Chapter 91 – Are You Happy, Princess?
(Olivia)
She didn't ask permission.
If she asked, they would say no.
Father would say, "He's busy stabilising the marches. Don't burden him."
The spymaster would say, "It's safer if you keep your distance, Your Highness."
The Helios priests would murmur about duty and restraint and how the sun shines on all equally, not just on one foolish boy who wouldn't meet her eyes.
So Olivia didn't ask.
She just left.
Two carriages, minimal escort, enough paperwork forged by her own hand that anyone who tried to stop her would think someone else had already given approval.
Being a princess was useful like that.
The road south felt longer than it was.
Fields. Villages. Little shrines to old gods and newer ones. People who did not know her and did not care, whose lives were being quietly rewritten by decisions she sat in on and did not fully understand.
She watched them pass through the window and thought of Erynd's back moving away from her in the palace corridor.
He had looked… tired.
Not the lazy, surly tired of a boy dragged into etiquette lessons.
Not the fragile tired of someone who'd just recovered from sickness.
A bone-deep, I-have-seen-too-much tired.
She turned that image over and over in her head until it hurt.
Every time, her mind snagged on the same facts:
He had gone missing.
He had come back.
He had told everyone something different except her.
Viester got an explanation. Some version of one.
Father got multiple "reports" with sections she was not allowed to see.
Even the Emperor leaned forward on his throne when Erynd spoke now.
And she—
She got:
"I'm busy."
"I can't explain."
"It would hurt you for no gain."
The last one stung most.
As if she were a delicate thing that would shatter if exposed to truth.
As if she hadn't watched him fall off the palace wall as a child because he'd insisted he could "definitely make that jump" and then held his hand all the way to the healer while he cried and pretended it was because of the angry lecture.
She clenched her hands in her lap.
The carriage rocked. Her thoughts rocked with it.
Are you happy? she asked herself, and had to bite back a hysterical laugh.
Happy.
Princess.
As if those two words belonged in the same sentence.
***
"Your Highness," one of the guards called softly, rapping on the frame. "We're approaching the Milton estate."
She lifted the curtain.
The first time she saw the walls, her breath caught.
She'd read the reports.
She knew, on paper, that the reclaimed marches had been fortified. That the old Milton seat was "undergoing renovation." Words, ink, lines on a map.
The reality was different.
The outer wall rose from the rough land like it had always belonged there: fresh-cut stone, mortared clean, arrow slits and walkways. Not a fortress in the grand, eastern sense. Not a showpiece of carved marble and gold. A working wall.
The gate stood open.
Inside, she saw motion.
Training yards. People with swords. People without swords. Awakened, if she had to guess, by the way their steps ate distance and the way some of them looked at the sky like they expected it to answer.
Her carriage rattled through the arch.
And then she saw… the impossible things.
Candles along the corridor walls that weren't candles at all.
They looked like them: little sconces, metal dishes with glass around them. But what should have been flame was a steady, white-gold glow, unmoving, smokeless.
Olivia held out her hand when they led her through the entry hall.
No heat. No flicker. Her fingers passed within a finger's breadth of the light and felt only cool air.
"What," she whispered, "is this?"
"Mana lamps, Your Highness," the steward said, bowing slightly. He was an older man, with the kind of patient face that had seen noble stupidity before. "Lord Milton had them installed. They're safer than open flame, he says. Less smoke. Less risk."
Mana lamps.
Of course.
Erynd, who used to knock over candles with his sleeve in her father's study and nearly set treaties on fire, had made safer lights.
She followed the steward deeper in.
More not-candles.
Pipes along some walls, disappearing neatly behind panels.
A faint, steady hum underfoot in one corridor, like something large and patient was breathing beneath the floor.
"Upgraded," the reports had said.
The reports had not done it justice.
It felt… different here.
Like the rest of the Empire was a painting and someone had decided this corner needed to be in sharper focus.
Her chest tightened.
He had built this.
Without her ever seeing it.
Without her being allowed to see him.
"Lord Milton is in the west sitting room, Your Highness," the steward said. "Shall I announce you?"
She almost said yes.
Almost let protocol wrap her like a blanket.
Instead, she shook her head.
"No," she said. "Just… show me where."
He hesitated, then bowed.
"As you wish."
***
She heard them before she saw them.
Laughter.
Not the brittle court kind. Real laughter. Young, messy, tripping over itself.
Her feet slowed.
The door was ajar.
She reached it just as someone said, happily exasperated:
"—and then he burned the bread again because he was reading at the oven, Noelle, I swear, I turned around for one moment—"
Tamara.
Olivia knew that voice by now, from reports, from gossip, from the way Academy graduates who'd met him spoke with simultaneously fond and terrified expressions.
Red hair followed, lazy drawl sharp at the edges:
"She's leaving out the part where she tried to magic the burn away and turned the crust black as Erynd's coffee. It crunched like regret."
Lyra.
Of course.
And Noelle. Soft, musical, a little breathless:
"It was still tasty. Just… very crunchy. And he ate it all, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," Erynd's voice answered. "I value my life."
Olivia went very still.
She looked.
The sitting room was wide, with high windows and sunlight spilling in. The kind of room that would have held stiff furniture and stiff people once, full of portraits and expectations.
Now:
Erynd sat on a sturdy armchair dragged slightly askew, like someone had shoved it closer to the window and refused to move it back. Papers lay scattered on a low table. Cups. A plate with crumbs.
Noelle was in his lap.
Not perched, not half-falling. Seated. Back against his chest, his arm loose around her waist like it had been there long enough to forget about itself.
Tamara sat on the arm of the chair to his left, one knee up, elbow resting on it, blue braid falling forward as she gestured with a fork.
Lyra lounged on the other arm, leaning in, red braid over her shoulder, fingers idly toying with the collar of his shirt.
They were… comfortable.
Three points of contact around him.
Three suns in orbit around a man who looked more relaxed than she'd seen him in months.
Olivia's breath locked.
This was wrong.
Not because they were touching him. She could handle that. In theory. He was handsome. They were pretty. They were young and alive and they'd been with him at the Academy, through loops of danger she could only imagine.
It was wrong because—
Because—
Because this was a version of him she had never been allowed to see.
He was smiling.
Not the polite, calculated curve he wore in court.
A real one.
Tired around the edges, yes. But real.
Why does my heart hurt? she thought desperately, even though the answer was obvious.
She didn't understand half of what they were saying. Some joke about Safon. About mana flow. About "the EryMachine" and how Ethan had almost taken his own eyebrows off.
They spoke a language she didn't know.
Olivia stood there in the doorway for a heartbeat too long.
Then some instinct she hadn't consulted made her say:
"Erynd."
His name came out flatter than she'd meant it to. Too formal. Too raw.
Three heads turned.
He looked last.
Of course he did.
First he checked the girls. Their reactions. Their tension. Then he looked at the door.
His eyes widened a fraction.
"Your Highness," he said.
He didn't get up immediately.
It took him half a heartbeat too long to move Noelle off his lap, untangle Lyra from his sleeve, shift Tamara's knee so he could stand.
That half-beat tore something in her she hadn't realised was still delicate.
She smiled.
She'd been trained to smile in worse situations than this.
"Am I interrupting?" she asked, voice light, brittle as spun glass.
He opened his mouth.
She saw him start to say yes.
She saw him stop.
"No," he said instead. "You're… never interrupting. We just weren't… expecting you."
The girls exchanged glances.
Noelle flushed scarlet and practically levitated off him, smoothing her skirt with frantic palms. Lyra's eyes narrowed, assessing. Tamara put her fork down with the controlled care of someone who wanted to throw it.
"Princess Olivia," Noelle said quickly, bobbing a little half-curtsy that would have made any etiquette teacher wince. "We— I— it's an honour. Really. Truly."
Lyra gave a lazier, sharper mock-curtsy.
"Your Highness," she drawled. "Welcome to our little nest. Try not to trip over the existential crises."
Tamara crossed her arms.
"Hi," she said. "We're not doing anything wrong."
No one had accused them of anything yet.
Olivia stepped into the room.
Her heartbeat sounded too loud.
"So," she said. "This is what you've been busy with."
She meant the estate. The lamps. The reclaimed land.
It did not sound like that.
***
[System]
[Advisory: High-value variable "Olivia (Princess)" has entered proximity.]
[Warning: Emotional tension above safe threshold. External alignment risk rising.]
[Recommendation: Integrate or neutralise.]
[Suggested tag: corrupt to your side.]
I know, Erynd thought.
He really did.
He'd known this was coming in some form from the moment she'd looked at him in the palace corridor like he was a stranger wearing her friend's face.
Melody materialised over his shoulder, floating cross-legged in the air, spectre only he could see. Her expression was complicated.
"Master," she murmured. "Isn't this a little cruel?"
Probably, he thought back. Necessary doesn't mean kind.
He watched Olivia walk in.
She was wearing court clothes, but her hair was slightly out of place, like she'd raked a hand through it too often on the road. There were faint circles under her eyes that powder hadn't fully hidden.
She looked… tired.
He recognised the kind of tired.
The kind that came from too many questions and not enough honest answers.
"You could just explain," Melody said softly in his ear. "Some of it. Enough that she doesn't have to guess alone in that cold palace."
"I can't," he said under his breath.
"Can't," she echoed. "Or won't?"
He didn't answer.
He thought instead of what the System had been quietly flagging for weeks.
Olivia.
Royal.
Future queen, unless the world burned first.
Born to rule.
Raised to rule.
Too clever not to see the cracks in the Empire and too constrained to fix them the way she wanted.
Leave her alone and she'd reach for whatever tools were offered.
Helios.
Hardline nobles.
Things in the dark that promised her control in exchange for access.
Pull her too close and he risked putting a crown of his war on her head and a target on her back.
Between those two options, corrupt to your side sounded better than letting her get eaten by someone else's agenda.
He hated that the System was right.
"You're about to weaponise jealousy," Melody said, watching the way Olivia's eyes flicked between him and the girls. "You know that, yes?"
"Yes," he thought. "I'm not proud of it."
He thought of Olivia as a child, stomping her foot because Erynd had refused to share a pastry he'd stolen from the kitchens. Of her father laughing and calling them "little tyrants in training."
He thought of the look on her face in the corridor when he'd told her he couldn't explain.
Regret twisted under his ribs.
"Her nature is to rule," he said quietly. "She's going to sit on a throne one day and make decisions that affect people I'm trying to keep alive. If I leave her in that palace with nothing but half-truths and sycophants, someone else will shape her. Better she sees what I'm really doing. Better she gets… hooked on this side of the mess instead of the other."
"And if you break her?" Melody asked.
"Then I fix what I can," he said. "Like always."
He turned his attention back to the room.
To Olivia, standing there with a polite smile pinned to her face like armour that didn't quite fit anymore.
"So," she said. "This is what you've been busy with."
He could hear all the things she didn't say:
Not writing. Not visiting. Not talking to me.
He exhaled.
"Part of it," he said. "The rest is outside. Swamps. Fields. Angry locals. Cult remnants. You picked a good day. No one's on fire."
Tamara snorted softly.
Noelle looked like she wanted to sink into the floor.
Lyra… watched. Too sharply. She always did.
"Would you like to sit?" Erynd asked Olivia.
She looked at the chair he'd vacated, at the girls, at him.
"No," she said. "I'll stand."
His jaw tightened.
He recognised that too.
She did not want to sit with them.
Not as she was.
Not yet.
"Alright," he said.
A dozen paths unfolded in his mind.
He could take the gentle route. Apologise. Offer her a tour. Slowly, carefully, let her into the edges of Yggdrasil without naming it. Let her see the mills, the training, the co-ops, the Awakened villages.
He could take the hard route. Keep her outside. Push her back to the palace. Let her stew until she made a move that forced his hand.
The System's recommendation slid across his vision again.
[Integrate or neutralise.]
He chose a third path.
"Erynd," Olivia said, and there was a crack in his name. "Why didn't you tell me? Anything. You vanished. You came back. You're building gods-know-what here, and I get to hear about it in reports written by men who think 'mana lamps' are indecent and 'Awakened settlements' are a moral hazard."
He winced.
"And I come here," she went on, words gaining speed, "and find you—"
Her hand twitched, indicating the room. The girls. Him.
"Happy," she said, and the word came out like a curse. "You look happy."
"If that's what this looks like to you, I'm hiding it well," he said dryly.
"Don't," she snapped. "Don't joke. Not with me."
The air tightened.
Noelle shifted on her feet, biting her lip. Tamara's hands curled into fists on her knees. Lyra's eyes darted between them, between him and Olivia, senses alive with tension the way she liked best.
"Princess," Noelle tried softly. "It's not—"
"This isn't your fault," Olivia cut in, sharply polite. "Any of you. You did nothing wrong. You were here. I wasn't. That's all."
The restraint in her voice hurt more than if she'd shouted.
He could dismantle that restraint slowly.
Or he could break it in one go.
"Cruel," Melody whispered.
"I know," he thought back.
He stepped back toward his chair.
Sat down again, deliberately, claiming the space.
He held out a hand without looking.
Noelle, after a startled half-second, moved almost automatically. Habit. Comfort. She perched sideways across his lap this time, closer to the armrest, her back against his chest but angled so she could still see Olivia.
His arm settled around her waist.
He felt her tense.
"You're sure?" he murmured, low enough only she could hear.
She swallowed.
"Yes," she said. "If this is… if you need…"
She didn't finish.
He hated that he was asking this of her.
Hated more that he was going to do it anyway.
"Tam, Lyra," he said aloud, keeping his voice casual. "You don't have to stay."
"We're not leaving," Tamara said immediately.
"Absolutely not," Lyra added. "This is free theatre and also emotionally important, but mostly theatre."
Olivia's eyes flicked to them, then back to him.
He could see the question forming.
Do I mean so little to you that you will treat me like any other guest while—
He cut across it.
"Olivia," he said softly. "Are you happy?"
The question hit like a physical thing.
She blinked.
"What?" she said.
"Are you happy," he repeated. "In the palace. In court. In Father's study. In the temple. Anywhere. You keep asking why I don't come back and play the same part I used to. I'm asking if that part was ever actually… good for you."
For a heartbeat, something raw flashed across her face.
Then the walls slammed back up.
"My happiness is irrelevant," she said. "I have duties. Responsibilities. I don't get to run off and build a private little kingdom because I'm unhappy."
Lyra made a quiet, disbelieving noise.
Tamara's nostrils flared.
Noelle's fingers tightened unconsciously on his arm.
Erynd kept his gaze on Olivia.
"This isn't a private kingdom," he said. "It's a buffer zone between the Empire and things that want to eat it. I didn't run away. I did what no one else wanted to do. Again."
"And enjoy it, apparently," she said.
He swallowed back three truths and two apologies.
"Enjoy isn't the word I'd choose," he said. "But I'm not pretending it's nothing anymore. I've spent too many lifetimes pretending my choices don't matter. I won't do that again."
Her eyes flicked to his chest, where his shirt hid the scars and the three cores she shouldn't know about.
"You won't tell me," she said. "Any of it."
"I can't," he said.
She laughed once, ugly.
"How convenient," she said. "You get to keep your secrets. You get to choose who stands next to you. And I get to read about you in reports and watch from a window while you—"
She cut herself off.
He saw the flick of her gaze to Noelle. To the way his hand moved slightly on her waist when she shifted.
Jealousy.
There it was.
He could work with that.
He hated that he could.
"Who I stand next to is not incidental," he said. "It's lethal. For them. For me. For anyone tied to us. I've already buried more people than you know the names of. I am trying not to add you to that list."
"Maybe I don't want your protection," she snapped. "Maybe I want your honesty. Just once. I have known you since before you decided to grow up and become whatever this is. I earned more than polite lies."
He felt something in her finally crack, hairline.
Good.
He needed that.
He needed her not to be a perfect princess for this next part.
"Then say what you actually want," he said, letting some steel into his voice. "Not what sounds good in a council. Not what fits in a prayer. What do you want, Olivia?"
Her lips parted.
Nothing came out.
Her throat worked.
"I…" she started. "I want…"
She was shaking.
With anger.
With humiliation.
With something she didn't want to name.
The part of him that wanted to be kind screamed at him to stop.
The part that had watched a hundred worlds die because good intentions weren't enough reminded him that hesitation was a luxury he couldn't afford.
"Push," the System snarled silently.
He did.
He leaned in, just slightly, to Noelle.
She stiffened, then forced herself to relax, trusting him.
He brushed a strand of hair back from her ear, slow.
"You're sure?" he murmured again, one last chance.
Her hand found his wrist under the fold of her skirt.
She squeezed.
"Yes," she whispered. "If it helps."
Then, very deliberately, he bent his head and bit her ear.
Not cruelly. Not hard. A careful, practiced pressure, lips and teeth and the warm huff of his breath over suddenly sensitive skin.
Noelle gasped.
The sound that followed was small and involuntary and utterly unmistakable.
A soft, broken moan.
Her hand clamped down on his wrist. Her head tipped back against his shoulder, throat bare, eyes squeezed shut for a heartbeat before she wrestled them open again.
Colour flooded her face.
Tamara made a strangled choking noise that might have been a laugh. Lyra's eyes went huge and then bright with unholy delight.
The room went very, very quiet.
Olivia stared.
Her mind felt like someone had kicked all the supports out from under it.
She knew, intellectually, that he had lovers.
She wasn't stupid.
She'd heard the rumours. Seen the glances. Watched the way Tamara and Lyra and Noelle orbited him any time they were in the same room.
Knowing was one thing.
Watching was another.
He had never been… that.
In front of her.
Unashamed.
Casual.
Using intimacy like a blade.
Her cheeks burned.
She didn't know if it was anger or embarrassment or something else boiling in her chest.
He met her eyes over Noelle's shoulder.
His gaze was steady. Unapologetic.
"This," he said quietly, "is my life now, Olivia. Messy. Complicated. Full of people who chose to be here and got the whole, ugly truth thrown at them for the privilege. If you step into it, you don't get to pretend you're untouched."
Her mouth felt dry.
"What are you doing?" she asked, hoarse.
"Making a point," he said. "And giving you a choice."
Melody hovered at the edge of his vision, expression tight.
"Are you happy, Princess?" Erynd asked again, voice softer this time. "Standing in rooms where no one tells you anything real, dreaming about a boy who doesn't exist anymore? Or do you want to be here, in this filth, in this reality, where it hurts and you can actually do something?"
The question hung between them.
Olivia's heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her throat.
Happy.
She thought of the palace. Her father's tired eyes. The reports stacked on her desk like accusations.
She thought of Erynd's hand on Noelle's waist. The lamp without fire. The hum of something in the floor. The way the air in this estate felt like the world was changing underneath it.
She did not have an answer.
Her mind threw up a dozen at once:
No.
Yes.
It doesn't matter.
It matters too much.
All of them tasted wrong.
Her spine straightened.
Years of training slid over the rawness like a mask.
"I have travelled a long way today," she said, voice suddenly very calm. Too calm. "And I am tired. If you would be so kind, Lord Milton, have someone show me to my room. We can speak of… choices… when I'm not swaying on my feet."
Something flickered in his eyes.
Surprise. Frustration. Maybe a hint of respect.
He inclined his head.
"As you wish," he said quietly. "We have guest rooms prepared. You're welcome to stay as long as you need."
She almost laughed.
As if she knew what she needed.
As if he did.
"I won't trouble you further," she said.
She turned toward the door.
Her legs felt strange, like she'd been running or standing too long in court, knees locked, blood gone.
Lyra called after her, too lightly:
"Sleep well, Your Highness. Try not to dream of us too much. It's terrible for the complexion."
Tamara kicked her ankle.
Noelle hid her burning face in her hands.
Olivia didn't look back.
***
The corridor outside was cooler.
Quieter.
Her pulse roared in her ears anyway.
A servant appeared as if summoned by her fraying self-control.
"Your Highness?" they asked. "May I show you to the guest wing?"
"Yes," she said. "Please."
They walked.
The estate unfolded around her: another mana lamp, another pipe, the distant clang of steel on steel from a training yard. Through an open arch she caught a glimpse of a courtyard where Awakened and normals sparred side by side, sweat and laughter and shouted corrections.
It felt… alive.
Uneasy. Half-built. Full of arguments and spills and people bumping into each other.
Nothing like the polished, hollow halls of the palace.
Nothing like the safe, suffocating routines she knew.
"Are you happy, Princess?" Erynd had asked.
She clenched her jaw.
In one doorway they passed, two young workers argued over a blueprint. She caught the words "EryMachine" and "no, he said the pressure ratio will kill us, do you want to explode?"
Farther down, a pair of children chased each other, ducking under the servant's outstretched arm with practiced ease. One had a faint glow to her eyes—Awakened, surely—and no one flinched.
She felt… displaced.
As if she'd stepped sideways into a story that had been going on without her for a long time.
And now she'd walked into the middle of it, late and uninvited.
"Your room," the servant said, stopping at a carved door. "If you need anything—"
"I'll call," she said automatically.
He bowed and left.
She closed the door behind her and leaned her back against it.
The guest room was simple but well-made. Bed. Desk. Basin. Mana lamp on the wall, its light steady and soft.
No eyes watching.
No tutors.
No father.
No Erynd.
She crossed the room and pressed her fingertips against the mana lamp's glass.
Cool. Solid. No flame.
"I don't understand you," she whispered.
She didn't specify whether she meant the lamp or him.
Her hand shook faintly.
She remembered Noelle's moan.
The way he'd met her gaze while his teeth were on someone else's skin.
The deliberate cruelty of it.
The deliberate honesty of it.
"This is my life now," he'd said. "If you step into it, you don't get to pretend you're untouched."
She sank down onto the edge of the bed.
Her dress creased. She didn't care.
Are you happy, Princess?
The question wouldn't leave.
It crawled under her skin, dug into the back of her eyes, replayed over and over in his voice.
In the palace, happiness had been something she deferred.
Later. After this crisis. After this treaty. After Father sleeps properly again. After the cults are dealt with. After Erynd comes back.
He had come back.
He had built something without her.
He had put the question in her hands like a knife and then stepped back.
She wanted to throw it at him.
She wanted to walk back down the corridor, smash open the sitting room door, and scream until all the composure peeled off her throat.
Instead, she sat there, perfectly still, and realised her eyes were burning.
She wiped them before the first tear could fall.
She did not cry.
Princesses did not cry over boys.
Princesses did not cry over being shown the truth with someone else's teeth in someone else's skin.
Princesses did not—
Her shoulders shook once.
She pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth until her jaw hurt.
"I am not broken," she whispered into her palm. "I am not. I will not be."
The mana lamp hummed quietly.
It did not agree or disagree.
She lay back without undressing, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling.
Sleep did not come.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw three girls around a chair. A boy she used to know wearing a man's tired face. His hand on someone else's waist. His question lodged under her breastbone like shrapnel.
Are you happy, Princess?
By the time dawn paling slipped around the edges of the shutters, she still did not have an answer.
All she had was the sick, restless certainty that whatever answer she gave would change everything.
And Erynd had gone and asked it on purpose.
She turned onto her side and glared blindly at the wall.
"I hate you," she told the empty room.
Her voice cracked on it.
She didn't know whether she was lying.