DEFUNCT - DRAFT DISCARDED

Disclaimer: This is a first draft, and this chapter is a little confronting. I know what I'm going for here, but I'm also aware it may be executed poorly. I heavily encourage detailed and clear feedback on what is and is not working. I appreciate you guys for alpha reading this.

Content Warning: Nudity, discomfort, trauma, hormones.

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Leonidas turned promptly on his heel as awareness caught up to his reality, and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “{This is ridiculous…}” he said while trying to ignore the embarrassed heat spreading across his cheeks all the way to his neck and ears. “{You are utterly mad, Ceruviel! You damn well know I—}”

“{Oh please, boy, spare me your repressed drivel. There are communal baths all over the Thronehold! Your own Roman Empire and many other nations throughout Terran history would—}”

“{This is not Rome, Ceruviel!}” Leonidas cut in, and glared over his shoulder through the veil of steam and scent of lilacs, only to see Aylar, again, and turn away with another blush. “{The only reason I am still in this room is so I can listen to your explanation. Why is Princess Aylar here, and why didn’t you warn me? You said you would let me approach this as I saw fit!}”

“{I wanted a break from the palace and decided to visit the Matthersons,}” Aylar answered flatly instead of Ceruviel, and in a tone that spoke to a mix of annoyance and something Leonidas suspected was frustration. “{Ceruviel offered me a chance to relax, and I accepted gladly. Why shouldn’t I?! We are due to go into a Delve that very well might claim our lives, Leonidas! The Rite of Ascension is not a casually undertaken endeavor. If I desire to indulge in some luxury, alongside a haelfar my mother regarded as a sister and I see as an Aunt, I see no reason for you to be standing in judgment, Earl Latherian!}”

Leonidas winced at the dressing-down through use of his formal title—always a danger sign—and rubbed his cheeks with his hands. He earned that by calling her Princess. She clearly disliked the enforced distance the title implied, if he had to guess.

“{It is improper for me to see you naked, Aylar. We are not even courting, and—}”

“{You think I care about you seeing me naked, Leonidas? Divines of Altera, how can you be such a terrifying combatant and such a shy boy all at once? I am a woman. I am proud of the beauty my mother passed down to me—}” the confidence in her words made him glance at her on impulse, then wrench his gaze away with an unspoken curse for his lack of self-control “{—and I will not be ashamed of that, nor embarrassed by a man seeing it. Especially not the man I am considering marrying, Leonidas!}”

Leonidas went still at her words and frowned at the open doors.

Finally, after a few seconds, he found his way to speech again.

“{Aylar, I am not sure you understand—}”

“{Why not? Am I ignorant to your eyes, Archon? Do you believe we are poorly matched because of what we are?}” the Swordmaiden cut in and demanded in a frustrated tone. “{Because you are Terran, and I am not? So what! That only aids us. Because we do not know one another? Because I do not know what so corrosively haunts your soul? Very well! We will ameliorate that with time, discourse, and candid expression. What else? The fact that I remind you of someone you once loved?}”

Leonidas stiffened at that and glanced back at Ceruviel angrily, whose presence was clear, despite the steam—but Aylar pre-empted his reaction.

“{She did not say anything, Leonidas, other than to confirm my suspicion! Did you think I would miss the way you looked at me? The yearning, the hope, the desire—only to cool and fade, to be replaced by grief? You may be the cold Heaven-Defying Knight, Leonidas Achilles, but you are still a man, and your eyes betray you as readily as anyone else!}”

“{It is not that simple, Aylar,}” he said roughly, thinking of Elatra, of Lyara, and all that it entailed with a grimace. “{There are things about me that make this complicated in the worst ways.}”

“{I am not an idiot, Leonidas! Damn it! Do you think I wanted to—to feel this way about you? Do you think I wanted to find myself drawn to you, after that first disastrous meeting? I knew then that something was wrong, but I did not heed it. Ceruviel told me I needed to bring you to my side of the succession, and I knew what she wanted, but I still allowed it to happen, Leonidas! Me!}”

Aylar’s words became fraught with a mix of anger, frustration, and self-recrimination as she continued. She seemed to be letting her Royal mask slip the more she spoke, as if venting her feelings was a catharsis that she had denied herself for a long time—too long, by the sounds of it.

It was something Leonidas could understand, at least, and so he listened.

He’d felt the same way more than once since his Return.

“{I let myself respect you, your prowess, your honor, your dutiful adherence to Ceruviel’s teachings—all while foolishly believing it would never become admiration, and surely never become attraction, and definitely not the beginnings of an infatuation that makes me act like a foolish serving girl! I am the Princess-Royal of Dawnhaven! I am the daughter of the Heroine-Queen of Altera! I am a Swordmaiden, and you, you stupid, blind, beautiful man, make me feel like a girl in one of those damned Terran romance tomes!}”

Leonidas took a breath at how similar her words sounded to what he had heard less than an hour prior, and glanced over his shoulder without letting his eyes land on her, focusing on the bubbles and the ornate gilding of the bath instead.

“{Aylar, I carry… burdens,}” he said at last, his voice lower, and filled with his own concern. He needed her to understand, damn it. “{Ceruviel helps me shoulder them as she can, but I am not whole. I am not healed. My mind—I have scars there, scars that run deep. With the complications surrounding my past, especially with haelfenn…}”

Leonidas sighed and rubbed his face again in frustration.

“{I am worried it would end in disaster,}” he admitted with a shiver of discomfort at exposing himself. “{You do not deserve to be subjected to my burdens on top of the pressure of the Throne.}”

“{Leonidas, we are not even past the Rite of Ascension, and you are worrying about the Throne? Divines! Heavens! You really are inexplicable. Do you believe you have a monopoly on grief and suffering? Do you think you are the only one who is afraid of what a relationship between us might bring? You do not even realize what you are doing, do you? No! Because you are so determined to protect me even when I never asked for it! You are devaluing my agency with a confidence that is simultaneously infuriating and alluring—and you do not even realize it!}”

Aylar’s movement splashed the water again as she made some sort of gesture, as he imagined it, and he heard Ceruviel chuckle in amusement.

“{That confidence, Leonidas, paired with calm certainty. That is what makes you a perfect partner for me. You have a knack for leadership and reassurance that is so natural it even catches me off guard, and I was raised to see it coming! Gods of Altera, that steady belief, the way you say ‘King’ as if my ascension to Queen-Potentiate is already a given...}”

A laugh left the Princess-Royal’s lips, both despairing and amused in equal measure.

“{Gods, Gods, that confidence of yours. The way you just make everything feel under control. It is maddening. It is infuriating! You are just flawed enough to be the perfect romance protagonist, and that is the worst part of it all!}”

“{Why do you keep mentioning—}”

“{I READ ROMANCE NOVELS TO DECOMPRESS, LEONIDAS!}” Aylar shouted in a way that sounded like a barrier shattering. “{I HAPPEN TO LIKE THEM, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!}”

Leonidas flinched in embarrassment, and Ceruviel laughed softly behind him with a sound of vindication.

“{I did not mean to imply you could not indulge in—}” he sighed and cut off mid-statement, looking to the ceiling and silently praying for guidance. “{Aylar, I appreciate your candor, and I will not be dishonest and say I do not find you attractive in kind, but this—this is not as direct as you may believe it to be. Not for lack of desire, because I would be lying if I said you are not beautiful, but I…}”

Leonidas growled and shook his head.

“{I cannot—this is not the right time for this decision, Aylar. I am sorry. I need to speak to Ceruviel, but I will wait until you two are done. I am hearing you, but I cannot give you an answer. Not now. Not like this.}”

“{Allow me to make it easier for you, then,}” Aylar said tightly, and he heard the sound of displaced water as she spoke, followed by the sound of bare, wet feet against marble when the Princess stepped out of the immense bath. “{I am not a foolish adolescent, Leonidas Achilles. I am the Princess-Royal, I am a Swordmaiden, and more than both, I am a Lady well into her age of majority. I may be young by the reckoning of my people, but this world does not care for such things.}”

Her words rang true for him with a sharp spike of empathy and pain, and Leonidas opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. It wasn’t the right time to interrupt. He could feel, subtly, the need she had to express what she was feeling. He wouldn’t take that from her.

“{You and I are of an age, Leonidas, and I can see what war has done to you—how it has forged your need for self-determination, and I respect that. All I ask is the same respect for my agency, and my right to choose what I want… what I—and Dawnhaven—need. I will not be a shelved piece of art, admired but never held. I will not be set aside for fear of what might happen.}”

Leonidas turned again when Aylar approached him and strode past, carrying the scent of lilacs and jasmine, out toward Ceruviel’s expansive rooms.

“{I will see myself dressed and attend to the Matthersons again before I return to the Palace. You, Leonidas, will think on what I have said. I… I am not in the business of exposing myself this way, and I insist you take the gravity of my words seriously.}”

Aylar paused, and Leonidas grimaced at her words, realizing he had probably failed to properly acknowledge just what it must have taken for her to be that exposed. If anyone understood, it was him.

“{I am drawn to you as a woman, yes,}” she continued with quieter inflection, though it was no less certain in its delivery. “{But my choice, that being you, is not an impulsive one made by a silly girl. I will be Queen, Leonidas, and I will have a King at my side who can not only unite this Thronehold, but build a future for all its people.}”

Aylar paused at the doorway, and he heard her shift as she turned back.

His eyes betrayed him—one heartbeat too long—before discipline snapped his gaze away, though not before the sight of her toned body burned itself into his mind like with self-mocking desire.

Jesus Christ, she’s beautiful. What the hell is wrong with me?

+{A fine question, my foolish Squire,}+ Ceruviel said into his mind in a tone that was equal parts amused and displeased by what she no doubt saw as yet another fumbled opportunity. +{A fine question indeed.}+ 

“{You are so wise and powerful in many ways, Leonidas, but you are such a boy in others—inexperienced, and immature both. I count those as very forgivable, even endearing failings, but failings they are. I would marry you, still, because I know the future we could create together—but I will neither beg nor plead. You must understand the benefits of our union by your own volition, or I will face Braedon alone when he challenges me, and I will fight knowing I am the right person to rule, regardless of his superior strength.}”

The Princess-Royal turned away then, and he heard her sigh as she hesitated one last time, and then spoke the last of what was on her mind with the same quiet, powerful certainty.

She truly did sound like a Queen already.

“{Whether you stand at my side to weather that challenge as my Champion and future husband, or watch me fall as no more than a companion, is wholly your choice. I can stomach my future husband fighting that battle on behalf of our nation, but I will not consent to being protected like a damsel by a mere Archon. The choice will be yours. Not today, not even tomorrow—but sooner than either of us may like. Consider that, Earl Latherian. Consider it well.}”

And then she left, not giving him a chance to reply as she vanished into Ceruviel’s quarters and drew the doors closed behind her with a very intentional bang.

Leonidas stared at the doors for a long moment after they closed, and then slowly turned back toward Ceruviel, his embarrassment already flaring into anger as he turned to the Archon—and then blanched when he realized she had stood up, and was standing naked in front of him without a hint of shame.

“{Do not look away from me, boy,}” Ceruviel growled when he turned instinctively. “{Look at me, Leonidas.}”

“{Ceruviel! This is ridic—}”

“{No, this is necessary. I am not seducing you. We have no desire for one another. Show some damned courage, Achilles. Look at me!}”

Her words carried command, but it was her presence that compelled his obedience—not literally, not through force or coercive pressure, but through sheer authority and presence. Slowly, and with a bracing inhale, he looked at her—focusing somewhere above her shoulder to the best of his ability.

“{You are a fool, Leonidas,}” Ceruviel said without remorse, and stepped toward him through the water, the bubbly liquid just high enough to hide everything below the last line of her abdominal muscles. “{You can face down a Hydra two tiers your superior without blinking, but the sight of breasts turns you into a blithering idiot.}”

His mentor reached up then, idly tapping her chest.

“{I am a woman, Leonidas. Aylar is a woman. You were born of a woman, you will wed a woman, and you will have daughters of your own. Will you refuse to care for them when they are weak, because of what they were born as? Will you refuse to render them aid when wounded, for fear of seeing them nude?}”

“{It is different!}” Leonidas shot back immediately, his face heating despite himself as he looked away. “{Those would be my children, you are—}”

“{Your mentor. We have no sexual relationship, Leonidas. I am your teacher, you are my student. That boundary is immutable, as you well know.}”

He looked back at her when she spoke, recognizing the truth in her words, and once more tried to look at her without looking at her—fighting the ingrained fidgeting panic that arose whenever his mind insisted nudity had to mean something else.

Ceruviel lifted her hands and shrugged, intentionally moving her body.

“I fuck, Leonidas,” she said in English, cold as steel in winter. “It does not make me lesser, and it does not make you noble for refusing to acknowledge what I am. I have seen more men naked in my life than you have lived years. It does not bother me.”

Ceruviel lowered her arms and settled them idly at her sides.

“You, my dear boy, are so hung up on your puritanical values that you are very nearly ready to lose everything you need to establish a sanctuary for your people and those from Altera, all because you are scared of tits.”

Ceruviel’s tone took on a colder bend, and she assumed a parade rest, somehow managing to appear terrifyingly martial—and take the edge off of her nudity in the same moment. It somehow seemed suddenly less important when she stood like the soldier she was.

“I dislike doing this,” she said more quietly, her voice displeased. “I dislike that you have pushed me to the point of having to confront you this way. I have respected and tolerated your avoidance for all the time we have known one another, but now your juvenile aversion to skin is imperiling everything we are working toward. They are just tits, Leonidas. Sacks of fat. Flesh and tissue. Your Terran-wrought sensitivity to them, when compared to your utter abandon in spilling blood, is one of the greatest stupidities I have ever witnessed.”

“Easy for you to say, you hedonistic old—”

“Yes, I am those things, and I am not ashamed of them,” Ceruviel cut in flatly. “What of you, Leonidas? Why are you ashamed? Why do you fear this?”

“It—I was raised a certain way, it isn’t fear, it’s just—”

“Conditioning,” Ceruviel interrupted again, curtly. “Stupid, idiotic, backwards conditioning. You can crush a goblin’s skull, butcher it without blinking, but you cannot look at a naked woman? Are you an idiot?”

Leonidas threw his hands up in aggravation and looked away, reaching up to run his hand through his hair.

“Why are you doing this? It’s mortifying,” he said in a plaintive way that made him want to cringe at hearing it spoken.

“Why should it even be a thing? I am naked. So what? So what? Am I less of an Archon for my nudity?”

“Of course not!”

“Then grow up, Leonidas! You came here to ask me advice about pursuing Synthra, did you not? Your mind was obsessing over it loudly enough that I barely had to skim the edge of your awareness to learn that. Foolish boy. You worry so much about what is proper that you do not consider what is right.”

“What?” he asked when she spoke, and turned back to her, nudity momentarily forgotten—something he barely noticed with immediacy. “What does that even mean?”

Ceruviel stepped closer again, water rippling as she moved, and though she was still naked, the impact of it was less present—smothered beneath the atmosphere of mentorship and command she had effortlessly created.

Her nudity did not change what she was, who she was. It had no bearing on the Duchess—the Archon before him—and the fact he had believed it ever might was suddenly embarrassing, and mortifyingly juvenile.

“You wear propriety like a barrier to keep others at a distance,” Ceruviel continued, utterly uncompromising. “You hide behind it. We are not courting. It is improper. I must not look,” she said in a mocking imitation of his voice. “You dress your fear and repression in etiquette until you can pretend it is a virtue, like a shield of childish ignorance. That is not virtue, Achilles. Virtue is what you do when the rules fail you—when there is no clean solution and no tradition or nobility to shelter behind. Right is not always proper. Proper, the way you hold to it, is very often cowardice with better manners.”

“But Aylar and Synthra—”

“Are women, Leonidas. Not things. People. Thinking beings with agency. If they want to show you their bodies, to share them with you, to trust you with that intimacy—it is not your place to decide it is improper. Who the fuck are you to tell them what is and is not acceptable by their standards? I am not saying you have to be okay with some degenerate coercing you into intimacy, but they are not that. I am not that. I am your mentor. Aylar and Synthra will soon be your companions, and potentially, your wives.”

“Wives? Plural? Come on, Ceruviel, that’s ridic—”

“We already discussed the Royal Harem, Achilles,” she said in a warning tone. “Do not force me to hit you for your feigned stupidity.”

Leonidas sighed at her verbal rampage and cursed, turning and striding over to where an elegant robe hung in waiting, and fetching the silk garment before striding back to her.

“Okay. I get it. You’ve made your point, so can you please just—”

He jerked the robe indicatively, and Ceruviel snorted, but turned and extended her arms while effortlessly rising from the bath on a swirl of Psi that was visible to his senses. The robe left his hands and settled on her body in one smooth motion, and she tied it closed while turning to drift with masterful control onto the marble before him.

“I am proud of you in many things, Achilles. You have made more than one of my dreams possible—but this reticence of yours will doom everything before it starts, if you do not master your… weaknesses. We will speak more of Synthra, Aylar, and all that delightful mess entails later. You said you had something else to discuss, and I’m sure it isn’t the two gorgeous women who want to bed you. What is it? Tell me what happened this morning to churn your thoughts so violently. I’m getting a headache by proximity.”

Leonidas breathed out a sigh of relief when she refocused.

Desensitization-by-exposure had worked, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t happier with her clothed.

“I went to the Guild to purchase something,” he said to her a moment later, relieved by the change in topic. “While I was there, I…”

Ceruviel listened attentively while he spoke, and her expression shifted from cold focus to a slow, pleased smile as he detailed what had happened, and more specifically, what he had acquired.

By the time he was done, the glint in her eyes was downright ecstatic.