The Captain of the Guard stepped forward. His gaze was the kind that could strip paint off the wall.
"Lord Albright, you say." It wasn't quite a question. "What business do you have with his lordship, girl?"
Girl. She was a girl, technically, so she couldn't fault him for that. What she could fault him for was the way he said it, the kind that found any answer from her unsatisfactory before she even opened her mouth.
Her brain was frying, like a hamster who was too tired to continue running on the wheel. She had to come up with something fast or... she could already see her head rolling off the guillotine platform.
She opened her mouth. Nothing sensible came forward.
"I... uh hehe..."
"Aurora."
She looked past the gate and into the courtyard. It was Julian, hands clasp behind his back. He had not raised his voice, because he had never needed to when getting his point across.
Julian exchanged a few words with the Captain in the tone he used when he was technically being polite and actually issuing orders. The Captain stepped aside. Aurora walked through without making eye contact with anyone, which was her preferred method to move through any situation.
She fell into step behind Julian as they crossed the courtyard. It was an absurdly long front lawn for someone to have. The kind that only served to make people feel small before they arrived.
It's working.
The Royal Palace rose ahead of them with its lavish architecture that seemed more concerned with impressing than defending. The gardens were immaculate and well groomed, the stream flowing through filled with all sorts of fish that seem to be imported from foreign countries. There were guards everywhere. Aurora counted eight in the immediate visible perimeter and stopped counting because it was making her anxious.
Julian did not look at her. "You were later."
Aurora stared at his back. "T-The carriage had to stop at the west gate."
"I accounted for that in the time I gave you."
She bit her cheek and said nothing.
Before Julian could reach the front doors, they opened from the inside. A tall man, mustached, around sixty, with a monocle seated precisely centered in his left eye, stood at the threshold and bowed with the experience of a man who has done it ten thousand times.
"Welcome back, Sir. Duke Partridge awaits you both in the Grand Library. Shall I take you to him?"
If Arden had been a human, Aurora felt fairly certain he would look something like this man. She hoped that the resemblance stopped there.
"Thank you, Albert." Julian patted his shoulder and gestured forward. "Please."
Albert bowed again and began walking. As the Head Butler of the Royal Palace, not to be confused with the Head Butler to the Royal Family, he knew his way around the Palace like the back of his hand.
Aurora followed, looking around the antechamber as they passed through it. The grand staircase at the center. The hallways branching off in every direction. The balcony on the second floor where someone with nothing better to do could watch arrivals and departures below. And to top it off, the ceiling was high enough to make sounds feel lonely.
"So... Duke Partridge," Aurora said to Julian's backside. His hair was a chestnut brown from behind, she always thought it was an odd contrast to his golden eyes, though she never said so and never intended to.
"He is crucial to your assignment." Julian kept walking. "And you are the reason he agreed."
"Me?" Did she save him or something?
"He is the Duke of Aurelio."
Oh, the port city of Aurelio, the one she saved a few months ago. Julian had found a duke who owed her a favor and pointed him at her like an expensive weapon. Give him a debt and he'll turn it into a leash.
Before she could think anymore on it, they arrived at the Grand Library. The doors opened before her like an answer to a question she hadn't known she was asking.
Two stories. Shelves from floor to ceiling on every wall and running in rows through the center. The light from the tall windows illuminated everything, showcasing the lack of dust on every table and shelf. There were, at a conservative estimate, more books on magical theory within her immediate sight than she had ever seen outside of the Bureau's restricted archive.
Her sapphire eyes went bright. She was most certainly coming back here, whatever it took. And she wasn't leaving for at least three days.
The joy lasted approximately four second before a tall man materialized himself from somewhere between the shelves. Why were they always so tall? She was going to start betting on whether she could find a short man anywhere within the palace.
She had not heard him approach, had not felt so much as a trace of resonant presence before he was simply there, and then his arms were around her and he was hugging her, warmly and completely devoid of warning.
Her heightened senses had caught nothing. No mana signature. No heartbeat frequency. Nothing. He had been concealing himself, and with a precision that gave her an uncomfortable feeling. She hated not being able to read people.
She processed this for exactly one second before the physical proximity registered for her, and she hated it. She hated every second of it, so much so that she pushed him away as hard as she could, which produced approximately one foot of space between them.
He laughed. It was baritone and genuinely warm and entirely unbothered by someone half his size. Oh, how she wished he didn't tower over him at this very moment.
"My apologies, Miss Aurora." He smiled. It was a boyish grin, despite the height, despite the three-piece suit. "Entirely my fault."
She looked down at her hands. They were shaking slightly. Not from anxiety, or not only from that, but there had also been a flicker of a memory passing through her before she'd gotten herself clear from it. She pressed her palms against her dress until the shaking stopped and then looked up just far enough to confirm he was still smiling and had not noticed, or had noticed and was kind enough not to show it.
"I'm sorry." Her voice came out small, more of a peep than a sentence. "I didn't mean to — I'll be better, I—"
"Not at all." He waved it off with genuine ease. "Or should I say — Miss Arcana Witch."
She looked up. How did he know she was the Arcana Witch? Wait, this must be Duke Partridge; he's far more... muscular than she thought. Her first imagination of him was that of a short, portly man, definitely a far cry from this tall, muscular, and handsome man before her.
The Duke clapped his hands together, which caused Aurora to jump out of her thoughts. "Now then. Let's get down to business."
Albert reappeared from the direction of the door, carrying tea. He showed them to a reading table that sat beside one of the library's center columns and poured three cups before disappearing again without another word.
Pulling a chair from the table, the Duke offered it as a seat for Aurora, to which she hesitantly took it. What if he pulled the chair out from under her, just before she sat down? Now that would be embarrassing. She thanked him and gently sat down.
"And thank you for offering me a seat as well." Julian pulled a chair for himself and sat down. The Duke bowed humbly in response with a smirk.
He settled into a chair across from them, leaning forward with his hands on his knees and a smile on his face, as if he were catching up with old friends.
"As I'm certain Julian has explained — you will be protecting the First Princess. Princess Alara."
"Y-Yes..." Aurora studied the surface of her tea. "He made me aware."
More like blackmailed her into doing it, but she left out that little detail.
"In order to do that effectively, you will need resources." The Duke pointed at himself with a boyish smile, "I am offering to serve as your benefactor."
Aurora slowly slid back into her seat. His excitement was contagious — well, it would be if he was talking to anyone but Aurora; she just found it scary how a tall, muscly man was shouting at her.
"As a thank you," he continued, apparently finding her slow retreat either charming or invisible, "for what you did for my city. It is the least I can do for the woman who saved Aurelio."
It was a very generous favor. A suspiciously generous favor. Julian's fingerprints were all over this. It wouldn't have mattered what city she saved, he would've roped any noble into his schemes. She glanced at him. He was polishing his glasses with a cloth from his breast pocket. He did not look at her.
Yes, this was entirely his fault.
"What sort of resources... are you offering me?" Manpower, potions, money... she hoped it was money; she loved money. There were so many things a Duke could offer somebody, especially the Duke of Aurelio, whose resources almost rivaled the King's.
The Duke spread his hands. "Anything you'd like. And what I can't provide directly, I will find someone who can."
She should probably feel lucky she saved Aurelio and not some landlocked grain county whose lord could offer her a wheel of cheese and goodwill. She was starting to feel something akin to gratitude, which was inconvenient.
Julian set his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and stood. "Now that the particulars are settled." He phrased it as if he owned everyone in the room. "It is time to meet the Princess."
Aurora's stomach dropped somewhere below the floorboards. The Princess. Right. That's the whole reason she was in the capital. She had to look the Princess in the eyes and say words with her mouth.
"Unfortunately," Julian continued, adjusting his cuff with the air of someone who enjoyed watching people squirm, "the King has requested to be present. We will be meeting them in the Throne Room."
Both of them. This just got even worse. The Princess and the King. At the same time. Aurora just wanted to curl up into a ball and die.
She set her teacup down before she dropped it, her thoughts already racing towards the gallows, where she'll probably end up if she messes up her introduction.
Julian was already moving toward the door. She stood, perhaps too quickly, and followed after him. Her foot caught on nothing — the floor was entirely flat — and she stumbled half a step before catching herself on the back of the chair.
The Duke said nothing. He was, she was beginning to understand, a man who allowed people their dignity. Unlike certain other people in this building.
She took one last look at the Grand Library as they left it. The shelves. The light. The thousands of books on magical theory that no one was stopping her from reading, theoretically, if she ever found herself here without an appointment with a king.
She was coming back no matter what.
Albert led them through corridors that branched and turned with a route that even she couldn't follow. Probably because she focused primarily on the back of Julian's coat rather than the never-ending doors they passed and the guards who watched her every move.
The Throne Room doors appeared at the end of a final hallway. Large. Dark wood, reinforced, with two guards stationed at either side.
Julian stopped and turned. It was a small movement, just his head, just enough to look at her peripherally rather than directly.
"Are you ready?" Was that consideration in Julian's voice she heard? Probably not, but she wanted to believe it was.
She swallowed. Bow and greet. That was all. She had read seventeen books on court etiquette over the past two years, none of which she had intended to use and all of which she apparently needed at this very moment. Bow and greet, and don't say anything that could get herself executed.
"Y-Yes," she nodded slowly. "I think."