Part 1
Night had fallen over the ducal townhouse by the time Philip found himself alone in his study, the crisp envelope from the Imperial War Office resting in his hands like a lead weight.
Albert had delivered it hours ago through the capsule system. But Philip hadn't had a moment to actually open it. Now… his mind kept drifting back to those moments at the tennis before the … interruption.
To the touch that had started it all.
He could still feel it—the warmth of her hand descending with butterfly gentleness atop his, slender fingers curving around his palm where it had rested on her thigh. That single moment had sparked the most memorable few minutes of his entire week.
The touch had sent his heart racing.
For three endless seconds, neither moved.
Philip's brain catalogued sensations with excruciating clarity: the warmth of skin beneath his palm, the subtle shift of muscle as she breathed, the way her fingers trembled ever so slightly as they held his hand in place. Her tennis dress had ridden up just enough that his fingertips rested against bare thigh, smooth as silk and radiating heat that seemed to bypass his hand entirely and shoot straight to his chest, where his heart attempted to jackhammer its way through his ribcage.
Move your hand. Move it now. This is an accident. She knows it's an accident. Just—
"Master," Natalia breathed, and something in her voice made Philip's chest tighten. Not her usual analytical tone or cheerful observation. This sounded almost... uncertain. Confused.
Her fingers pressed more firmly over his hand, and Philip watched her face with growing concern. A flush was spreading across her cheeks, but her expression wasn't the serene contentment he'd come to expect. Her brows drew together slightly, lips parting as if she wanted to speak but couldn't find the words.
Her blue eyes locked onto his with an intensity that made his throat go dry. The usual analytical distance had vanished, replaced by something raw and unguarded. Her pupils were dilated, her breathing shallow, and a flush was spreading from her cheeks down her neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her tennis dress in a way that made Philip acutely aware of how little fabric separated them.
"I..." Philip's voice emerged as a croak. "Natalia, I didn't mean to—"
"You didn't?" The disappointment in her voice was so immediate, so genuine, that it stopped him mid-apology. Her fingers tightened fractionally around his hand, not quite pulling it away but not releasing it either. "But I thought... when you touched me... I assumed you wanted..."
She trailed off, and for the first time since he'd known her, Natalia looked uncertain. Not confused about facts or protocols, but uncertain about... herself. About what she wanted versus what she thought he wanted.
"The books," she continued, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper, "they describe this scenario. The accidental touch that lingers. The moment where both parties realize..." Her flush deepened to crimson. "I calculated the probability that your hand placement was truly accidental at approximately forty-three percent, given the trajectory of your arm movement and the available surface area of the bench."
Only Natalia could apply statistical analysis to hand-holding while blushing like a maiden.
"Which means," Philip said carefully, his engineering brain engaging despite his body's entirely different agenda, "you thought there was a fifty-seven percent chance I did it on purpose?"
"Correct." Her eyes searched his face with desperate intensity. "And when you didn't immediately withdraw... when you lingered instead of moving... I thought perhaps..." She bit her lip, a gesture he'd never seen her make before. "I thought perhaps you wanted what I want."
The admission hung between them like a live wire.
"What do you want?" Philip heard himself ask, though some distant corner of his mind was screaming that this was a terrible question to ask while his hand was still on her thigh on a private tennis court.
Natalia's free hand moved to rest over her heart, and Philip couldn't help but notice how the motion drew attention to curves that her tennis dress only accentuated. "I want..." She swallowed hard. "To finish what we started at the hotel..."
Philip's mind went completely blank.
"I know you said we weren't ready," she continued in a rush, words tumbling out with uncharacteristic speed. "I know you said we needed to figure things out first. But Master, it's been weeks already..."
"Natalia—"
"I am sorry Master. I don't know what has gotten into me," she interrupted, and the raw honesty in her voice made his pulse spike.
But she didn't pull away. Neither did he.
The moment stretched like taffy, thick with possibility and confusion. Natalia's fingers remained curled around his hand, her other hand still pressed over her racing heart. Her eyes searched his face with an intensity that bordered on desperate—not the analytical observation he'd grown accustomed to, but something far more primal.
"Master, I..." She swallowed hard, and Philip watched her throat work with the motion, suddenly hyper-aware of every detail. "My body feels... strange. Like there's something incomplete. Something unfinished. Ever since the hotel, I've experienced this recurring... I don't know how to describe it."
Her free hand drifted from her heart to rest against her lower abdomen, the gesture unconscious and utterly suggestive.
"An ache?" Philip heard himself ask, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Yes." Her flush deepened, spreading down her neck and disappearing beneath her tennis dress in a way that made Philip's mouth go dry. "It intensifies when you're near. When you touch me. Right now, it's..." She bit her lip again, that gesture she'd never made before these past few weeks. "It's almost overwhelming."
Philip should move his hand. He knew he should move his hand. Every rational thought in his head screamed at him to create distance, to think this through, to consider the implications and ethics and complications.
But something had shifted inside him too. Perhaps it was Margaret's words this morning about understanding others' perspectives. Perhaps it was the System's pointed observations about overthinking. Perhaps it was simply that he'd reached the limit of his own restraint.
Or perhaps—and this felt truest of all—he was finally allowing himself to feel without the constant self-questioning of whether those feelings were acceptable.
"Natalia," he said softly, and was surprised by how steady his voice sounded. "What do you want right now? Not what you think I want. Not what the books say you should want. What do you want?"
Her eyes widened, pupils dilating further. For a long moment, she simply stared at him, as if the question had short-circuited something fundamental. Then, moving with a decisiveness that was pure instinct rather than calculation, she shifted.
One fluid motion brought her from sitting beside him to straddling his lap, her tennis dress riding up scandalously as her knees bracketed his hips. Her hands found his shoulders, gripping with surprising strength, and her face hovered inches from his.
"I want..." she breathed, and Philip felt the words ghost across his lips. "I want to finish what we started. I want to understand this sensation. I want..." Her fingers tightened on his shoulders.
The admission hung between them for perhaps half a second before Philip's restraint shattered completely.
His hands moved to her waist, pulling her closer as his lips found hers. Not the tentative, confused kiss from the hotel. Not the analytical exploration of sensations. This was hunger and need and something that felt startlingly like desire.
Natalia made a sound—half gasp, half moan—and her arms wrapped around his neck with desperate intensity. She kissed him back with a proactive eagerness that surprised him, her lips parting under his, her body pressing against him with unconscious need.
For the first time since that night at the hotel, Philip's mind wasn't filled with questions about ethics or whether Natalia truly understood what she wanted. Those thoughts existed somewhere in the background, but they were drowned out by the overwhelming presence of this moment, by the harmony between what his body wanted and what his mind was beginning to acknowledge.
His hands explored the curve of her waist, feeling the toned muscle beneath smooth skin. She was strong—he could feel the athletic power in her body—yet there was a gentleness to how she held him, as if she were acutely aware of her own strength and careful not to hurt him.
One of his hands slid up her back, fingers tracing the elegant line of her spine through the thin fabric of her tennis dress. The other moved lower, feeling the contours of her leg, and Natalia arched into the touch.
"Oh," she breathed, her eyes fluttering open to meet his. The analytical distance was completely gone, replaced by raw sensation and discovery.
Philip couldn't help but smile against her lips. "Stop analyzing," he murmured, echoing his words from the hotel, and kissed her again before she could formulate a response.
This time, Natalia's response was immediate. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer as her hips shifted in his lap in a way that sent his blood racing through his body. The movement was instinctive, driven by urges she clearly didn't fully understand.
Philip's hands continued their exploration, and he was surprised by his own lack of hesitation. He could feel the subtle definition of her abs, the sculpted softness of her thighs against his hips, the perfect curve of her backside as his hand ventured lower.
Natalia broke the kiss with a gasp, her head falling back as Philip's lips found her throat. "Master," she breathed, wonder threading through every syllable. "I don't understand your earlier hesitation. When something feels this right, this wonderful... how can we not be ready for it?"
Before Philip could reply, her words dissolved into a soft cry as Philip's wandering hand touched a particularly sensitive spot around the inner side of her thigh. Her fingers tightened in his hair, her body arching into him with unconscious grace, and Philip felt her thighs trembling where they bracketed his hips. And he completely forgot the pending question from earlier.
His hands moved to her face, cupping her cheeks as he brought her mouth back to his. This kiss was deeper, more desperate, fueled by weeks of tension and interrupted moments and careful distance finally giving way to honesty.
Natalia's hands slid from his hair to his shoulders, then down his chest, exploring with the same wonder he felt in his own touch. Her fingers found the buttons of his tennis shirt, and without conscious thought, she began working them open with surprising dexterity.
Philip's breath caught as her hands found bare skin, her touch sending shivers through him despite the afternoon warmth. She explored the planes of his chest with gentle curiosity, her touch both tentative and bold, and Philip was acutely aware of the contrast between his softer body and her athletic perfection.
But if Natalia noticed or cared about the difference, she gave no sign. Her hands continued their exploration with clear appreciation, her touch growing bolder as she discovered which touches made him pull her closer.
His own hands grew bolder too, one sliding up to tangle in her golden hair while the other traced the curve of her hip, then higher, feeling the gentle swell of her ribs beneath his palm, then—
"Master Philip!" Lydia's voice cut through the haze of desire with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. "I do apologize for the interruption, but I believe I should remind you that while the maids are stationed away to give you privacy of conversation, they can still very much see this area!"
Philip froze, his hand still curved around Natalia's ribcage, his shirt half-unbuttoned, Natalia straddling his lap with her tennis dress hiked scandalously high and her hair thoroughly mussed from his hands.
The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water.
"Oh God," he managed, his voice strangled. His face flooded with heat from the sudden realization that maids stationed fifty meters away had just watched him thoroughly make out with Natalia on a tennis court bench.
Lydia stood at the edge of the court, her expression carefully neutral except for the telltale quirk at the corner of her mouth. "The maids need to remain attentive, you understand. To retrieve stray balls at a minute's notice. Which means they must keep this area in their line of sight at all times." She paused, letting that sink in. "They've been very attentive for the past several minutes."
Philip wanted to die. Or possibly sink into the ground. Or ideally both simultaneously.
Natalia, however, seemed confused by the interruption. She tilted her head, still in Philip's lap, her hands still resting on his bare chest beneath his opened shirt. "But why does it matter if they see? I am sure they can feel our joy and share in the—"
"Natalia," Lydia interrupted gently but firmly, "It's a matter of Master Philip's safety. I will explain the connections later."
For a split second—so brief Philip almost missed it—Natalia's expression shifted. Her brows drew together, her lips pressed into a thin line, and something flashed in her blue eyes that looked startlingly like frustration. Pure, genuine, personal frustration at being interrupted, not confusion about protocol or concern for Philip's feelings, but her own disappointment at the moment ending.
Then, as quickly as it appeared, the expression vanished. Her face smoothed into compliant serenity, and she immediately shifted off Philip's lap with graceful efficiency.
"Of course, Miss Lydia," she said sweetly, tugging her tennis dress back into place and smoothing her mussed hair. "I apologize for the impropriety."
But Philip had seen it. That micro-expression of frustration. A rare evidence of her own desires.
The realization sent a different kind of warmth through his chest, even as he fumbled with his shirt buttons with trembling fingers, his face still burning with embarrassment.
Lydia's expression softened slightly as she watched them both attempt to restore some semblance of propriety. "I do apologize for the interruption," she said, and this time her voice carried genuine sympathy beneath the professional tone. "But perhaps the tennis court is not the most appropriate venue for … intimacy."
Philip finished the last button, his fingers still shaking slightly. "Right. Yes. Of course. Tennis court. Bad idea. Noted."
Natalia had successfully restored her appearance to something approaching presentable, though her cheeks flushed in a way that would make her activities over the past few minutes abundantly clear to anyone who looked closely.
"Well then," Lydia continued, her voice returning to its usual crisp efficiency, though Philip could swear he saw the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. "Shall we head back to the estate? I believe you've had quite enough... exercise for one afternoon."
Philip nodded mutely, not trusting his voice.
As they began walking toward the estate, Lydia's mirror phone suddenly chimed. She pulled it from her pocket, glancing at the screen, and her expression shifted instantly from amused to serious.
"Master Philip," she said quietly, her tone making both Philip and Natalia stop and turn. "I've just received a message from Albert. Apparently, there's been a mail delivered to the Yorgorian estate for you."
"A mail?" Philip frowned. "What kind of mail?"
Lydia's eyes met his, and the concern in them made his stomach clench.
"Military mail, sir. From the Imperial War Office."
Part 2
The mansion had been Vlan's declaration of his love for her—twenty rooms of marble and gilt overlooking manicured gardens that could have graced an imperial palace. Wrought-iron gates. Walls high enough to keep out armies. Or, even since Vlan's supposed death, to ensure one foreign princess never left without permission.
Rosetta stood motionless at her bedroom window, a shadow among shadows, watching the guard rotation below with the cold precision her grandfather had drilled into her since childhood. Midnight struck. Exactly midnight. Military precision, even in what they euphemistically called "protective custody."
Four men at the front gate. Two patrolling the perimeter with mathematical regularity. Another stationed at the servants' entrance, his posture suggesting boredom rather than vigilance. All of them following orders to ensure Lady Rosetta Woterbatch remained exactly where the Arussian Empire wanted her until prisoner swap negotiations with Osgorreich concluded. After all, the crown prince needs the swap to bring back his most staunch ally.
Every prison has weaknesses, her grandfather had taught her. Every system has exploitable gaps. Every guard rotation creates a window—however brief—when discipline momentarily lapses.
She turned from the window, her movements economical, professional. The dress laid out on the bed represented weeks of careful planning—simple dark wool instead of the silk and lace her wardrobe typically contained. The kind a respectable middle-class widow might wear. High collar, modest cut, nothing that would draw a second glance from anyone who mattered. A heavy shawl that could double as concealment. Oversized sweaters to obscure her figure's distinctive lines underneath. And most critically—a black veil and headscarf that would render her face entirely forgettable.
Her raven hair, usually styled to perfection, she'd already arranged in a simple braid. No jewelry except a plain wedding band that spoke of recent loss and fresh grief. Everything about the ensemble screamed ordinary—the kind of woman who warranted sympathy rather than scrutiny, compassion rather than interrogation.
The door opened without sound. Katerina entered like smoke, older woman with lined face and eyes that had seen too much. An Osgorrotian operative, one of many planted across Arussia years ago for exactly this kind of contingency. Sleeper agents, waiting for activation.
"The kitchen door," Katerina whispered in flawless Osgorrotian, the language feeling like home on Rosetta's tongue after weeks of forced Arussian. "The new guard drinks. Not much, but enough. His pattern is consistent."
"The stable?"
"Your mare is saddled. Hooves muffled like you requested." Katerina's voice caught, emotion threatening her professional composure. "And after you leave... this place will be one of many targets in tonight's massive aerial raid. Vakeria has coordinated the timing. This mansion will be... no more."
Rosetta placed her hands over Katerina's, the gesture both gratitude and farewell. "What is past is past. However beautiful the memories were." Her voice softened. "I suggest you retreat immediately back to the Imperium after faking your death tonight. The network will extract you."
"But my lady—"
"That's an order, Katerina." Gentle but iron beneath the silk. "You've served the House of Woterbatch faithfully for twenty-three years. This is how I repay that service—by using what little authority I have left to grant you an early retirement. A real life. One where you choose your own path."
Katerina's hands trembled as she clutched Rosetta's. Tears carved paths down weathered cheeks. "Thank you, my lady. Thank you."
They embraced briefly—two professionals acknowledging that some operations ended not in death but in survival—and then Katerina vanished back into the shadows she'd emerged from.
Rosetta changed with practiced efficiency, abandoning silk for wool. The transformation was remarkable. The radiant socialite who'd graced ballrooms across three empires disappeared, replaced by someone beautiful but ordinary. Someone easily ignored. Someone of no particular consequence in a world that judged women by their status first and their faces second.
She wrapped the veil around her face, the headscarf over her hair, and checked her reflection one final time. Perfect. Forgettable. The kind of woman who existed in peripheral vision rather than center stage.
Quarter past midnight arrived with the precision of an executioner's blade.
Rosetta watched from the darkened corridor as the guard at the kitchen door shifted his weight, glanced around with the guilty furtiveness of a man about to break protocol, then disappeared behind the carriage house. The bulge of a flask was visible in his coat as he moved.
Two minutes. Maybe three if she was lucky.
Rosetta moved.
Down the servants' staircase, muscle memory guiding her feet around the creaking third step Katerina had warned about. Through the kitchen where the cook's snoring rumbled through the adjacent wall—a metronome of oblivious security. Out the door into the garden, staying low beneath window lines, using shadows the way other women used cosmetics.
The stable loomed ahead—dark wood and the familiar smell of horses and hay and leather. Rosetta slipped inside, finding her mare exactly as promised: saddled, hooves wrapped in cloth to muffle sound, eyes calm despite the irregularity of midnight preparation.
"Good girl," Rosetta whispered, stroking the mare's neck with genuine affection. This horse had carried her through morning rides with Vlan, through carefully orchestrated appearances that maintained her cover. "We're going home. Finally going home."
She mounted in one fluid motion—years of riding lessons making the movement second nature—and guided the mare toward the stable's rear exit. The garden wall loomed twelve feet high, but intelligence always found the weaknesses in security. There was a service gate for deliveries. Locked, yes. But Katerina had provided the key three days ago.
The lock clicked open with a sound that seemed deafening in the night silence.
Rosetta froze. Every muscle tensed. Listening for alarm, for shouting, for the distinctive click of rifles being readied. Nothing. Just the distant sounds of the capital itself—a city that never quite slept, even past midnight. Carriages on distant streets. Laughter from some late-night gathering. The ordinary sounds of people living ordinary lives while espionage unfolded in their midst.
She led the mare through the gate, closing it softly behind her with hands that didn't quite steady. Then mounted again and rode.
Not fast—that would draw attention. Just a steady ride through the suburban streets, another widow traveling late, nothing unusual in a city this size. The veil and darkness did the rest, rendering her invisible through sheer ordinariness.
Behind her, the mansion remained quiet. The drunk guard would return to his post, none the wiser. Morning would arrive before they discovered her empty room. By then, if everything went according to plan, this mansion would be rubble and ash. And so would many other carefully selected targets across the capital.
Rosetta allowed herself one brief moment of regret—for Vlan and the beautiful fake fairytale she worked so hard to craft for the Arussian public. The fantasy of love preventing war. The dream that passion could override politics.
Then she pushed the emotion aside with the ruthlessness her grandfather had cultivated. Sentiment was a luxury operatives couldn't afford. Not when survival depended on cold calculation and colder execution.
Part 3
The central railway station rose from the darkness like a cathedral to industry and empire. Gas lamps flickered along the platforms, casting pools of yellow light that transformed locomotive steam into something ethereal, almost holy. Even at three in the morning, the station hummed with the relentless energy of a nation at war—night trains departing for distant provinces, freight cars being loaded with military supplies, workers maintaining the machinery that kept the Arussian Empire grinding forward despite mounting casualties and mounting debts.
Rosetta tied her mare at a public hitching post three blocks from the main entrance, among the horses of other late-night travelers. The mare would be collected by designated Osgorrotian operatives embedded in the city's extensive smuggling network and spirited back to the Imperium through channels that had existed even before the current Arussian Empire. But that was a different mission entirely. Her job now was simple survival.
The station's main entrance was too visible, too watched. Instead, Rosetta used the third-class passenger entrance—a smaller door on the eastern side where working people came and went without fanfare or scrutiny. The guard there barely glanced at her veiled face and ordinary figure, waving her through with the bored efficiency of someone working the worst shift imaginable, his mind already on whatever breakfast awaited him when dawn finally arrived.
Inside, the station was controlled chaos. Soldiers in uniform moving toward military transports with that peculiar mixture of resignation and dark humor that characterized men heading toward probable death. Families clustered around meager belongings, heading to relatives in safer provinces, their faces worn with exhaustion and worry. Workers reporting for factory shifts in industrial cities, lunch pails in hand, eyes hollow from too little sleep and too much work. And among them, invisible to untrained eyes, the network of Osgorrotian intelligence operatives that existed in every major transit hub across every major nation.
Rosetta moved to the third-class waiting area, finding a bench in a corner with good sightlines—able to watch all approaches without being easily noticed herself. Around her, the other passengers were exactly what they appeared to be—tired workers, anxious mothers, old men who'd spent too many years working too hard for too little reward. No one who'd recognize a foreign princess beneath widow's weeds and fresh grief.
"Excuse me, ma'am." A young woman approached—early twenties, dressed as a railway clerk, carrying a stack of schedules that looked entirely legitimate. "The express to Vyrzhalovo is boarding on platform seven. Were you waiting for that one?"
The code phrase. Perfectly natural words that could mean anything to anyone listening, but told Rosetta exactly what she needed to know. Contact established. The network was active. Her escape route was confirmed.
"Yes," Rosetta replied softly, modulating her accent to match middle-class Arussian, the linguistic camouflage as important as the visual. "My father-in-law is in Vyrzhalovo. He is severely sick. I must reach him before..." She let the sentence trail off, the implied ending obvious.
"Of course. I'm so sorry." The young woman—one of the Osgorrotian operatives, positioned in the railway company years ago specifically for operations like this—pressed a ticket into Rosetta's hand with practiced subtlety. "Coach seven, compartment fourteen. You'll find the accommodations... suitable."
Code within code. Everything arranged. Everything accounted for.
"Thank you."
The operative melted back into the crowd, just another clerk helping passengers, entirely forgettable. Rosetta examined the ticket—third class, as planned. The kind of accommodation where passengers kept to themselves and conductors asked minimal questions, where privacy was guaranteed by poverty rather than privilege.
Platform seven was chaos in miniature. Passengers jostling for position, porters hauling luggage with practiced efficiency, the locomotive hissing steam like some mechanical dragon preparing for flight. Rosetta joined the queue for third-class carriages, keeping her veil in place, her posture that of a woman exhausted by grief rather than espionage. Just another widow traveling alone. Nothing remarkable. Nothing worth remembering.
The conductor checked her ticket with barely a glance, his mind already on the next passenger, the next problem, the next complaint. "Fourteen, down the corridor. Mind the step, ma'am."
The carriage interior was utilitarian rather than comfortable—wooden benches instead of upholstered seats, narrow windows, the smell of coal smoke and unwashed humanity. But it was transport. And transport meant freedom. Transport meant home.
Compartment fourteen held five other passengers when Rosetta entered. Two women, three men, all dressed in that careful middle-class respectability that suggested education and modest means. They nodded politely as she settled onto the bench, then returned to their newspapers and quiet conversations.
Except their conversations were a little too natural. Their gestures too refined. Their eyes assessed her with the professional evaluation of trained operatives rather than the casual disinterest of genuine passengers.
Osgorrotian operatives. All of them. The entire compartment carefully curated to ensure Rosetta traveled isolated from genuine passengers who might recognize her or report suspicious behavior. A bubble of security in a hostile nation.
The relief was almost overwhelming. For the first time in weeks, she could breathe freely without wondering if every word was being reported, every gesture analyzed, every smile calculated for its propaganda value.
The train lurched into motion, pulling away from the station with the grinding power of steel wheels on rails and coal-fired engines converting fuel into forward momentum. Through the window, Rosetta watched the station recede, then the suburbs, then the city itself dissolving into the pre-dawn darkness like a nightmare fading with morning light.
Behind her, somewhere in that sprawl of lights and smoke and imperial ambition, guards were probably still soundly asleep. The planned Vakerian attacks would start once her train's departure was confirmed—massive aerial raids targeting strategic locations across the capital, including one beautiful mansion on the outskirts. By the time alarms started sounding, she'd be halfway to the border and the mansion would be ash.
One of the female operatives—an older woman with kind face and eyes that had seen too much—leaned across the compartment. "Would you like tea? I have extra."
"Thank you," Rosetta said softly, the simple courtesy feeling profound after weeks of performative interactions.
"Traveling far?"
"To family. In Vyrzhalovo." The lies came easily now, worn smooth through repetition.
"Ah." The woman nodded knowingly, her expression suggesting understanding. "You're Volskan, then? Your accent..."
A test. Making sure Rosetta understood her cover story, that she could maintain it under casual interrogation.
"My late husband was Volskan," Rosetta replied smoothly, the backstory rolling off her tongue with practiced ease. "I'm returning to his family. They'll... help with arrangements." She let her voice catch slightly, grief performance becoming second nature.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
The tea was terrible—bitter, over-steeped, served in a tin cup that burned her fingers. But it was warm. And warmth meant life. And life meant she'd survived the first impossible part of an impossible mission.
Now came the part where survival depended on forged documents, infiltrated railway officials, and the desperate hope that for the next thirty hours the Arussians would be too occupied managing the aftermath of Vakeria's massive aerial strikes on their capital to notice that a certain foreign princess under house arrest was missing from her gilded cage.