room to grow now, after she stole Trisiagga’s hoarded treasure of blood, but not to the size of the spirit core that a fifteen hundred year old half-spirit of Huajie could build, and certainly not to the size of said spirit core and Tiana’s current spiritual vessel added together. The result would be at best coma and at worst death.
Thus, whenever I did recombine with Tiana on Huade and bring her all this wisdom that Rhea was teaching, it had to include both the means to prevent this and the knowledge of a completely different kind of cultivation.
She could easily learn how to accumulate spiritual energy as I had done, but rather than that, Tiana on Huade had to accumulate the pneuma to support it.
The ancient Elders only had two means to do this. They could build a blood core that would store it as a part of the blood they accumulated, or their body could increase it with age, as the blood running through their veins naturally grew more and more dense with bonded pneuma and mana.
As well as techniques to control Immortal Mother’s barrier between Fan Li’s spirit core and Tiana’s spiritual body, I had to learn techniques to artificially mature the blood in my veins, causing the living blood portion of it to become as dense as the collected blood in my core.
Until we could be absolutely certain we could prevent the terrible cascade that might kill Tiana on Huade, we had to ensure that she would never acquire any connection to the spirit core.
And that meant that the versions of her, and Sirth, and Kwelabi, and all the rest, remained out of contact with their copies in the spirit core. Even Fan Li could not risk reawakening herself on Huade. Only our ancient incarnation, Lydia, could dwell there.
And thus, we had to know one other skill. A skill that it was now time for me to use.
Reaching through the channel that Lydia was holding open for us, as Tiana on Huade went over the railing of her balcony to descend to the courtyard below, I simultaneously executed a blood magic technique and a vampire technique by borrowing the blood core she wasn’t using anyway.
[Blood Effigy]
And
[Vampire Cloak]
The effigy, for now just an invisible mass of condensed blood and mana, exited her back, unnoticed by her thanks to her own cloaking technique. Being immaterial, it passed through the french doors leading back into her room and flitted over to where Mireia was drowsing after having spent a lively night with her lovers.
The effigy shifted to my human form, with a slight tweak so Mireia would understand that I was a slightly different Tiana, dropped the cloak and took a seat on the edge of the bed.
