Love Among Duty & War

Shortly after the start of the commencement ball, Vesper and Ariadne kept their promise to rendezvous behind the thick velvet curtains that hung behind the thrones. The Princess greeted her guardian with a bright grin as she reached out and joined hands with her in excitement. Vesper smiled and squinted her eyes at the girl, unsure whether or not she should be worried that the Princess was so delighted already.

“Good to see you’re enjoying yourself, Princess,” the lady knight observed. “Already found one suited to your fancy?”

“What do you think of Prince Ciel?” Ariadne asked, brows disappearing from behind her fringe.

“The agreeable fellow with the dreadful guardian?” Vesper’s expression mirrored hers, but conveyed dismay rather than anticipation. “Oh, he seems nice, Aria. But that monkey of a knight is horrid! How can a prince be so pleasant and remain in the company of that- that thing? I can’t even- Please don’t set yourself on him just yet, at least finish out the night.”

Ariadne wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disappointed, but she forced a smile and nodded reluctantly. Her guardian’s opinions were something she took very seriously and if Vesper thought something was best, then it probably was. Even so, her disdain seemed to be geared more towards the guardian knight she had encountered rather than Prince Ciel himself.

“Alright, Vesper, if you feel that way…” She said.

“I’m sure he’s a perfect gentleman, but I’m just being overly cautious. That’s my job, you know,” Vesper added, immediately detecting the Princess’ unease and offering a smile. “Now let’s get you back out there before they realize that you’ve vanished.”

An easy smile blossomed on Ariadne’s face as she nodded in agreement and slipped out from behind the curtain with Vesper behind her. They hadn’t made it far before a tall young man with striking red hair and amber eyes smoothly inserted himself into the Princess’s path. Vesper frowned slightly, but stood back as he presented himself with a graceful bow and charming smile.

“Princess Ariadne, I am Prince Valentin of Acolle,” he said, extending his hand shortly after. “Would you honor me this dance?”

Ariadne blushed, but still managed a kind smile as she went through the motions of courtesy before taking his hand to let him lead the way to the dance floor. Vesper watched him for a moment before someone took up space at her side. When she looked, it was only Irina who was beaming up at her with some mischief in the corner of her mouth. The lady knight squinted at her and thought to move away, but Irina caught her by the arm and started to drag her onto the floor.

“Dance with me, Blue. I don’t have a partner,” Irina insisted. There was an abundance of young men milling about and Vesper was pretty sure that Irina wasn’t really finding a shortage of escorts.

“Nobody calls me Blue anymore, Princess,” Vesper sighed, but letting the younger girl have her way. “And I could’ve sworn you said you didn’t even like the name, once upon a time.”

“Yes, but now nobody calls you Blue,” the pretty brunette smiled, positioning Vesper’s hand below her shoulder and taking her other with her own. “So it is now my special name.”

“I guess so,” she mumbled, leading the Avestan Princess through the motions of a traditional waltz. At the same time, she was sure to keep Ariadne within her sights.

“So, I saw you talking with that handsome knight from Trias,” Irina said. “Maybe when Ariadne gets married to one of them, you might fall in love with their guardian knight. Wouldn’t that be just perfect? You could follow Ariadne and live happily ever after.”

“Oh gods, please don’t even mention that demon spawn,” Vesper groaned, directing her through a twirl. “If anything happens between us, it might be me skewering him with my blade. Besides, they don’t intend to keep me as Ariadne’s guardian, they want me on the Elite Guard…”

“What? Seriously?” Irina practically shouted. “But you and Ariadne are-“

“Shh!” Vesper winced, abruptly swiveling them away from the attention her voice brought. “I really don’t have a choice in the matter, Princess. I’m a knight. They tell me where my duties lie. It’s not like I want to spend the rest of my days hanging around the Elite Guard, they’re all so old and boring and… serious.”

Irina giggled, swatting her on the arm, shortly before a young man timidly approached them and Vesper brought them to a halt.

“E-excuse me, may I cut in?” He asked.

“Of course, your highness,” Vesper promptly moved aside with a bow, peering at Irina as she cast her a disappointed frown. The knight merely shrugged, helpless to go against the structure of courtesy when dealing with royals.

Vesper stood by as they got themselves situated and fell into step amongst the crowd. With that, she switched back to tailing the Princess across the room. Just as she turned to see herself off the dance floor, she was stopped by a familiar figure standing behind her. She faltered and tilted her head at the Crown Prince of Eustele, who merely extended a hand to her. He said nothing, but he didn’t have to because Vesper placed her hand into his without hesitation.

“Those wrinkles in your forehead are setting, Vesper. Soon they might be permanent,” he observed gravely. “You are getting older…”

Vesper scoffed, “Oh quiet,” she hissed. “I’m not nearly as old as you are, Prince. And I don’t see how you can possibly be so at ease when all these young men are looking to marry your sister.”

“Well, it is not my duty to worry about them,” he said with a curve of his mouth. “And I wholly trust the one whose duty it is.”

“She is a capable knight, after all,” Vesper mused aloud. “Such talent you had at such a young age, handpicking only the finest out of the city slums.”

“If I had not, she may have turned into a mud monster and ravaged the town,” Constantine teased, only to be on the receiving end of Vesper’s elbow when she came back in from a twirl.

“Forgive me, Prince,” she said, hiding a smile. “I’m clumsy when it comes to dancing.”

They exchanged a glance and broke into quiet laughter. It was minute moment such as this one that made Vesper reminiscent of the old days, when they were younger. Days when they were free, innocent, and naive. Vesper and Constantine were close when they were children, but all that quickly changed as they grew older and more aware of where they stood in terms of the traditional hierarchy. Neither one of them talked about it, but they didn’t have to. Vesper would say that it stopped hurting once Constantine left for the battlefields when he was eighteen. Once he came back, neither of them were quite the same.

“Oh, great,” Vesper muttered, spying a dark, stoic form standing idly at the edge of the ballroom. His eyes were undoubtedly locked onto her. “Pardon me, I’m being ‘summoned’.”

She slowed to a halt and gave the Prince a regretful nod. He saw her off with a small bow and sympathetic smile before she cut across the floor to confront the tall man with unruly dark hair. Vesper would have thought he would at least tame his mane for the occasion, but maybe the Elite were allowed to do whatever the hell they wanted. He stared her down and she stared defiantly back.

“You can’t afford to be distracted now, Vesper,” Vega said. “We can’t trust any of these men with the Princess.”

“I was not being distracted, Vega,” Vesper retaliated. “If anything, I’m being distracted now.”

“Really? Anyone can see it, the relationship you have with the Prince,” he commented. “And I have say that it relays an impression that is not for the best.”

Vesper glared at the man, drawing a breath to temper the rising fury. But she only scoffed and took a step back.

“There is nothing between the Prince and I, Vega,” she spat, a sharp slice of her hand through the air easily conveyed what her voice could not. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m losing track of my Princess.”

The lady knight spun around, fully intending to leave her senior and the conversation where it lay, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Vesper heard before she felt him, a firm grasp on her arm that manipulated her into a dancer’s position a little too roughly to be unintentional. She sighed, having no choice but to follow his lead with a sour frown.

“Vesper, you cannot be doing this,” Vega urged. “It’s bad enough with the Princess, but her highness will be leaving the castle as soon as she is wed and you cannot follow her forever. If you’re going to be inducted into the Elite, this thing with the Prince needs to stop. Now.”

Vesper felt her throat tighten, but she kept her mouth shut and bit her tongue. Vega did have a point of his own, but she hated more than anything being reminded of it. She understood everything so perfectly, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Still, it wasn’t so easy for her, no matter how hard she tried.

The thing with Constantine was that he was the one who lead to her being brought into the castle in the first place. He had only been six years old when they first decided to take him out to tour the city that extended before the castle. The Prince’s initial impression of the five year old Vesper was that she was a mud monster, lurking in the shadows of untravelled alleyways and waiting for him to let his guard down so she could destroy the kingdom.

He was shaken so badly that he had recurring nightmares in the week to come, so persistent that at last the King had the ‘mud monster’ located and brought to the castle to prove his ridiculous ideas untrue. She still remembered being doused in hot water and having her skin scrubbed raw by a flock of handmaidens. Constantine had sat a good distance away in the washroom, watching with saucer eyes as the dirt melted away before his eyes to reveal a pale, malnourished little girl. Once he’d accepted what he saw as the truth, he was ushered out and her clothes were stripped off for a full bath. Vesper never experienced anything more traumatizing than that in her life thus far.

So afterwards in the garden when Constantine decided to yank her hair to see if it was real or not, she was hardly in the mood to let it slide. He was smaller than the rest, so she turned on him with what he saw as a death glare and pounced on him without warning. She managed a good knock on his head before she was pulled off and he immediately fled to his father’s lap. The King only laughed and laughed at the time, intrigued with the way his son interacted with another child. And as bizarre as the King had always been, he was a man of compassion who never thought to drop the little girl back to the streets.

At first, she would spend a few weeks working in the kitchens. Despite the rough introductions, the Prince would still seek her out every chance he got. Things changed when one of the senior knights caught them sword playing in the courtyard. The Prince often got caught while the little girl always managed to outsmart her pursuers and avoid immediate punishment. Eventually, she forgave the Prince enough to take him with her and lead an entire squad of knights and servants on a wild goose chase throughout the castle. That was how Vesper was permitted to enter knighthood. The King recognized that she had a skill set that could be groomed into something good. With his second child on its way, he thought of no better time than that moment to begin training a guardian for his daughter.

“May I cut in?”

Vesper quickly let go of Vega and slipped into the other man’s arms without a word or second glance. It took only a second for her to register why her new partner seemed so familiar. A single glance at the smirk on his mouth and the mocking in his dark blue eyes was more than enough to send her over the edge, but all she did was give a great sigh of exasperation.

“I could’ve sworn I said- very clearly- to stay away from me tonight,” she hissed.

“Yeah, but you looked you were treating that poor man so coldly,” he said. “I figured I’d swoop in and save him before he got frostbite.”

“Please, that man is the last person who needs anyone’s sympathy,” Vesper muttered, taking the chance of being so close to the edge of the room to let go and abandon him there with a half-assed curtsy. “Whatever your name is.”

She swiveled on her heel to find the Princess and avoid anyone else she didn’t want to see.

“It’s Devlin, by the way!”