
Xia woke up during the late afternoon of what would become the most important day of her life.
Roused by yellow sunlight sneaking through the rickety window frame, she shot up, back whipping straighter than iron.
She immediately checked her body. A weight of a boulder lifted from her chest upon finding her fraying garment intact. She lifted the blanket to get up and found the demon from last night watching her.
The enigmatic man had style, there was no doubt about that. His face was sculpted like art. His clothes mixed bright white and subdued grey. Xia could believe herself accepting a dance with this man in a joyous ballroom back home.
With ingrained manners seeping through, Xia attempted a basic courtesy "Tha—"
"No need." Ciel cut off any attempt to form any connection beyond transactional. "Just call this even for your armor."
Xia sulked. The mattress wobbled fluidly with her every movement. She squinted at this new, soft boundary. Questions filled her mind as she assessed her situation.
This mysterious figure could be kind, and even honorable. Her treatment the previous night provided ample evidence of that. Yet, upon coming within a step of reconciliation, he chose to erect a barrier.
"What exactly is your deal?" Xia’s question sharpened into a keen edge, penetrating the heart of the matter. "I can't help but feel you are acting like this on purpose."
"You are thinking too much." Ciel attempted to dismiss her suspicion with a hurried brush.
Xia's squint grew thinner as his words continued to flow.
"I have an offer: you get me to the capital and I will get you to Mandrake." Ciel met her eyes, intertwining his hands to mask any nervous shaking. "We both win that way."
Xia heard Ciel's promises of victory echoing in the room, filled with shadowy sunlight and deafening silence. She felt something amiss. Her mind grasped for the missing piece, the final stroke to complete the portrait of this demon.
"Counteroffer: we get to know each other first," she poked for more clues. "Then I will consider your deal."
Ciel's expression visibly sank for the first time Xia had known him. "Do I have to?"
"Shouldn't getting to know each other first make a more cooperative environment." Xia cheekily smiled, ulterior motives gleaming behind her perfect teeth. She spoke, not wasting any opening. "My name is Xiahana La Louve. I am the Crown Princess of Curtis, a nation of the Western Continent. It is my mission to clear my father's name." She cocked her head cutely. "What's yours?"
Ciel listened to the girl, deluded enough to believe this method would work, and obliged her with another half-truth. "My name is Ciel. My family is running a business and I am competing with my sibling to inherit the company."
"Is that why you make those comments about the 'heavenly throne'?" Xia verbally stabbed at the balloon of falsehood.
"That is our nickname for the Administrator of the company,” he stated without hesitation
"What about those high-end technologies?" She decided to rip at the unavoidable loopholes. "No one managed to make matter transference technology until you came along."
"They are my sibling's works, a family secret." He clarified with another half-truth wrapped in mundane simile. "I made some improvements upon it."
Xia couldn't help but admire Ciel's ability to lie with such consistency and an honest face. However, she had grasped his weakness from their brief time together.
"Ciel," she dug up her emotional turmoil and baked in a potent psychological weapon. "Do you believe my father betrayed my country to the Yulong Empire?"
"How could I know?" Ciel defaulted to running away from such emotional baggage. "Do I look like I live rent-free in your father's head?"
"But you vouched for Mandrake back in the forest," Xia verbally nailed the man more slippery than an eel. "My sister declared she found our father's letter to the Yulong Emperor, offering him our land; a land inside the capital too." She then hit the fish with the hammer. "Your friend wrote back and agreed. His seal was on the damn return letter."
Ciel gritted his teeth. He must hand it to the girl. She managed to milk his weakness out in a single night. Anything else, be it money or shameless promise, he would have found a way out but not responsibility. He had no obligation to clean up after that idiot, but refusing to take responsibility for that failure was something he could never live with.
"Tell me the details," Ciel resigned, fully putting his hand into the trap. "Mandrake is the type who often gets taken advantage of. The seal is likely faked, but I can imagine some scenario where he would put his head in the beehive."
Xia rested her face on her knees to hide the triumphant smirk. "Father didn't share many details. He is a model king: fair, wise, and sticks to the letter of the law. He is also one of the greatest White Magic specialists in Acceltra."
Ciel watched as the woman on the mattress regressed into a wistful child.
She leered at those distant memories in the sun. "People said he often preferred me to my sister. But out of nowhere, he had gone secretive, keeping my sister at a distance even more than usual."
"Favoritism?" Ciel said. "Did your estranged sister plot to kill him?"
Xia shook her head. "I don't think so. Yes, Betty is ambitious and often miffed about our father, but even she wouldn't stab him in the heart and leave him for the guards to find." She growled at what followed. "After that, the court unearths his secret document and unanimously condemns him. My sister appointed my cousin, Spade, a puppet king. I refused to follow the script and got sent here to die."
"Why don't you just refuse?" Ciel snorted in disbelief.
Xia blanched at that suggestion. "I am the Crown Princess; I need to set an example."
"An example on how to die pointlessly," he raised his fingers. "Oh great, we are dealing with a half revolutionary."
"Half what?" she asked, puzzled and semi-offended.
"In politics, contrary to expectation, the middle road is the place of maximum suffering," Ciel declared. "Yes, appealing to both sides means you survive for longer, but the political landscape is an extremely volatile place. Each pole of the spectrum will be dragged to their extreme from constant combat."
Xia's mouth couldn't close. This walking mystery seemed to be talking from experience.
Ciel pointed at the warrior maiden. "Back then you had two choices. Completely throw your father under the bus like your sister and ally with the regime, or just quit the ruling apparatus and become the avenging daughter."
Xia's mouth hung open. "Both of those choices are insane!" she shrieked.
"And that is why fanatics often win wars," Ciel concluded. "Hug the explosive and eat tree bark, or surrender and live under occupation; those are the only options. What you did is not standing sanely in the middle ground, but naively strolling into no-man's land with a peace symbol."
He then closed this argument with a word of wisdom. "Go big or go home. History honors the victorious warrior and the valiant resistance, not flip-flops and half-revolutionaries."
Hurrying to divert the argument train before it crushed her, Xia changed the subject, "Let's stop talking about my mistake and focus on how your friend's letter found its way into father's office."
Ciel leered at the deflection that couldn't be more obvious, but let it pass for the sake of revealing an old friend's innocence. "Mandrake is not the type who responds to letters, unless it is urgent." He imposed another condition. "You said your father started to act suspicious. What happened during this time?"
Xia's forehead scrunched in concentration, "I don't know. The noteworthy event was that the capital started undergoing rapid development with the innovation from the Architect Guild," She bitterly ranted.
Ciel would have let the girl vent, if not for the term she used next that caught his attention.
"I heard the place is unrecognizable now. Spade even renamed the city to celebrate his reign." She balled her fist.
"Really?" he drifted, preparing for the first ever "Spadetopia" on the planet of Acceltra. "What is the name, then?"
"He called it Hecate!" Xia ranted. "What kind of name is that anyway?"
Ciel's blood froze in its veins. His eyes widened in sudden shock of a cataclysmic scenario. "Wait. How did you spell that name again?"
"H-E-C-A-T-E," she answered, deaf to the precarious circumstance mounting against them. "Why do you ask?"
"So it is really Etaceh spelled backward," Ciel affirmed his dread and got up. "This is truly the worst-case scenario." He strode to the door with renewed fear. "We must get to the capital and regroup with Mandrake. The entire Acceltra will get butchered at this rate!"
Xia stumbled from the mattress beneath. Her pupils spun in confusion. "Wait a second, tell me what do you mean?" Xia then reached another important point. "You know the Master of Architect Guild? My little sister couldn't stop praising her."
Ciel had no time to even comprehend that bad news, "I will explain later. Right now, we need to find Mandrake and see how much your father managed to slow that bitch down."
There, he stopped before the dried wooden door and told the one thing that sent Xia's heart to the sun. "Xia, no matter what you will be told, know this: your father is not a traitor. Anyone trying to stand in the way of that megalomaniac is a hero through and through."
Xia listened to those words with trembling hands and tears moistening her face. Her father was a hero; those words meant more to Xia than any armor and prestige, and her chest couldn't stop pumping in gratitude.
Ciel stepped foot through the door, "And I'll be damned if he's remembered as anything less."
The floor beneath them exploded into kindling without warning. Caught off guard by the ambush, the two plummeted to the ground below, engulfed in the ruckus of the implosion.