Years went by—years as a child counts them, by afternoons and questions—while Aurelia grew within the Imperial Palace. Malcador served as tutor, guide, and the closest thing to an uncle that Terra's protocols would allow. The Adeptus Custodes watched her days, the Silent Sisterhood her nights; gold and grey in steady rings, as constant as the Palace clocks and the slow breath of its cyclopean engines.
She made gardens where there had been only stone: cloisters of alien bloom coaxed from seeds gathered in her harmless wandering, terraces of pale grass that sang faintly when wind crossed them, fountains taught to remember the sun a heartbeat longer. There she would lie upon warmed marble and let her mind slip where minds do not go. When her essence drifted, the Custodes stood as statues—unblinking; even their shadows kept formation.
Sometimes she chose mischief. A breath held, a glance aside—and she was elsewhere, leaving only a ribbon of hair, a print in dew, and a soft laugh caught under an arch. Even the Ten Thousand could start panicking when a child vanishes between blinks. Twice she reappeared behind a Shield‑Captain and tapped auramite with a knuckle.
"Are you awake?" she whispered.
The helm inclined a fraction. "We stand," he said—which was both answer and oath.
Malcador found her beneath an arch of silver‑leaf and wagged a finger with the patience of an old librarian. "Do not make the Ten Thousand wish for an end to their watch. They have sworn enough oaths without adding 'survive the Princess's ambushes' to the list."
She nodded—contrite in the way bright minds were: sincere, if not exactly repentant. An hour later, she gifted the same Shield‑Captain a sprig that never wilted.
"For your patience," she said.
He did not smile, but his posture forgot to be perfect for the rest of the day.
The Silent Sisterhood took it better. Their null‑aura unmade the Warp's whispers, and in its hush they found humour that needed no sound. Many avoided them, but the Princess felt calm around them, not disgust nor fear. She welcomed them with open arms and smiles. That was a gift that had no price for them.
Knight‑Commander Jenetia Krole spoke to Aurelia in Thoughtmark, each motion as precise as a blade: be careful, do not sow disorder in the minds of your father's guardians,focus is a fortress; do not test its stones for sport. And theirs can be flimsy.
Aurelia watched the clean geometry of Krole's hands. "Is that an insult at the Custodes?" she asked, solemn as only the playful could be. "At the honour guard of my father?"
Krole's reply was absent: no sign, no word. But a breath escaped her—something like a snort someone had forgotten to mute. Aurelia learned then that the Silent Sisterhood could be wickedly funny when no one was looking, and that the Custodes understood the Thoughtmark perfectly while pretending not to notice amusement at their expense.
An Aquilan Shield detachment rotated through her guard—watchers trained not only to ward blows but to stand beside lives destined to matter. A few Sisters of Silence began to trade words, about the "moving walls of stones finally arriving". They were not offended, only occasionally mortal. A sigh. A visor tilt that suggested exasperation.
They knew, and the Sisters of Silence were aware of their knowledge. The Princess always found amusing things to observe.
Once, Aurelia hid behind them when Malcador hunted her for lessons on the perils of the Immaterium; a mountain of auramite makes a serviceable screen. Other days, she rode a Custodian's shoulders, small hands in the laureled crest, sleepy from long walks among the beds she had coaxed to life. When she dozed there, no one woke her save Malcador himself, and even he did it like a man asking permission of a sunrise.
Her days took on a rhythm that did not admit boredom.
Morning: histories, maps, the long arithmetic of empire. Midday: languages—binharic as puzzle, High Gothic as song, thoughtmark as clean geometry.
Afternoon: cautions of the Immaterium, taught beneath wards that hummed like bees. And only what the Emperor wished for her to know. Wish was only "Don't go there. It's dangerous." And no more.
"Names are doors," Malcador would say, drawing sigils in ash and then smoothing them away. "Do not knock on the ones already listening."
She repeated the phrase, then forgot it in the exact way that kept her safe: by being herself. Still, she listened and obeyed. Aurelia never went there, and ignored the doors and the voices asking her to open them.
She was most human where she was least human. The paradox pleased her, though she could not have named it. In the sight of the Custodes, she was different from the Emperor: his presence was a summons that braced the spine and narrowed the breath; hers eased the jaw and gentled the heart. Those who guarded the Palace were grateful for the change, even as their brothers far away waded through wars beside their lord. Standing watch over the Princess offered a purpose not measured in slain foes. It asked for steadiness, not blood. They found they liked that, though none would have said so aloud.
From time to time, the Palace felt her in ways it could not name. Servitors slowed by half a beat when she laughed, as if savouring the echo. Banners that should have hung stiffly learned to breathe. In an astropathic choir, a chorister flinched when Aurelia passed the gallery above; the Sister‑Superior's null presence folded the moment flat, and the flinch became a shrug no one remembered.
She learned the kitchens at night: heat, steam, the beauty of motion. A cook taught her how to wait for bread to decide it was ready; she taught the oven to keep a memory of warmth for one loaf more. The exchange felt fair. She set a tiny garden by a service door so the night shift could take leaves without asking. A Custodian noticed the thefts and said nothing; discipline is not cruelty.
She asked questions that bent inward as often as outward. "Why does it hurt to speak a truth, instead of a lie?"
"Why do we pretend to be wise, when we don't know yet how to be wise?"
"Can pain be kind?"
Malcador answered what he could and built careful fences around what he could not. When she pressed, he would say, "Later," and she—who could cross the thought‑paths of a million worlds—accepted that single human promise with grave seriousness.
The Sisters taught her silence that is not absence and discipline that is not coldness. In the drill courts, they showed her how to stand still without becoming stone, how to watch without taking, how to say no with an open hand. Sometimes, when she stood between Krole and a ring of Sisters, the air felt like a lake before rain—charged, patient, honest.
"You make the noise quiet," Aurelia sighed once.
Krole's fingers moved: you make it quite true.
She did not abandon mischief; she refined it. Once she vanished for the span of a heartbeat and reappeared balanced atop a spear‑butt, neat as a note in a margin. The Custodian did not flinch, nor was his voice harsh.
"Down," he said, and offered a gauntleted hand. She stepped to the ground, chastened by the mildness.
Another season, she led a small procession of gardeners—Custodes among them—to transplant a tree she had raised from a seed shaped like a tear.
"It prefers the sound of water," she explained. They moved it beside a fountain. It lived. When winter grazed the Palace, the tree kept a small green even as marble took frost. A Sister paused there on rounds she did not have to walk and let the quiet settle in her bones.
So the seasons turned. Legions formed beyond the walls; starships took light; the Palace rehearsed its own heartbeat. Malcador taught history and caution. The Custodes taught by example—exactness without cruelty, patience without indulgence. The Sisters taught economy: of motion, of thought, of need.
Aurelia, in return, taught the gardens to climb and the fountains to remember. She taught corridors to give back echoes kindly. She taught herself to return whenever she vanished, and to warn before she did.
"Going," she would say, hand lifted.
"We stand," the nearest Custodian would answer, which meant we would be here when you return.
She was a child among titans, threading play through ritual and mercy through iron. In the quiet ledger Malcador kept where no ink dried, he wrote: The Ten Thousand breathe easier when she enters a room. They call it nothing and stand straighter. That is enough. And Terra, watching, learned to love her in the one way that needs no litany: by breathing easier when she entered the room—and a little easier still when she left and then came back.