Chapter 123: Aftermath

{Hexilia}

The door to the royal box burst open, and six of my own guards came pouring in with their swords drawn.

"HER MAJESTY!" the first one shouted. "Where is Her Majesty!?"

"On the floor, behind me, alive!" I snapped. "Get her out of here! Now!"

Two of them grabbed the Queen under the arms and hustled her out the door with her shawl still over her head. She was saying something about her lemon cakes. I didn’t catch the rest.

The other four stopped in the doorway and stared.

I couldn’t blame them. The royal box looked like someone had set off a fire spell inside a bakery. There was broken china everywhere, tea soaking into the carpet, and lemon cakes smashed into every corner. One of the gilded chairs was hanging halfway over the railing.

In the middle of it all lay Secretary Anselm Pryce, face down, with no head.

A thin little curl of smoke was still rising out of his collar, drifting lazily up toward the ceiling. A single lemon cake had landed in the middle of his back and was sitting there, perfectly whole, as if somebody had set it there on purpose.

On the floor by the wall, curled up in a puddle of her own blood, was Kohaku. She was still in her maid uniform. Her right sleeve was soaked red from the wrist to the elbow, and there was a tiny silver cake knife lying beside her open hand.

The guards looked at the headless secretary. Then they looked at the fox.

I watched them put it together, and I watched them get it completely wrong.

"Captain!" Sergeant Brannock raised his sword and pointed it straight at Kohaku. "Step away from the beastkin!"

"Put that down!" I knelt beside Kohaku and tore a long strip off the bottom of my cape. "She’s bleeding out, you idiot!"

"Captain, the Queen’s secretary is dead! There was a flash of light, we couldn’t see a thing, and when we come in, the only person in this room who isn’t Guard or royalty is that fox, lying next to his body with a weapon in her hand!"

"It’s a CAKE KNIFE, Brannock!!!"

I wrapped the strip around Kohaku’s arm above the cut and pulled it tight. She didn’t even flinch. Her face was gray, and her eyes were closed, and her breathing was much too shallow.

[Come on, little fox. Don’t you dare die on me.]

"Pryce drew on the Queen," I said, as clearly and slowly as I could. "I saw it. He had a blade in his hand, a black one, and he came at her with it. I fought him. He was beating me, Brannock. Me. And this girl stopped him."

The guards glanced at each other.

"With respect, Captain," Brannock said carefully, "the light blinded you too. None of us saw who drew first. And everyone knows you’ve taken a liking to this fox."

He wasn’t wrong about that last part. That was exactly the problem.

"Seize her," Brannock told the others. "We’ll sort it out at the palace."

Two of them stepped forward.

I stood up between them and Kohaku with my sword still in my hand. My heart was pounding, and I honestly didn’t know what I was about to do.

"Good evening, gentlemen~"

Every head in the box turned toward the door.

Professor Sabine Corvaine was leaning against the doorframe, with her dark hair pinned up and a glass of wine still in one hand. She looked around the room at the broken china, the smoking body, the bleeding fox, and the four drawn swords, and she didn’t seem surprised by any of it.

[Oh, thank the gods.]

She had taught me swordwork for three years when I was a student here. I had never once seen her lose an argument.

"That young lady is a first-year student of Stellaris Royal Academy," Sabine said pleasantly, "and this hall is academy property. The academy has a duty of care toward its students. That means that until the matter is properly investigated, she’s in academy custody, not palace custody. Mine, specifically."

"Professor, this is a matter for the Crown..."

"Then the Crown can send a request through the proper channels in the morning." Sabine stepped over a lemon cake, knelt beside Kohaku, and lifted her off the floor without any effort at all. "Meanwhile, I’m taking her to the infirmary before she dies of a paperwork delay."

"Sergeant!"

The last guard had crouched beside Pryce’s body. He’d pulled the gray coat open and was staring at something underneath it.

Strapped tight against Pryce’s ribs, under the coat, was a long, narrow sheath made of dark leather and stamped with the sun mark of the Church of Lux.

It was empty.

Then the guard reached under the Queen’s chair, and he pulled out the blade that belonged in it. It was a dagger made entirely of black glass. The moment it came into the light, every lamp in the box dimmed.

Nobody said a word.

Brannock slowly lowered his sword.

"Duty of care," Sabine repeated, very softly. Then she carried Kohaku out the door and down the stairs, and nobody tried to stop her.

I stood there in the wreckage with my sword in my hand, staring at the place where Pryce had been standing a few minutes ago with that blade pointed at my Queen.

He would have killed her. Then, he would have killed me, because I couldn’t stop him, and I’d known it after the first three exchanges.

Instead, a little fox in a maid dress had walked in with a tray of lemon cakes, and she’d stopped him with a cake knife.

In other words, I owed that girl my life, and I didn’t even know why she’d been watching him in the first place.

---

{Kohaku}

I woke up in a narrow white bed, with a lamp burning on the table beside me and a ceiling I didn’t recognize.

For a few seconds, I just lay there. Then I remembered the box, the knife, and my arm splitting open, and I sat bolt upright.

"MY BLOOD!!!" I grabbed my right arm with my left hand. "How much did I lose? Is there any left in me? Am I a ghost now? Is this the afterlife? Why does the afterlife smell like disinfectant!?"

"You’re not dead, Kohaku~"

Sabine was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, with her legs crossed and a book open in her lap. She didn’t look up from it.

I looked down at my arm. There was a clean white bandage wrapped around it from the wrist to the elbow, and when I flexed my fingers, they all moved. The weasel was curled up asleep on the blanket beside me, snoring.

"The healers closed it up an hour ago," Sabine said, turning a page. "Your little friend there helped once it woke up. You lost a great deal of blood, but you still have plenty. You’re in the academy infirmary, under academy custody. The palace is very upset about it."

"Oh." I flopped back against the pillow. "Okay. Good. Great."

"However..." Sabine finally closed her book. "Church relics are usually treated with something unpleasant, so the healer has gone to fetch the poison tests. You’re to stay right here in this bed until she gets back. Do you understand?"

"Totally! I feel great, though. I don’t feel poisoned at all."

"Stay," Sabine said, "in the bed."

She stood up, patted my head, and walked out.

I lasted about four minutes.

The whole time, my attention kept drifting to the same thing, which was the empty seat in the front row with the silver ribbon on it. The play was over. Lily had looked down during the final scene and found nobody there. Serena had probably looked down too.

In other words, I needed to see them both, right now, before either of them decided I’d just skipped it.

I slid out of bed, tucked the weasel into my pocket, and snuck out of the infirmary in my bloodstained maid uniform.

Backstage was nearly empty by the time I got there. Most of the cast had gone off to the after-party. Hugo was sitting alone on a cardboard rock, still in his director’s scarf, staring into space with a dreamy smile on his face.

"Kohaku!" He jumped up when he saw me. "You missed it! It was perfect! It was the most perfect performance in the history of the academy! Everyone cried! I cried!"

"That’s great, Hugo! Have you seen Lily and Serena?"

"Oh." His smile slipped a little. "Serena went into the dressing room after the bows. She was furious about something. I don’t know what. Lily went in after her to calm her down. That was a while ago."

[Furious. Right. That’s probably about me.]

I went down the hall to the dressing room door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.

"Huh, I wonder how the play went..."

Lily was on all fours on the dressing room couch.

She was still in the star gown, but the skirt was flipped all the way up over her back, and silver stars were scattered across the cushions where they’d come loose. Serena was kneeling behind her. She’d gotten the breastplate off, but the rest of her armor was still on, with the cape hanging off one shoulder, and she had both hands locked on Lily’s hips. She was fucking her hard, so hard the whole couch was rocking against the wall. Lily had her face buried in a cushion and was moaning into it.

Both of them froze and turned to look at me at the exact same time.

"K-Kohaku!" Lily squeaked.

Serena didn’t say anything. She just stared at me with her red eyes wide open.

I opened my mouth to say something. Then the room started spinning, and my legs went soft, and bright colors started blooming at the edges of my vision.

[Oh, this is way too much to look at after losing that much blood.]

The floor came up to meet me for the second time that night.