Shin
The migraine I had woken up with could easily go on to be immortalized as some kind of record in historical textbooks. The way the world swayed behind my eyes as I started to blink back to consciousness was rather similar to being hit in the head and then shaken around, something I unfortunately had enough experience with to be able to compare with confidence.
Dawn crept forward like an unwelcome friend, the mat I had laid back against so comfortably at some point forcing my joints to now feel stiff and unused. It hadn't even been night time yet when the saintess had left to her chambers – I could only estimate that I had been asleep around twelve hours.
The mana overload was like an itching in my veins.
Now that I had had time to sit and rest, the fact that I had managed to make it back to Venathca in one piece was nothing short of amazing. I'd have to find a way to brag about it at some point, to someone.
The list of people that could possibly be, though, was incredibly short.
As for Shin, he is unable to use mana.
It wasn't a lie, necessarily.
In fact, it was basically true until just a few days ago. Until a certain saintess kickstarted the long abandoned roots of my mana, I was only able to call on a mere trickle. Not enough to be useful for anything other than sensing someone else's mana at a close distance.
Now it was like regaining a limb I had forgotten I lost. Buzzing and humming under my skin with a vengeance.
It was thrilling and concerning in equal measure. I had thought I'd lost any ability to maintain mana – any scholar who had researched mana thoroughly had said that mana depletion was permanent, usually life-ending – but there was no telling what this really meant. Was it temporary? Would I wake up one morning at just as much of a loss as I had been?
I wished I could focus on the implications more thoroughly, but along with reawakening my mana the act of balancing the saintess' own overload had instead just turned the tables on myself – overloading my previously completely empty tank and sending a surge of pain through my entire body that had still been surging off and on even now.
Taking a look around the room I noticed that the tea cups sat untouched on the table, Ikuto having apparently decided that it was a better choice to let me sleep and not call any attendants to clean the sitting room, a thoughtful gesture even though the prince himself wasn't exactly the role model of health.
In fact I'd bet money that my overachieving brother was already up and terrorizing the court officials with his neat handwriting and well-thought out documentation.
The horror.
I rolled my shoulders as I walked out to the palace gardens – an overly ostentatious collection of plant life that stretched from the courtyard of the palace, around the annex, and even over to the barracks – and the stiffness felt as though I had been asleep for twelve years, not twelve hours.
It was early enough that the majority of the palace grounds would still be silent, save the occasional unlucky servant, but late enough that the advanced guard would have started daily training already. This would be the first time in five years, maybe more, that I had slept in.
I pictured Valdeer's smug expression at me arriving late as I made my way towards the barracks. I had my own rooms in the palace annex – being technically a prince still meant in some ways I was treated like one, but I still preferred to stay close to my men. When the court first started to treat me as a manaless outcast, the shameful ex-saint, it was my pure stubbornness that had me bunking in the outpost's spare room.
Time had proven it to be a good decision. Out of sight, out of mind after all. I had a lot more freedom and privacy as Captain of the Advanced Guard than I ever did as That One Crown Prince.
Ikuto always deserved it more than I did, anyway.
It had been more time than I could easily place since I had been in the gardens so early in the morning, and I found myself retracing a path I often took in my youth – behind the annex, towards the barracks but through the stone paths as opposed to the more secluded areas I would normally traverse.
I had been gone a year. It wasn't strange to be sent off on various tasks and misadventures that were thinly veiled attempts to end my life, but up until now they had been easily resolvable conflicts, minor issues here and there that usually took a few weeks to settle, or just a month or two.
Demons live long and despite our origins Devora were no exception. Still, we weren't all that different from humans – time didn't move faster just because we had more of it to spare. A lot had changed in a year. The garden paths bloomed with different plants, the court was comprised of different nobles who were in and out of my father's favor.
"You look horrid, Shin!" A voice called further up the path, surprising me, light and musical as always. She held a basket filled with flowers that she must have been gathering from the gardens – she was the only person the royal family would allow to do such a thing.
"If it isn't my wayward betrothed. Chasing the daylight hours, Noriko?" As she walked up to me her blonde hair moved behind her like a wave, appearing effortless. I knew that it was meticulously taken care of by her attendants, along with the rest of her appearance.
I had often equated her eyes to that of a sky that had just been cleared of a storm – gray, but warm with blue in a way that was uniquely her. Noriko was beautiful. It was the easiest and most simple way to describe her.
Less simple was realizing as you got to know her that she wasn't some clear and tranquil sky at all – she was the storm itself.
"The only wayward one here is you," she teased, coming to a stop in front of me. She looked me up and down, cataloging any changes and looking for injuries – a habit she had developed since we were just kids. "I hadn't expected to run into you here of all places. Is the venerated and feared captain of the advanced guard growing lazy in his old age?"
I rolled my eyes, casting a glance down the path behind her and then looking down at her with a frown. "You're alone?"
The disapproval in my voice must have been obvious as she frowned right back at me. "We're surrounded by walls twice as tall as any house, plants that are meticulously cultivated and therefore harmless, and palace guards stationed just a yell away in every direction. It's safe, of course I'm alone."
"Here I'd been reflecting on everything that had changed while I was away and yet the few things I wish had remained just the same it seems," I crossed my arms, taking the intimidating stance that would have most others thinking twice about the words they would say next, "You're a noble. You're promised to a prince – though I use that description of myself lightly – you're in a position where false comfort could be the opening an assassin would nee–"
"– Oh spirits above, you big baby. I've made it two hundred years running back and forth barefoot through the palace and these gardens and I'm still just as alive as I've always been. Worry about yourself for once. Now are you going to give me a hug, or am I going to have to leave you alone to brood all by yourself?"
I shook my head with an amused sigh and opened my arms in invitation, to which she spared no time to throw her arms around me and knock several flowers out of her basket in the process.
"You stink."
"I've been wearing the same thing for a week."
"Gross."
"Hey, you're the one who asked for a hug."
"Do you know how boring it's been here without you?" She pouted against my chest, "Ikuto won't listen to me and take breaks. It's been a year of having to listen to him discuss tax reformation and dual cropping."
"You realize," I started as we separated, gesturing for her to walk with me. She fell into step at my side, "his highness and I would be discussing the same topics if I had been here?"
"Yes!" Exasperated, she stomped for a few paces and then gave me a look, "if you're here then you get to deal with the numbers and 'optimal growth patterns,'" she whined while mimicking Ikuto's tone of voice with surprising accuracy. "I can only nod and pretend I'm interested for so long."
"He knows you're not interested."
"I know he knows but I must be polite and – ugh!" She sat down on a stone bench as we passed it, slamming her basket of flowers to the ground. When she pat the seat next to her, I hesitated and she saw through me. "The guard can wait. You haven't been home in a year and who knows when I'll bump into you at some god awful early hour again. Tell me everything!"
Resigned, I sat down and she immediately leaned into my shoulder, her arm intertwining with mine in practiced ease. It was subtle, but I felt her posture relax incrementally.
Devorian tactility – one of those things I never realized I missed until it crept up in moments like this. Biologically, Devora weren't far off from humans. Perhaps that's why our mana was unique even in the Demon World. Normal Devora process mana in cycles related to the moons – an ebb and flow that pulls from the world around them. Saints, however, pulled mana from – well, everything. But primarily other Devora. It's why Devora gravitate toward each other. It's why we crave touch, even platonically.
"Your mana feels different," Noriko muttered, her voice quiet with contemplation. "Almost like before."
I 'hmm'-ed at that, debating on dismissing the observation entirely. Still, Noriko was one of the only people who knew the full story. I started describing the saintess and how her mana had overloaded – and how I had helped her balance it.
"That's dangerous!" Norkio exclaimed with a gasp, "What would you have done if that didn't work?"
"I'm an empty tank," I shrugged, "Theoretically the absence of my mana doesn't mean the capacity would have changed, as a vessel I should hold just as much as she could. I felt like it would probably work."
"But Shin, people die from mana overload. You – you can't just go with your gut feeling on something like that!"
"It worked out."
"You're still overloaded. You have bags under your eyes – how much is it actually working out and how much is it just you being stubborn." She held out her hand, "Here, try transferring some of it to me. There's no point in pushing yourself like this!"
I shook my head, refusing, "It's already evening out. A few days and it'll be fine." Though I wondered what fine looked like now. I could feel it like a cup being overfilled, slowly seeping out as it attempted to balance itself. Would it drain completely? Slowly, like syrup, it felt as though it were dripping through my veins.
She didn't seem too happy but didn't argue. Noriko knew me well enough to know when to try and change my mind. "So you did bring back a saintess…"
"We did indeed. Safely acquired and safely gifted to our crown prince." The noise Noriko made at that was something akin to frustration, and it looked like she had something to say. "Well, what is it?" I prodded.
"Father says I should become Ikuto's concubine now that the opportunity exists," she said sourly. I couldn't help the way my shoulders stiffened at the thought, and I was sure she had noticed. "Of course he's elated to see some other way to scheme himself upwards in court."
"And to get rid of any feelings of obligation having promised you as my wife when I was still worth something," I had tried to make it sound sarcastic, but I couldn't quite mask the tone of my voice. It wasn't as though we were in love with one another or that either of us had really expected to marry in the long run, Noriko was far too independent of a woman to let her father get away with such thoughts without a fight and she was like a little sister to me. To both of us. Yet I still found an old frustration creeping into my thoughts.
With no fault of his own, here was another thing that Ikuto was taking from me.
It wasn't fair of me to think that, as the machinations of court officials were as predictable as the seasons, so I put it from my head. "I suppose you told him what you think of such an idea?"
"I've been banished from any court event until the next full moon!" She said it cheerfully, as though it were a reward and not a punishment. It went to show how little her father paid attention to her as a person, because it basically was. Noriko hated being paraded around.
"How will you go on?" I said dramatically, placing my hand over my mouth and gasping. She hit the side of my arm playfully and then sighed dramatically herself.
"I'm sure Ikuto will get a good laugh out of it all. Not that I've seen him smile much lately." She looked at me seriously then, "I wish I could go off like you, too. Get away from all… this."
"Perhaps one day you could," though I wouldn't say the advance guard's misadventures were anything to be envious about, I could admit that I was grateful to know of the world outside of the palace and capital. My own father, who had ruled for three hundred years – coming into power just before Ikuto was born – had probably left Venathca less than a dozen times in his entire life.
"People like me don't leave Venathca, Shin," her voice is light, but the look in her eyes is not. I know what she means -- the world is limitless, layers and layers of things to explore, and its not even the only world out there. But as a daughter, and the only one at that, her entire world was here. A daughter, to be a wife, to be a mother. If her father weren't a noble, she'd have more prospects, but...
From the other side of the gardens I could see the tell-tale rustling and bustling that proved the rest of the palace had started waking up. Several servants walked the back paths carrying laundry and other duties for the day.
On the westward path, I spotted the tenacious attendant Renma leading the saintess toward the other side of the gardens, gesturing as if she were giving her a tour. Her dark hair had been tamed somewhat, and it seemed as though she had bathed. Thankfully.
Not that I had any room to speak, considering I had passed out before I could do the same.
Her bangs were still covering her face, but the robes she wore were far more suited for her station than the robes we had found her in. It wasn't a bad thing that Renma was showing the saintess around, but given that she toed the line between prisoner and royalty I wasn't entirely sure I approved.
"Is that her?" Noriko asked, leaning forward with interest. "Renma is her attendant?"
The two did not exactly get along, so the distaste in her voice wasn't masked. The two had very different views on what it meant to be nobility, and the few times they had interacted around me they had clashed. I supposed that was probably why Ikuto had assigned Renma as the saintess' attendant – who better to acquaint her with the rigid expectations of Venathican nobility than someone so attuned to it?
"Be nice," I chided teasingly.
"She seems pretty," Noriko commented, ignoring me, "Renma couldn't do something better with her hair?"
I imagined that the saintess probably didn't give Renma much of a choice. She seemed like the type who had to have things exactly her way, given the amount she fussed and struggled on the trip here. Her previous attendants must have loved that.
"Do you think… maybe she was attempting some sort of elaborate suicide? With her mana?" Noriko questioned, watching the saintess closely with a thoughtful look on her face. "Everyone she had ever known was suddenly gone. It must have been painful."
I thought back to the first expression I had seen on her face – indignant and frustrated that I had thwarted her little escape attempt. The same look basically remained on her face the entire time until her mana had overloaded. Not once had I seen her mourn for those unfortunate enough to have served her.
"No," I said with some confidence. Perhaps the overload wasn't an accident, but I didn't think she had purposefully meant to hurt herself. "She must have just been more spoiled than I assumed. She said she had never regulated her own mana flow, never deigned the common folk with her presence during the full moons." I scoffed, the idea absolutely absurd to me.
She didn't seem to agree with me, but then Noriko did always like to think the best of people. "Maybe the moon tribe is different. Maybe she had to work extra hard to regulate her mana? If she's like you were, she would have a lot."
A lot was an understatement. I could still feel it vividly – the pulse of mana flooding through me like a memory with its own consciousness, a wave hitting the rocks of a cliff with violence. I watched as the saintess brushed some loose hair behind her ear, a flash of quiet contemplation as she observed a particular flower her attendant had pointed out.
Feeling the immensity of her mana had forced me to confront complicated thoughts that I had considered long since buried – jealousy being the most ugly of them. I had no right to feel jealous of her, of course. Transferring my mana to Ikuto had been my own choice, my own idea, but it didn't stop the ache of wrongness that I had spent so much of my life ignoring to this point to have this woman tear it down in a few selfish minutes.
"She's so thin…" Noriko observed, as if seeing something that I hadn't in that fact. I thought about her wrists, about how we had to pad the manacles that were too big for her dainty structure. Like most soldiers my experience with women had been fleeting liaisons – never much beyond the transactional coin for company. I had never put much thought into what the norm was for a woman's frame. I wasn't picky.
A bell sounded in the distance, knocking us both from our observations. Noriko sighed and stood up, collecting her basket. "I'd better go before one of the gardeners see I've taken so many flowers again."
"Just send anyone who complains my way," I stood up as well, patting her on the head before we parted ways. I had been dallying long enough, and I was sure that Valdeer was waiting eagerly to bore me with morning reporting and cataloging expenses from our venture.
The path had me approaching the saintess and Renma, who noticed me before the saintess had. The near-frown that had been gracing her features turned into a full blown scowl once she saw me walking towards them.
"Lady Renma, it's been too long," I greeted her by taking her hand and giving her a light kiss on the back of the hand. She giggled and looked up at me coyly through her eyelashes and I made a mental note to circle back sometime when the saintess was busy elsewhere.
"Lord Shin," she greeted, though the saintess glared at me through her bangs, her pink eyes peeking through like angry gems. "I was just showing Lady Yumi through the gardens."
"So our illustrious saintess has a name," I teased, crossing my arms and looking her up and down. On the road it wasn't something that I could focus on but Noriko was right – she was thin. The robes she had on now hadn't been made for her – something that I was sure would be remedied with time given her station – as such they hung loosely in places that couldn't be secured with ribbon. "Taking a tour?"
She seemed annoyed at my scrutiny and moved her arms in front of her to cover herself, almost as a protective gesture. She had yet to greet me, something that I'm sure scandalized Renma as she seemed to be waiting for her lady to do so.
"My lady had asked to see the paths through the garden around the palace before duties call her elsewhere today," Renma bowed.
"Hmm," I looked over at the saintess, who looked away quickly as if I had caught her in the middle of scheming. "A day here and you're already trying to map out the place. Looking for escape routes? How proactive of you, saintess."
"I'm not trying to –" She snapped, indignation causing her hackles to raise like some angered feline. And here Noriko had told me not to trust my gut so much. I'd have to station one of the advanced guard somewhere out of sight near her rooms. As if she were reading my mind, she muttered, "there's too many of you around, anyway."
I laughed at her audacity, "It would be good for you to remember that." I looked at Renma, who had taken Yumi's informal responses toward me with some shock. In the eyes of history, a saintess was far more important than a mere prince. In the eyes of polite society, it was debatable.
I supposed a deposed prince and captured saintess was a dynamic that just hadn't been explored in court etiquette.
Maybe it was because I had gotten used to being around non Devora, but it came to me how cagey she had been. She kept a careful distance from anyone on the road, and even now stood a good distance away from both Renma and myself.
Like a princess used to her pedestal, I had thought. But something about the way Noriko had looked at her with almost pity in her eyes had me examining her with some pause.
"Everyone she had ever known was suddenly gone. It must have been painful."
I hadn't even seen her cry. I'd seen her angry, yes, lots of that. She had tried to escape – exhausting her mana in the process and making her susceptible to mana overload, which she had apparently no experience with. It didn't seem as though she had been sustaining some form of extended shock – No, she had experienced enough of that during the scuffle at camp that showed she was unused to bloody violence.
It was hard to say the state of her before we had found her, as she had been brought to me by the guard after the temple had already been mostly burnt. Even her clothes had been scorched.
I parted from the two, watching as Renma led the saintess down a winding path that lead to the other side of the gardens toward the courtyard that many visiting nobles favored.
Didn't know how to balance her mana. Didn't know what a bonasus was. Or how to suppress her mana when using her abilities. Or what low-level demons looked like..
I'd have to file these thoughts away for later, but as it were, the implications started building like heavy stones at the pit of my stomach.
A princess used to her pedestal. Her teal hair was out of sight now, and I turned back toward the barracks. That's what I had to imagine she had been. Because that was what she was supposed to be.