Leo had always believed that if he were going to meet royalty, it would be under more dignified circumstances than hiding behind a decorative hedge while trying to prevent an assassination attempt that he had written himself three years ago during a particularly uninspired bout of late-night plotting.
The Royal Academy's eastern gardens were a masterpiece of landscape architecture, filled with winding paths, ornamental fountains, and carefully cultivated flower beds that bloomed in precise seasonal rotations.
Leo had described them in loving detail as the perfect setting for romantic encounters, political intrigue, and the occasional dramatic revelation that would advance the plot in meaningful ways.
What he had not anticipated was how difficult it would be to navigate the gardens while carrying a two-inch-tall knight who insisted on providing tactical commentary about proper surveillance techniques.
"Your positioning is all wrong," Sir Reginald whispered from his perch on Leo's shoulder, his tiny voice barely audible over the gentle sound of water trickling from a nearby fountain. "A proper reconnaissance mission requires elevated observation points and clear sight lines to all potential escape routes."
"This isn't a reconnaissance mission," Leo hissed back, crouching lower behind the hedge that concealed him from the main garden path. "This is me trying to prevent a murder while maintaining plausible deniability about how I knew it was going to happen."
"Ah," Sir Reginald said with the tone of someone who had just received a crucial piece of information. "In that case, your positioning is still wrong, but for entirely different reasons."
Leo ignored the pixie's critique and focused on the scene unfolding before him.
Princess Seraphina was walking along the garden path exactly as he had written her to do, her golden hair catching the afternoon sunlight and her blue silk dress rustling softly with each step.
She was beautiful in the kind of effortless way that belonged on the cover of a romance novel, and she moved with the grace of someone who had been trained from birth to be watched and admired.
She was also, according to Leo's original plot outline, approximately thirty seconds away from being attacked by an assassin disguised as a gardener.
Leo had written the scene as a way to establish Princess Seraphina as more than just a pretty face; she was supposed to fight back against her attacker with surprising skill, demonstrating that she had been secretly trained in combat despite her sheltered upbringing.
The assassination attempt would fail, but it would serve as the catalyst for increased security measures and the beginning of a romantic subplot between the princess and Kaelen, who would arrive just in time to help her defeat the assassin.
It was a perfectly serviceable bit of plot development that would advance multiple character arcs while providing some exciting action sequences.
The problem was that Leo was no longer just the author of this story; he was a character in it, and he had a moral obligation to prevent people from being stabbed, even if those people were fictional and the stabbing was supposed to fail anyway.
The assassin appeared right on schedule, emerging from behind a rose bush with the kind of theatrical timing that suggested he had been waiting for his cue. He was dressed as a gardener, complete with dirt-stained clothes and a wide-brimmed hat that concealed his face, but Leo could see the glint of steel beneath his gardening apron.
Princess Seraphina continued walking, apparently oblivious to the danger approaching from behind. In Leo's original version of the scene, she would sense the attack at the last moment and spin around to defend herself.
But Leo couldn't be sure that events would play out exactly as he had written them, and he wasn't willing to bet the princess's life on the assumption that his fictional world would follow his original script.
"Thirty seconds," he muttered to Sir Reginald. "I need to warn her without making it obvious that I knew this was going to happen."
"Might I suggest the direct approach?" Sir Reginald offered. "Simply shout 'Look out, Your Highness, there's an assassin behind you!' It's not subtle, but it's effective."
"That would require explaining how I knew there was an assassin," Leo pointed out. "Which would lead to awkward questions about my apparent ability to predict assassination attempts."
"Fair point," Sir Reginald conceded. "Perhaps a more indirect approach? You could create a distraction that would alert her to the danger without revealing your foreknowledge."
Leo looked around desperately for something he could use to create a distraction.
The gardens were filled with decorative elements, but most of them were either too heavy to move or too delicate to use as improvised weapons. His eyes fell on a small ornamental pond filled with lily pads and what appeared to be several dozen very fat, very lazy fish.
It would have to do.
Leo grabbed a handful of pebbles from the garden path and began throwing them at the pond, creating a series of splashes that sent the fish into a frenzy of panicked swimming.
The noise was loud enough to attract attention without being obviously artificial, and it had the added benefit of being the kind of thing that could plausibly be caused by a clumsy student who had tripped while walking through the gardens.
Princess Seraphina turned toward the sound, her blue eyes wide with curiosity. "What on earth..."
The assassin, apparently deciding that his cover had been blown, abandoned all pretense of subtlety and lunged forward with his concealed dagger. But Princess Seraphina's attention was focused on the pond rather than the path behind her, and she stepped sideways at exactly the wrong moment.
Or rather, exactly the right moment, depending on one's perspective.
The assassin's blade whistled through the air where the princess had been standing a moment before, and his forward momentum carried him directly into Leo, who had been in the process of throwing another handful of pebbles and was therefore positioned in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.
The collision sent both Leo and the assassin tumbling into the ornamental pond with a splash that sent water cascading over the carefully maintained flower beds.
Leo found himself face-to-face with a very surprised-looking man whose gardening disguise was now thoroughly soaked and whose dagger was somewhere at the bottom of the pond among the startled fish.
"Assassin!" Leo shouted, because at this point, subtlety was no longer an option. "There's an assassin in the pond!"
Princess Seraphina spun around, her training finally kicking in as she assessed the situation with the kind of tactical awareness that Leo had written into her character.
She took in the scene: Leo and the would-be assassin thrashing around in the pond, the discarded gardening tools that had concealed the assassin's weapons, and the general chaos that had erupted in what was supposed to be a peaceful garden stroll.
"Guards!" she called out, her voice carrying across the gardens with the kind of authority that came from a lifetime of being obeyed. "Guards to the eastern gardens!"
The assassin, realizing that his mission had failed spectacularly, tried to climb out of the pond and make his escape. Unfortunately for him, the ornamental pond was deeper than it appeared, and his waterlogged clothes made it difficult to move with any kind of speed or grace.
Leo, meanwhile, was discovering that tackling assassins was significantly more difficult than throwing buckets at golems. The assassin was trained, experienced, and highly motivated to avoid capture, while Leo was a former fantasy author whose primary combat experience involved describing fights rather than participating in them.
"A little help here would be nice!" Leo called out as he tried to prevent the assassin from reaching the edge of the pond.
"I'm providing tactical support!" Sir Reginald announced from somewhere near the pond's edge, where he had apparently been thrown during the initial collision. "The key to aquatic combat is controlling the high ground!"
"This is a pond!" Leo shouted back. "There is no high ground!"
"Then you must create your own high ground through superior positioning and strategic use of available resources!"