…

          As the group of four exited the carriage, Aisling had to hold back a look of shock from coming upon her face. What was docked at the port wasn’t a mere ship, it was a royal passage boat. The whole thing was massive, easily dwarfing the ship she had been brought to this island on.

          Its purple, wooden frame was made from a special type of wood, one found only in the capital of Francia. What was really spectacular was the parts that seemed to be underwater most of the time. It seemed to her at least that they had a special type of waterproofing that used an equal part of magic as it did chemical reactions to stay dry.

          She looked at the rather large staircase that somehow wasn’t a ladder, despite being nearly vertical. Her eyelids had to pull themselves over her eyes just by a slim margin so as to avoid looking like a anything, but her doll-like existence suggested.

          Her master seemed shocked at this as well, as if he had only seen this type of boat in fairytales. She then looked at the head maid; she seemed just as shocked as her as well. Only that man seemed too unbothered by it. And why should he?

          The Chancellorship had boats five times this size. Sure, they were nothing but outdated hunks of metal, but at least they had function. This boat seemed to want to capsize, and it was in the port. The boat itself seemed to be about 750ft long, and 250ft wide. She couldn’t tell how tall it was as some of it was underwater.

          That man walked up to the staircase and looked back at them as if they were the ones being slow. Aisling wanted to push her master forward, but knew that was unproper. Instead, it was the head maid the seemed to be shaken out of it first.

          “My duke, we should follow the messenger. We have to go,” she urged him on, only to be shocked by his response.

          “But Paddy, the only reason that this boat is here is because one of the members of the royal family is here. And that means we he might be here,” her master told the head maid.

          She seemed shocked by this, as she hadn’t the knowledge of the ship’s status beforehand. It was like a bucket of cold water had been poured all over her, only for that man to grab both of their arms and haul them over to the staircase.

          Aisling walked with them, suddenly acting as though she hadn’t got a spine to stand with. It was as if she had been splashed with cold water as well, and she hated cold showers. That man seemed intent on getting them up the steps.

          “Miss Aisling, help me bring these two up the steps. The only royal family that came with me was the First Prince, Augustus. And that kid is currently seasick,” he told her, and her master and the head maid suddenly became much stiffer.

          She nearly became as stiff as they were, but the familiar pain in her neck helped her in that regard. She grabbed the hand of the head maid and walked up the first three steps. She was very careful with her skirt, so as to not become indecent. That man also grabbed her master’s hand as she had led the head maid up the first couple of steps and now there was room for him.

          As she looked up and around the top of the ship so she could better walk and get a grip of the place she was to stay, she noticed how it was laid out. Ther was just over twenty masts coming from the ship, all of them had their sails up and furled. There were also many sailors all over the place. There was also well over twenty of them.

          As they made their way up to the top of the rather tall staircase, she noticed something. It was a small boy, perhaps ten, maybe eleven years old. He had the same eyes as that hunter that had tried to take her and Sylvia. This was such a shock that she nearly didn’t notice that the head maid had come too.

          “Thank you doll, bringing you has come in handy already. But could you-,” she stopped halfway, she had noticed the boy hiding behind the steps up to the captain’s quarters.

          It was at this moment that Aisling guessed who that was. After all, who would bring a child to this place and not have them be around the adults working, the only children that Aisling could think of would be here were the apprentices, but they would be older than this boy. This noble boy was in fact the only royal on this ship at the moment, the first and only prince. He was Prince Augustus, the first of his name.

…

          The young prince in question could do nothing more than gawk at the girl in front of the steps. She was so strange, there was a tamped down fire in her eyes. What he knew about her right away about her, was that she was a slave, and she was a beastkin.

          He had lived in the palace for his entire life, so he had not even seen a beastkin slave ever. That was until the otherworlder had purchased some and he had seen them with his own eyes.

          They were… different from what the strange man had said they were. They looked pretty human, and walked pretty human, and even talked pretty human. So, it was rather strange to see the man he had come to see as an uncle in a rather short time frame, talk about them like they were the manifestation of an angle or a god on earth.

          He thought that they just looked funny, but that was just him. What was more was that his dad didn’t like the fact that they existed at all. He talked about them like they were a plague on the ground that all of God’s children walked on.

But when he looked back at his father’s ranting it always ended with him getting slapped in the face because he was asking questions his dad didn’t understand in the first place. His dad was pretty dumb if he was being honest.

Venator looked at them with like he looked at everyone, like they were people who weren’t him, and he was better because of that. His mother just responded to them like any other slave, with a jealousy that they could move about without the use of a chair or magic.

But this girl was, well, different. She had wings, and pretty eyes. They were like cloudy emeralds, unpolished but still beautiful. Her gaze was like she was staring right into him, the young boy that would be king had seen many girls.

          They all chased after him. Of course, their parents told them to. But they were all, for lack of a better term, ugly. They all had something wrong with them, barring only a few. Some had pointed chins, others had differently sized eyes. Venator told him it was because they were all inbred, whatever that meant.

          Augustus just thought they looked ugly, so he avoided them. His dad also said that they were nothing but bugs underfoot, just like commoners. But then again, the young boy had never been to the capital itself before, so he had no point of reference.

          The more he gazed at the young preteen, the more he noticed something was off about her. She walked like a slave, she seemingly talked like a slave, but it seemed to him that she was putting up an act. The prince was simply good at telling if people lied with their actions or not, he didn’t know anything about his gift, nor did he know no one else had this power.

          The boy simply thought the girl in the maids’ uniform was strange and pretty. After all, he was a child at the end of the day, he was also the same age as the young lass. Though, he didn’t know of the strange ageing of beastkin. He thought she was older than him.

          After the girl helped another woman up the steps, she noticed him and seemingly shrunk in on herself. It was as if she was a dog that was scared of getting hit for stealing food. The older woman also looked at him and straightened, like she was servant of the palace.

          He also saw the uniform she wore, and the scars she had. He thought to himself that these were strange people, but then again, he had not met many people. Only girls and boys his age; that was the kind of people he had met. Well, he had met scheming nobles trying to curry favor with him when his dad wasn’t around.

But they shrunk down and deflated when he was. It was honestly kind of scary watching his dad look at them like they were nothing but a lamb that someone put in the way of the door. The only person his dad didn’t do this to was Augustus himself and Venator.

          Turing back to the outside world and not his mind, the young boy saw his surrogate uncle and smiled.

…