The sun that day had the innocent angle of spring: warm without being oppressive, dust motes hanging like a deliberate audience in the air. For Princess Lily it felt like a small miracle. The palace had been asking her to stay behind brocaded curtains for months; to be out among common folk, even for an hour, was a kind of theft she took with grateful hands.
She had chosen Seraphine.
It had been a deliberate choice — no Orsic shadow at her elbow for once. Seraphine was Postknight through and through; she had the dry, measured steadiness of someone who could make hard choices and live with them without drama. Seraphine bowed once when Lily asked, then clipped a slim badge to her breast as if no grander ceremony were necessary.
"Only one condition." Lily said, when they stood before the carriage. "No grand escort. Keep it small and simple — let people speak freely."
Seraphine's expression softened. "As you wish, Your Highness. We will stay close and quiet."
They had arranged a short circuit of three neighborhoods: the infirmary, the grain halls, and the western ring where a number of farms and small markets had set up refuge tents. Seraphine had checked the streets twice, had scouts in the alleys. Everything, she said, looked clear.
What they did not know — what none of them knew — was that the chessboard of the city had already been set by other hands. Orsic had been away that morning — an absence that made the princess smile with relief — but his shadow had been long; the K.P.P. watchers were planted in covert positions along the route, disciplined and still as statues behind market stalls, in the shadow of a fountain, folded inside the wide doorway of a bookseller. Their orders were crisp and cold: do not reveal yourselves. Wait. Intervene only when the situation escalates to the point where your action becomes heroic, decisive, and, most importantly, visible.
Solis had still been surprised that morning. A K.P.P. rider had come to their little rooms in the castle, and the man had presented the king's request like a formal petition: the princess needed a Postknight in her immediate retinue. K.P.P. wished Solis to go in that place, "a small test of loyalty," the rider had said exactly as Orsic had instructed. Solis had exchanged a look with Vaidya — half pride, half disbelief. He had wanted to run to Elizabeth's infirmary, to hold her hand and argue; instead he had tucked the medallion under his shirt, checked the strap of his satchel, and followed orders.
"We'll do this right," Ada had said the night before, squeezing his shoulder with a grin that was both courage and a dare. "You'll be the quiet hero who outshines the pomp."
He boarded the carriage that morning with his palms damp and his heart too loud. He had rehearsed in his head all the reasons to be calm, all the reasons to control the blade of his feelings. He had told himself — over and over again — that the test would be for him, not a theater for others.
The carriage rolled out. People craned and whispered and, for the first time in months, a line of polite, smiling faces met the princess as she stepped down to the infirmary. She moved among them like a small, bright compass, and every time she took someone's hand the watchmen noted that she was composed and human.
They came to the market where the grain vendors set out their sacks, and a young mother pressed a bowl of hot porridge into Lily's hands, tears like rain in the corners of her eyes. Lily knelt, handing the bowl back in a small theatrical humility that convinced and charmed.
Solis stayed at the carriage-side, eyes scanning the crowd and listening for the weave of a threat. He had brought nothing conspicuous — no posturing armor, just the ordinary cloth of a C-ranker. He kept his hand near his satchel, fingers closing on the strap. Part of him wanted to show everyone he was more than the size of his rank; another, quieter part wanted simply to keep the princess safe.
The route bent toward the western lane, narrow and shaded with awnings. It was the lane where refugees had made a line of small stalls and where children kicked up dust as they ran errands. The smell of baking bread and leather and hot spice braided together.
Seraphine walked ahead of Lily, one step and watchful. She moved in a way of a predator who had been taught to make her moves invisible; the world around her seemed to conform to a silence she carried.
Commander Cassandra's face had haunted Seraphine for days; within an hour before the princess would step out, Cassandra had pulled her aside. The conversation had been blunt.
"Orsic is giving us space." Cassandra had said. "Too much. He's a man who does not make mistakes in generosity. He is either testing you all — or setting up a stage. Be careful. If anything happens, do what you have to do."
Seraphine had nodded, the way a water-tight knot takes less to be secure than a conversation demanding the world to change. "Understood." she had said. "Whatever comes, I will handle it."
Cassandra had squeezed her hand once, a small, human pressure. "Protect the princess. Regardless of orders."
That phrase had felt like an incantation in Seraphine's ear. She had accepted it like an oath.
---
They were midway down the lane when the first movement happened — not with trumpet blast but with a soft ripple like the passing of a shadow. At first none of them registered it: a man slipped among the stalls, a woman's cloak slid, a child darted between legs. Then, one stall away, an arm flashed a blade. Someone shoved a basket. The line of watchers — the K.P.P. men planted by the fountain — held their breath. The intended script — a marketplace scuffle — folded into violence.
It was sudden and clean: a cluster of dark-armored figures, faces masked, moved in the way of those who are practiced in turning crowds into cover. Their armor had the ragged scar of many raids, and their leader wore an emblem that caught the light like a smirk: a black notch stitched into their sleeve, the same sigil that had haunted sentry reports of the past weeks.
Gasps rose, then choked off. The crowd surged in all directions. Vendors shoved carts. Children scattered like spilled grain.
Seraphine reacted before the world could name what had happened. She stepped sideways, a blade long and taught at her hip, and in the space of a breath she turned the flow from chaos into a funnel. She moved the princess — smooth as pouring water — from the front toward the carriage and, in one fluid motion that split the space like a seam, she slammed a hand down on a vendor's table, blocking the nearest two assailants' path while a single, practiced strike from her elbow sent one raider staggering.
Solis felt the instruction like a bell: protect the princess.
He moved to plant himself between Lily and the nearest angle of attack. He kept his eyes on the lead raider's hands — hands that moved with a speed and greed that told of a practiced thief, not a desperate refugee. A blade flashed past his shoulder; Solis's palm tightened on his satchel strap. He wanted to draw the axe he carried for work — an ugly, battered thing — but Seraphine's voice, cool as river stone behind him, stopped him.
"No blade in the open unless you must," she snapped. "Keep her away. Move her to the carriage."
He obeyed. He pushed forward, pulsing outward at thirty percent of his aura — no more. He had learned the lesson of his own body: go half-committed and you would live to see another day. He would not gamble his flesh for a flash of glory.