With a sigh, Hitomi sits down to have the bodice laced up by two of the young women, and allows the other two to deal with arranging her hair.

    From the doorway to the room, Merle watches with bittersweet satisfaction as Hitomi is prepared for her wedding. Once, long ago, she had thought to never see any woman thus attired, becoming prepared to be joined to Van in a way that no other woman had ever been, but something inside her secret heart feels at peace as she watches the women winding flowers into Hitomi’s hair and preparing to pin the long veil into her sandy blond hair. Quietly, she sinks farther into the shadows to check on Van.

***

    Allen takes a deep breath and knocks on Eries’ door again. With the knowledge that the hair in the letter did not belong to Millerna, he feels it safe to rouse her from her seclusion. Celena, answering the door, steps aside to let her brother into the room, and then steps outside, closing the doors behind herself.

    “Princess,” Allen calls into the darkened rooms of the pale haired monarch.

    A weak response draws Allen farther into the room, and toward the canopied bed. Eries, looking frailer and weaker than he had ever seen her before, makes an effort to draw the covers over herself as he approaches, despite the gauzy curtains between the two of them.

    “What brings you hear, Allen?” she asks, turning her face from him, to look towards the glowing curtains. On the other side of the thick brocade the light of the sun illuminates Asturia, and Palas.

    “It’s time for you to get out of bed, princess,” Allen says, folding his arms across his chest. Eries doesn’t respond, and so he starts to repeat himself, but stops, and changes his tactic. “I bring word from the King.”

    Disinterested, Eries turns a blank face back towards him.

    “That wasn’t Millerna’s hair that Ouran sent you, Princess Eries.”

    “Dryden could never be sure.”

    A low growl in his throat, Allen keeps himself from yanking aside the gauzy curtains and shaking the princess he had grown to respect and… he forced himself to admit it, love, until she came to her senses. Instead, he purposefully strides across the room and throws open the thick curtains.

    Eries shrinks slightly from the bright light of the morning that filters into the formerly dim bedroom, and frowns at Allen.

    “The sun has risen, Princess. The council awaits your leisure. If you are not dressed and to see them in an hour I will bring you down in whatever attire you have on.”

    She sits up and glares at Allen, but, with his back to her and his eyes carefully scanning the horizon outside of her window, he cannot take affect at her anger. “How dare you,” she seethes.

    “Because between yourself and Dryden, this country is short on thoughtful monarchs at the moment,” Allen’s voice is cold, and Eries steels herself for his disdain. But, as he turns to look at her, she finds a faint blush rising to her cheeks. “And I care to much for the affairs of this country, and for the members of it’s royal family,” he pauses to meet her eyes meaningfully, “to let it all fall apart. Millerna is fine, it would be best for her sister to see about getting her back instead of letting boastful letters scare her.”

    Without another word to her, Allen forces himself to leave the room, setting his jaw as he crosses the threshold and instructs Celena to get the princess ready to meet her council.

***

    The hardest thing for the king of Fanelia had been trying to sleep the night before, he thought. His body, on the other hand, seemed determined to prove him wrong. Waking up, and staying up, was much harder. Every time he closed his eyes, a sweet vision of Hitomi greeted him, and without seeing her since lunch the day before, it was much more enjoyable to remain with her, even in illusion, than it was to allow his servants to dress him for his wedding.

    Sighing, he forces himself awake again, and allows one of the servants to run a comb through his slowly-drying hair. His eyes dart to the window to check the sky, and he smiles a little to find it clear and relatively cloudless. Leave it to Hitomi to blindly pick the perfect day. A noise almost too faint to hear draws Van’s attention to the doorway.

    “Good morning, Merle,” he says with a soft smile to her as he makes out the barest trace of her outline in the recess near the door.

    “You look tired, Lord Van,” she replies quietly. “Didn’t you get any sleep?”

    “Little.”

    “It seems both you and Hitomi will have a long day ahead of you, then.”

    “You’ve been with her?” Van tries to keep his voice casual, but he hears the faint laugh from Merle and knows that his anxiousness is showing.

    “She’s about as nervous as you, but she hides it better,” Merle replies, stepping forward a little so that the light from the candles illuminates her face some in the dim room. “I trust you’ll still be awake once dawn breaks to actually walk to the shrine and greet your bride, Lord Van?” she teases slightly.

    Van narrows his eyes and nods, “Of course.”

***

    Ouran frowned, watching from the balcony as Sotet’s horse disappeared up the valley and away from Reyo. At his side, an aide waited patiently for his king’s attention. “Speak,” the dark haired king said finally.

    “The units stationed around Fanelia have found the proper moment to attack, my liege,” the slightly hunched over aide said, “the king is getting married in two days, and they will attack then.”

    He nodded barely, the only indication of a change in his state the motion of the dark curls of hair on his head. He eyed the movements of his son as the young man put distance between himself and his father, with a critical and calculating eye. The boy had agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to return in a few months, but Ouran was not entirely sure that he wanted to wait that long.

    “What news from Cesario?”

    “The country is quiet, but preparations are being made for defense. The whole of Gaea believes war is brewing, but none are quite sure from where it will spring first.”

    “And offense?”

    “None reported, my liege.”

    There was a long pause between the two, and Ouran narrowed his eys. “I want Aden called back,” he said, as though gifted with a premonition of something.

    “That will alert the Cesarians that foul play was involved, certainly, my liege…”

    “Every Kathis takes a short hiatus each year to train at the Compound. I have other uses for him than petty spy work in that worthless country.”

    “Yes, my liege.”

***

    At last dawn arrives, and from the opposite sides of the castle, Hitomi and Van step out of their chambers. Each wear their formal attire for the day, and the ritual of a Fanelian royal wedding ceremony begins. The two make slow circles of the interior of the castle, ending with a walk up to the temple slightly above the castle, to the courtyard where the first of the actual ceremonies would take place.

    Seeing him walking out of the archway across the flat, mostly empty courtyard, Hitomi’s heart speeds up slightly. The last time she had seen him as dressed up, wearing the full royal armor over his clothing, had been the day he was crowned king. With a faint smile she collects herself before starting out into the courtyard.

    Van smiles brightly as he sees her approaching, a vision of pale creamy skin covered in a sparkling white dress barely visible across the courtyard. His smile falters a little as she stumbles slightly, and his brow furrows with worry, though he resists the urge to run to her side and see what was wrong with her. She regains herself well, and does not even break the pace of her walk, but Van’s mind reels at what might have caused her slight stumble.

    What bothers him most is that he knows there will be no time to talk of whatever happened until much later that evening, most likely after dinner.

***

    “Prince Jasper.”

    Startled out of his contemplation of a map of Gaea, the green-eyed prince of Cesario nearly drew his sword at the quiet voice from across the room. The door had not been opened, he was sure of that. And yet there, across from him, stood Nileyah, eyes downcast and voice solemn and serious.

    “Yes, Nil?”

    “It is time for me to return to the Compound. I must leave you for a time, and your new bride,” the steady, low voice seemed to add the last phrase with a slight edge.

    “I see,” Jasper said, returning to his maps. Things between himself and Nil had been colder since returning from the celebration in Asturia, and he faulted himself, and his marriage for that. He would never give up Kira, not after having found such a jewel of a woman in her, and such a trustworthy companion, but he couldn’t get over the guilt that he felt at having been forced to hurt Nil, whom he had known almost his entire life. “I… trust you will have a safe journey there and back. When will you be leaving?”

    “Almost immediately,” she responded.

    There was a quiet moment in the study, and then a servant opened the sliding doors and entered, carrying a service tray with tea on it. Shortly following the servant, Kira stepped in, a bright smile on her face. She crossed to Jasper and kissed his cheek warmly, without noticing the stock-still figure of his Kathis across the room.

    “I take my leave then, Prince Jasper,” Nil said, turning to formally address the princess, “I hope you will both be safe until my return. Princess.”

    Kira, startled by the sudden speaking of someone she had not noticed to begin with, nearly jumped at the icy greeting from the Kathis. Jasper put a calming hand on hers and smiled over the maps at her.

***

    Despite the pain of her injury, Fariah rose to practice the next day. She refused to be looked at by a doctor again, and preferred to keep her time alone and overseeing the interrogations of the would-be assassins. As suspected, they had been sent by Norte. Much to his dismay, she did not see Chid alone for nearly a month.

*

    “I’m a little disturbed,” Chid announces to his Kathis as he steps out of the shadows in the practice ground where she is training with her sword.

    Wiping her brow, she sheathes her sword, “Disturbed about what, Chid?”

    “You’re spending your time everywhere but where you need to be. What if I was attacked again? And if you weren’t there to protect me?” Even as he says these words, he hears the hollowness of his statement, the childish whining in his tone. Fariah frowns slightly, and sheathes her sword, moving past him on her way to enter the castle.

    “What’s your problem?”

    “What do you mean, Duke?” she stops on her way to the exterior staircase, back to him so that he cannot see her face. Idly, for a moment, he allows the contrast of her skin and hair to the dark rock of the castle staircase to sink in. It isn’t until she speaks again that he responds, “Duke?”

    “I told you not to call me that,” Chid responds, turning an angry glare in her direction. “You agreed, if you don’t recall?”

    “What do you want, Chid?” as she talks, still not looking in his direction.

    With a low growl, one of his first, Chid stalks the distance between himself and his Kathis and turns her to face him with a well-placed hand on her shoulder. “Look at me!”

    “I’m looking,” Fariah responds, voice even. She refuses to let Chid know how startled he’d made her by forcing her to look him in the eye, or how different he looks with a little purpose behind his expression.

    “I want us to be friends,” Chid says, voice low and angry.

    The affect on Fariah, however, is just as desired. In fact, more potent than desired. Her eyes, trained on his, unfocus slightly as she remembers someone else who spoke those selfsame words to her, a few years before.

    “Fari-”

    Snapping quickly out of her trance, Fariah nods, stepping back a little to break his hold on her, the trance his clear blue eyes held her in, and says, “Then we shall be friends, Chid.”

***

Hitomi fights her yawn as Van leads her up through the temple, past the halls where altars towered as tall as Escaflowne itself, and to the shrine in the small grove on the mesa above. Beside her, Van’s profile is stern and slightly concerned. She feels butterflies in her stomach jump again and forces herself to breath calmly and to act naturally. It had mostly been bad timing that had caused her prior stumble, and a sharp pain in her stomach.

The cool air of the shrine, and the familiar trees around the tall stone monument where Van’s father and brother are both buried calm Hitomi’s slightly frayed nerves slightly. Side by side with Van, she kneels before the monument and folds her hands in front of her. In Hitomi’s ears, a chorus of birds plays counterpoint to whispering voices.

No, she thinks sternly to herself, staring through slitted eyes at her praying hands, not now, not again. After a long moment, Van murmurs something, and she responds as rehearsed for this small ritual of asking permission of the past kings of Fanelia for their blessing. The whispers in her ears speak a little louder, but she forces herself to ignore them. I will not start this on my wedding day! her mind-voice shouts back at the whispers.

*

    It is almost too easy for the infiltrating troops to set themselves up in the castle. The entire population of the castle and it’s surrounding city are at the temple, reverently filling up the outside area of the temple and, for those more important members of Fanelian society, the seats and positions in the actual courtyard for the wedding ceremony, which is set to commence just before the midday meal.

    The streets of the city are quietly secured, though the gates are left open. The four samaurai generals were in attendance at the temple, but the armies of the four samaurai are secretly awaiting any foul play at the city gates. Unbeknownst to the infiltrating Norte troops, they are also stationed in the castle, though they were dressed down and in padded leather armor rather than in metal. There are two regiments waiting inside the temple, and so, had the Norte infiltrators thought to close the gates, they would have met with less resistance than trying, as directly as they had planned, to assassinate the king and his bride.

***

    The sun had crested, and was beginning it’s afternoon decline as Hitomi and Van reentered the halls of the temple. The crowd of Fanelian citizens filled the halls quietly behind them as people moved out of the king and future queen’s way in order to take their seats for the actual wedding ceremony.

    Hitomi smiled regally as the two of them descended the main steps from the temple to its courtyard, but inwardly, she was nervous. The whispering voices in her ears had picked up, and she could no longer ignore them. It was taking all her wit just to continue to smile and maintain a steady pace at Van’s side.

    Van’s presence was helping to keep her in check, and the royal sword, so close to his capable hands, kept her from pulling him aside and delaying the wedding ceremony altogether. She wanted nothing more than to be Van’s wife, but she was scared that something would happen as soon as the crown was placed upon her head.

***

    Eries drafted her letter to Fanelia quietly in the seclusion of one of the courtyard gardens of Palas. Allen, seated nearby, already had his own letter of congratulations completed for the soon to be kind and queen of their neighbor country, and was awaiting Eries’ letter so that both could be sent at the same time.

    The Princess found herself distracted from the letter writing at hand, however, by the sight of Celena and Exeter playing in the garden around them. Dryden, finally showing signs of recovery from the lapse he had gone into with the queen’s disappearance, was taking in the early spring sunshine and watching Celena and his son as well, but with a less concerned eye.

    “Princess?” Allen asked quietly, hoping not to startle her into action or flight. Inside, he had been greatly troubled when he had seen her in her bedroom, lying as though she were near death, more than he would ever let her know, he feared. Something had told him to ignore her protests and shake her a few times that morning when he had been forced to rouse her in less than gentlemanly manner a few days prior. In regards to his gentle query, he was rewarded by a serene and regal turn of her head towards him, and he felt slightly nervous with the intense blue eyes of the pale-haired woman on him.

    “I… do not know what more to write,” she confessed, offering the letter to him.

    He paused momentarily, asking himself if it was right to read the letter she was writing, and then, as she moved her hand forward slightly more, he took it.

    Dryden’s slightly glazed eyes were keener than either Eries or Allen suspected, the slight smile that drew across his lips as Celena chased the young prince around the garden wasn’t directed at the two of them, but at the Princess and the Knight Caeli seated in the far corner. He knew several things about the Aston family, and its daughters. His sister-in-law was many things, and one that he knew both from experience and reputation was that she was a very private person. What she thought and felt were kept largely to herself. It made her a good monarch.

    It also made her a recluse. Her retirement to the convent had only furthered that particular aspect of her personality, and upon her return to the castle, she spoke to no one except for himself and Allen in any way more than functionally. In truth, Dryden admitted, the only one she spoke to in any manner other than professional was Allen himself. The princess could do much worse than the Senior Knight Caeli for a husband, especially given the reason she hadn’t been chosen to become queen in favor of Millerna.

***

    The rumble, at first, went unnoticed by those in the temple. It was just as Hitomi and Van exchanged a perfunctory kiss to seal the wedding vows after exchanging rings that there was a wave of whispering through the crowd. Not so much of appreciation at the near-finality of the wedding, but at the display of birds taking flight from the trees above and around the environs of the temple.

    As Van prepared to crown his queen and present her to his people as a queen, he nodded to Aguilo, and the Northern general turned and disappeared into the crowd.

    True to her anxiety, the crown was just being settled on her head when Aguilo returned with his findings by staggering, wounded, into the courtyard, and collapsing.

    The cry of battle rang out over the quiet temple, and the guards ushered the citizens out of the temple through side and back doors, and into the hills beyond. Van drew the royal sword and glanced wildly around as the noises of battle increased around the temple grounds.

    Hitomi, huddled close behind him, placed her palms on his back, clenching and unclenching her fingers in the dark fabric of his cloak. The rest of Aguilo’s personal squadron, plus Merle, moved to surround the king and queen as they retreated slightly to the largest of halls in the temple, where Escaflowne was at rest.

***

    The day began for her long before Tristan stirred in bed beside her, but true to the decision he had made the prior evening, Arik remained in bed long after he rose, complaining of an upset stomach. She did not rise from bed until well after the midday meal, and then she appeared to those in the compound to have a severe case of morning sickness. It allowed her the privacy needed to make her preparations, which she did with a single-mindedness that would have surprised Tristan if he had been around to see it.

    Tristan spent his day, as usual, in the library, studying the various texts, though there was a fevered anxiety about him that, had she left her own seclusion, Mot would have immediately noticed. Mot did not, however, set foot outside of her own sparse rooms, and the other Council members attributed his uneasiness to the sudden illness and disappearance of Arik.

    As the sun first started to set, he made his way down to the stables to check on Arik, and the two of them hid themselves away in the stables until the Kathis hands assigned them all went deeper into the Compound for dinner. It was then that they made their move.

    “Quietly now,” Arik cautioned as they each lead a horse from the stables, prepared with saddles and a little baggage. Tristan, unable to speak as quietly as she, merely nodded in response.

***

    The battle within the temple lasted the rest of the evening. It was early when the Norte troops discovered the location of the king and queen, and the fighting was bitter. No one escaped the day without scratches and cuts, including Hitomi, who, for the most part, was forced to stay behind Van and out of harm’s way.

    When the guards started to thin out, as the sun began to set outside, and Van and Merle were left with swords, Hitomi in a small alcove behind them, the two lifelong friends glanced sidelong at each other. The three were hold out against at least five Norte invaders. Hitomi had already ripped the long train from her wedding gown so that she could move about more easily, once or twice it had almost proved fatal to one or all of the three Fanelians. Gone, as well, were her satin shoes, thrown, in angry and desperate moments, at the attackers that would not let up, no matter, it seemed, how many of there number fell.

    Merle opened her mouth to speak, but just as she did, a blindingly bright white pillar of light crashed to the floor of the temple around Van, and he disappeared. A quiet ‘thunk’ noise announced that the royal sword had stayed behind on whatever journey he was making.

    Hitomi was halfway to Van’s former position when the light sucked upward and the room returned to its normal, coppery red color as the sun set in the mountains outside. Merle steeled herself as four soldiers rushed her, and switched to her unwounded arm to wield her sword, but with all the blood loss the soldiers were to much for her, and she collapsed.

    “No!” Hitomi cried out, half leaping to Merle’s aid as the cat woman sank, first to her knees, and then pitched forward on the marble floor of the temple.

    The soldiers chuckled at Hitomi’s distress and began to move forward. Frightened, she made her way backwards at the same pace they were advancing, until she ran into chill, solid metal. Glancing upwards, she saw that she had come to the very edge of Escaflowne.

    Hitomi closed her eyes tightly, willing to endure whatever these soldiers might do to her, so long as she could do it blindly. But at that instant, Fanelian soldiers charged into the large hall of Escaflowne, and the distracted soldiers turned to defend themselves before grabbing Hitomi as a hostage, and, in the momentary upheaval, Hitomi managed to scramble up to perch on Escaflowne’s knee, her climb made easier by the earlier loss of her train to a near-missing sword slash that would have crippled, if not killed her.

***

    The sun was halfway to it’s setting place when the Compound took note of its two missing number, and by then, Arik and Tristan had left the grounds of the Compound and escaped to the open plains of Asgard. Bundled on his mount, Tristan was doing his best simply to hold on while they traversed the wasteland plains. The winds were colder than he was used to, and the sun was harsher in his eyes as it set than anything he could remember since he watched his mother struck down before him.

    Arik, however, seemed impervious to both weather and glare. She guided her horse expertly through the frigid expanse as though she knew exactly where she was going, because, in fact, she did. Though she had only come to the continent of her father’s homeland twice before, she knew the way as though it were tattooed on the inside of her eyelids. Like something in her blood was directing her towards her second, now third, home.

    The sun’s slanting rays turned auburn and rust, and finally the world around them looked crimson as the first faint signs of habitation grew nearer. Tristan squinted his eyes as he looked at the figures in the near distance, and then he rubbed them.

    Sure enough, his eyes appeared not to be playing tricks on him. The figures came closer, and to Tristan’s astonishment, they bore wings behind them, rising from beneath thick clothing to stand tall and proud. The creatures, Draconians, he thought he recalled correctly, looked like bronzed angels in the slanting evening light. But they carried spears and a few of them appeared to have swords as well. He could not understand exactly what the words exchanged between Arik and the tall Draconian guards, he assumed they were, meant, but from the brusque manner in which they were ushered forward, he assumed, again, that it could not be a good thing.

***

    Much later, after the battle had been won, and the wounded bandaged, and she was assured that Fanelia would recover and be able to defend herself… once Merle was assuredly alive, and those invaders not killed were rounded up and the questioning had begun, then Hitomi allowed herself the luxury of tears.

    She could not tell exactly why she was crying, or for what. Van, she was almost certain, was not wounded beyond recovery, nor was she, though the two of them were separated. The country he loved, and so, too, did she, was going to survive. But tears flowed from her eyes and she curled up in Van’s bed, burying her face in his pillow.

    The door opened quietly. “You shouldn’t cry so, your majesty,” a calm voice said to her as a hot plate of food was set down on the bedside table.

    “Who…”

    “I don’t expect you should remember me, majesty, my name,” the woman taking a careful seat beside Hitomi on the bed was older, and maternal, “is Austa. I was one who helped look after his majesty and the Lady Merle when they were both babes.”

    Hitomi blinked back her tears, but they continued to fall freely. “I… wish I could stop crying,” she said in a broken voice.

    “But you’re not quite sure why you are, are you, child?”

    Glad that Austa had refrained from using her royal title, Hitomi nodded and accepted the tender hand that brushed her hair back from her head. “You’ve a heart that grieves often, haven’t you, child?” Austa asked rhetorically. “You’ll be a fine queen for us, but those who died today did so to protect us.”

***

    It took next to no time, it seemed to Tristan, for them to reach the main camp of the Draconians. His eyes, instead of watching the wasteland, were on the creatures above him as they kept easy pace with the tired horses.

    As they reached the camp, Arik dismounted, and motioned for him to do the same. There was a group of Draconians waiting for them, and from the back stepped a tall, familiar figure.

“You’ve fallen from your mother’s graces, I see,” the baritone voice said as Arik knelt before him.

    “She has never been truly happy with me, father,” Arik replied, glancing back at Tristan’s uncomprehending face.

    “And yet you’ve brought the responsibility she foisted off on you along for the journey, I see.”

    “We have no where else to go where they won’t force me to bear a child, father.”

    “Force?” the hazel eyes of the taller Draconian sparkle, and he brushes a few graying auburn locks of his bangs from his eyes. “Whatever the reason,” he turns to regard the small group gathered around him, “we welcome you home, my child. Take the horses and have them tended to. Take my daughter’s man to a place where he can rest before he falls over.” The tall Draconian steps forward and he embraces his daughter, after a moment he steps back to slip an arm around her shoulders and lead her into the village.

***

    Head spinning, Van staggers down the street, eyes not quite properly focusing. Not quite sure where he had ended up, he’d quickly hidden his armor before moving much of anywhere. Blood dripped down his left arm from a deep gash, and he had been knocked in the head a few too many times during the battle, when the attackers had gotten too close.

    The last, and yet only, thing that he needed was sleep. His mind knew it was not good, with the way the world was spinning, to fall asleep. But his body, which had slightly more control at the moment, decided otherwise, and Van collapsed in a heap at the most fortunate time and location possible.

    Yukari was just rounding the corner with a few cleaning supplies for the old Kanzaki residence when she saw him at the end of the driveway. Alarmed, she thought at first to call the police, but on closer inspection, she recognized the young man passed out and bleeding on her ‘best friend’s’ sidewalk, and so she opted, instead, to take him inside and bandage him up.

    After a quick call to Amano that explained the situation, she settled the two of them in for the evening, careful to check him every so often to be sure that he would wake up.

    Outside, the sun finished setting.