Princess Kassandra of Nohr

Travelling with companions was much more pleasant than travelling alone, and the days of riding didn't seem to drag like they had done when I'd been without company. As well as three of my siblings, there were a whole host of retainers, and a lot of soldiers -- as many as had been deployed at the border battle, if not more.

I ought to have known exactly how many were present, but I was still weak and ill, and it was all I could do to ride from dawn until dusk each day. There was no energy left to spare for my royal duties, or anything much at all. As soon as camp was set up, I slept.

Time seemed to slip by very quickly, and sometimes in a haze, until we reached Fort Dragonfall.

It was a strange fort. Guarded by neither soldiers nor doors, it was more of a tunnel, with bricks like scales, a jawed entrance, and a thick darkness inside that stretched forever. Lamps were hanging from the walls, but their light did not shine far. I looked into the shadows and shivered. "You said this is a giant sleeping dragon?"

"A dead dragon, fortunately," Xander corrected as we approached it.

Elise grinned at me from my right. She and Xander were flanking me, and with Camilla flying overhead, I felt as if they were trying to wrap me in a cocoon of protection. Wherever I went in camp, too, they were always there, checking on me.

"Hey, maybe you could write about this in a song, Kass?" Elise said. "A great dragon who died and turned into a fort? You used to write songs about everything we did."

Until Norton left.

Still, I understood his actions now. Perhaps I really could start writing songs again.

"Hold," Silas said. "Can you hear shouting?"

We halted and listened. When I strained my ears, I could just about hear faint, angry voices on the wind. Every soldier tensed.

"Kass, stay out here with Elise," Xander said immediately. "I'll take some soldiers and investigate."

I bit my lip. "All right. Be careful."

Elise, Effie, Arthur, and I moved our horses aside. Camilla dropped her wyvern lower so that she would be able to fly through the fort, and she and Xander led Silas, Felicia, and Flora in. A small group of soldiers began to follow.

The voices grew louder, moving towards us. "On your knees, Nohrian scum! This is where you die!"

"Please, I'm not your enemy!" someone cried.

I recognised that voice.

Putting my heels to Zodiac's sides, I galloped into the fort before the soldiers could cut me off. The others turned in their saddles as his hooves clattered against the stone.

"It's Azura!" I yelled as I drew alongside Xander. "Forget caution. Hurry!"

He asked his horse to canter, and the whole group picked up a frantic pace. Zodiac stayed steady at his side, and he glanced at me urgently. "Go back, Kass!"

But it was too late. The light of the torches picked out a group of people before us.

"Back to trot!" Xander ordered.

We steadied our horses as the Hoshidans turned. Their voices rose, and their swords, once pointed at Azura as they stood around her in a circle, were raised to point at us. The previous Nohrian princess was kneeling on the floor between them, her wrists and ankles bound. She raised her head, blood smeared across her face. Weary resignation turned to surprise.

I steered Zodiac towards the side of the tunnel as the others charged, still feeling too weak to battle. Camilla hovered near me.

"Please protect Azura!" I said to her.

"But, darling, I need to keep you safe."

One Hoshidan soldier stayed back as the others engaged. He turned to Azura and grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck. His blade glinted in the dark.

"Camilla!" I shrieked.

She had already taken the initiative, flying over the battle. Her wyvern swooped down on the other side of the Hoshidans. Before the soldier could even look up, his head fell away from his neck.

I gagged and turned Zodiac around. That wasn't how I'd been expecting her to resolve the situation.

But it was an all-out battle, kill or be killed. The clash of steel and the furious cries knotted my stomach, and the screams of those who lost made my blood curl. I looked over my shoulder, searching for Xander.

When my gaze found him safe and sound, nothing settled inside. There was a look on his face I'd never seen before: a cold, hard kind of fury. The Hoshidans were fighting desperately for their lives. He was not. He was fighting to defeat them, and he was determined that he would. Certain of it.

The battle was already won in his eyes; the sentence handed down. He was the executioner.

It didn't take long for the Hoshidan platoon to draw back, outnumbered and overwhelmed. "Retreat!"

They started to fall away, but the Nohrians followed them as surely as a tide, blades plunging into the enemy lines. Bones crunched under hooves. Swords punched into flesh and muscle with a sickening thump. The Hoshidans hardly had the chance to run before the horses reached them.

Blood splashed across black stone. Screams for mercy echoed down the tunnel. I dismounted Zodiac and covered my ears, but I couldn't make myself close my eyes. There was something in me that said I needed to see, a twisted survival instinct.

Not a single Hoshidan got away.

Even when the noises stopped and the Nohrian soldiers came back, the sights stayed, and the stench of blood thickened the air. It made me feel woozy, and my knees buckled. Camilla came and pulled my hair back just before I was sick.

"It's all right." She put a hand on my trembling shoulders. "Xander, really? In front of Kass?"

"This is what war looks like, I'm afraid." His voice echoed in the tunnel. "Sooner or later, she would have been confronted with it."

My throat stung, and my stomach was still turning. Oxygen seemed hard to come by, and I couldn't catch my breath. I didn't know if I'd finished being sick or if something else was happening to me.

Xander dismounted with a thump behind us and crouched down at my side. Gone was his cold confidence, and in its place was a surprising amount of uncertainty.

"Kass," he said softly. "Breathe."

I wanted to tell him that I was trying, but I couldn't speak. Instead, I shut my eyes and tried to wipe what I'd just seen from my mind, searching for security.

I saw my room in the Northern Fortress: clothes spilling from chests, sheet music scattered across the bedcovers, a preserved rose on the chest of drawers. Ease threaded into me. That place had been my prison for sixteen years...and my sanctuary. I'd lived there, laughed there, and fallen in love with a man who would never hurt anyone.

My breaths slowed. I rocked back on my heels, and Camilla handed me her canteen. I sipped from it, wary of making myself sick again. Only when I'd given it back did I look at Xander. I tried to keep hold of the man I knew and not the man I'd seen, but although his eyes were soft, his skin was flecked with blood.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I truly am. But I could not let the Hoshidans escape when they're so far into Nohrian territory. They would have killed hundreds of our people before they made it back to their own country. Do you see how death was the price either way?"

"I don't like it," I croaked. It was the only answer I could give. I didn't think slaughter of innocents was the Hoshidan way...but then, what had I just witnessed them doing to Azura?

"No one likes it, Kass." Xander stood up and turned away. "Least of all me."

He left us, muttering orders to our army to move the bodies aside. I watched him go.

Camilla took my arm. "Let me help you up, darling."

"No." I cast another look at Xander. "I'll stand up on my own."

I had to straighten up very slowly, and I was secretly grateful when Camilla kept hold of me, because the world was not entirely steady. When I was up, she linked our arms and nodded across the bloodied tunnel. "Shall we join Azura?"

That was where Xander had gone, and now they were standing together further down the tunnel, speaking with ease.

Reuniting.

Azura was dirty and bloodied, one prominent wound striking a deep diagonal across the bridge of her nose. A healer was tending to her, although he looked like he was trying to start in several places at once.

Camilla walked me to them. When they spotted us, Xander's speech faltered, although he did not look away. Azura gave me a weary smile. "Kaiya. It's a pleasure to see you again."

"Yes," I murmured, although pleasure wasn't the word I had in mind. "Forgive me, but what are you doing here? And what just...? Why did your own soldiers...?"

Some of the strength seeped out of her body, and she seemed to fade a little before my eyes. "Because I'm not Hoshidan by birth. It has occasionally caused difficulties in the past, but now that the war has escalated, I'm an enemy to them. Nayoko -- Norton -- tried his hardest to protect me, but I was kidnapped by dissenters." She glanced at Xander, then back at me. "I've been told you're the reason why my life was saved. Thank you."

Behind them, a Nohrian soldier dragged a body aside, so broken that it was shapeless.

"Don't thank me," I whispered.

Camilla was looking at Azura with guarded curiosity. Xander smiled. "Surely there is no need for me to introduce you?"

"I just can't believe we've finally found you again." Camilla's expression relaxed, and I thought she was going to fly across the gap and hug Azura -- but she kept hold of me and simply smiled. "I'm so pleased to see you."

Perhaps my astonishment at her lack of dramatics must have shown on my face, because Xander explained. "Azura is the child of Father's second wife, the late Queen Arete. When they married, many Nohrians were still distraught over my mother's death. Those who loved Queen Katerina were not happy about Queen Arete or her daughter. Camilla and I, and later Leo, were told not to associate with Azura because of this."

I looked between them all again. So were they siblings, or were they strangers? It was eerily similar to my Hoshidan family, and the thought made me feel a little sick. I'd turned my back on them because they were strangers, but family was still family, wasn't it? Azura certainly seemed to be both here.

"If it's not too much of a burden," she said, "I would like to join you permanently."

I stared at her. "You wish to fight against Hoshido?"

"I merely wish to end this senseless war. I don't want to hurt my Hoshidan family, but I will be killed if I return. Yet, even though I've lived in Hoshido for sixteen years, none of you are trying to kill me." She glanced across the tunnel at the bodies, and a hint of pain flashed in her eyes. "I owe you my life and my loyalty."

Xander was looking at me as if it was my place to give the answer. His gaze was apologetic.

I supposed he had granted one person mercy.

Straightening my back into the stance of a soldier, I placed a fist over my chest. "We would be honoured to have you, Azura."

***

We rode back out of the fort to fetch Elise, Azura doubling up with Silas. When we had my youngest Nohrian sister, we all turned around to ride back through and continue on, but Elise hindered our progress considerably with her questions.

I explained who Azura was, and she lit up. "Wow! Oh, wow! Does that mean you're my big sister? I have a sister named Azura! And she's so pretty!"

Azura blushed.

"Don't overwhelm her," Xander warned from the front.

"I'm not!" Elise said.

She proceeded to ride by Azura and talk her ear off as we rode back through the fort, falling silent only when we passed the bodies. When we'd cleared them, she started up again, her voice louder and brighter to the point where it was obvious that it was forced.

Even so, she was handling things better than me.

I pushed Zodiac through the formation and took my place beside Xander again. He caught my eye, and I nodded at him. His face cleared in relief.

I'd forgiven him, but things weren't quite the same. I would remember the screams, the blood, and the begs for mercy until the day I died.

I loved Xander. I thought that I might even gather the courage to tell him those words one day. But the beginnings of a rift had opened between us, and it was a rift called war.