Rileus had not been lax during Althalos' time away, but he willingly put down the letters to greet them both. "I managed to get through a good half of these. The man is offset-proposed to you on your fiftieth birthday, and the letters shifted from things you'd write to an innocent to the explicitly carnal. It's clear he's thinking of you as a man and not a boy-even comments on your improved physique, so he's been keeping tabs on you. But everything is short of outright threat."

Althalos shook his head as he pulled out a chair from the table for his betrothed. "I figured it would. He was bound to shift from idolizing a relationship to pure filth eventually."

She sat gently, waiting on his tucking the chair away a bit tighter before settling in fully. "But nothing actionable?"

"No."Rileus dragged the pause out, thinking about how he wanted to speak, for once-not his strong suite. "Certainly he wrote things I would personally kill a man for saying to me, but we're not cut from the same cloth." He gave off this false cheerfulness that his cousin would know came most often before a fight.

Esme didn't, though. "Why are the Aelfine like you so lax about this? A man stalking boys? He would be dead as soon as it came out, in the Shards. This issue has been known most of my life."

"Don't mistake me for your bondswain, girl. I find anything actionable, I will have his head. I'm going to call for his death, anyway-would do so if he went after a woman this way. Attempting to train an all-but child to your sexual drives? This is demented." Rileus then shifted his subtle glare from the woman to the man. "You never said why you put up with this."

The braw Aelif sat himself down, shrugging. "I was an unreasonably pretty child, and I hated my own actions in this, but I hate having to dwell on this part of my life even more-although I'll do anything demanded, by you, Grandfather, or Esme on this. There are people I cannot let this divide me from, and you're the few that know."

"I've not asked you to do much of anything, All." The protest was off Esme's lips nearly before he had finished.

"But you have questions you've not asked, yet."

"What time? You wanted a break after the meeting and ran off in the morning."

"Well, you've not come to find me either." His words were harsh, accusing, far unlike himself as to even cause Rileus to lean back a hair from the two of them. "You've not once come to find where I've been this whole time. Instead, you run your backside out the castle into Gods know what awaits you out there."

Esme rolled her eyes-a very human trait and one she had been suppressing for a long time. "Not this again..."

"Aelfines, please, there's bigger concerns than the two of you." Rileus grin was wickedly wide at the behaviors in front of him. "All, she wasn't there alone. The guard made it clear that you made it there in time when securing our assailant. And Esme was armed."

Althalos growled back at his superior. "She gets attacks of nerves that affects her coordination."

"Well, that just means a guard at her side as well as a tail, when she leaves. That's on you for not making her protection adequate, not her, oh guardsman." But Rileus wasn't all praise for the Princess, either. "And as for you? A woman from the Shards should know that the world is a dangerous place. She should know her own limits, from those she owns as well as what she's been vaulted into. You're not anonymous to the kingdom. You're the newest royal that is gossiped over in homes both high and low. There is no such thing as security in this city, beyond these walls. You best get used to it."

That didn't cause the woman to wilt. "What, you want me to stay in the castle grounds as well?"

"Neither of us wants that, Esme." Althalos leaned on the table with an unbearable combination of tension and yearning to relax. "We don't spend enough time communicating until everything is dire or forced. If I dig too much, you bristle and pick."

She was quick to quip back. "And like you do better. You just don't talk or only give me part of the picture."

Althalos' eyes closed briefly. "I do that, don't I? I didn't know you weren't seeking time with others. You don't have much interest in people, do you?"

"Not that." She had some interest in him, at least. Dinner conversations were occasionally interesting, but it never seemed to be more than a dining arrangement. "People are trouble and we have little in common."

"Well, I know I would like your help in improving those boy's ability to hide."

"I'm no teacher." Esme still wasn't over his lack of reaching out until a fight, to give in this easily. Not this time.

"All you have to do is take a walk with whatever guard is assigned to you and tell them what you notice. They will rotate, hear from you what mistakes they are making, and it gets you out without having to depend on me. I beg you to obey them, though, as life and death may be wrapped up in a single command."

She sighed as the fight dissolved from her as quickly as it had formed. Deep water could be damned frigid for as polite as his wording was, and she had to admit that she didn't have the strength to fight him out of sheer pettiness. "Well, that's something to do for a few hours, here and there."

"You could also come find me when you want my company, none of this waiting. I'm most often somewhere around these rooms."

"I don't want to intrude..."

Rileus had gone back to reading, barely paying attention to them, but he looked up to speak on intrusion. "Sometimes all he is doing, here, is napping until a patrol comes back in to report. We are not always busy. Today? We are busy, but you're a part of that very issue. Let her read the letter, All, quit stalling. Maybe go check on the prisoner afterwards?"

The letter itself was short, in what Esme assumed was a feminine hand-save that her own spidery scrawl didn't give her much faith in the gender of a writer.

Long May Octavian Live!

Our king's kindness towards his lesser people is well known, but no servant wants to see his Lord debase his lineage. These marriages to pale-skins, particularly human pale-skins has to cease. The short lifespan of the creatures will diminish the lives of our ruling class, placing people in charge whose lives are too brief to think objectively about the future they'll not live to see.

~ A Concerned Citizen.

She looked back and forth between the two men for a moment, before speaking. "How does anyone go from a sensible objection to attacking me out there?"

Althalos snapped back, "Nothing about that was sensible!" He refused to say anything further.

It dawned on Esme that calm wasn't in his current demeanor and he had a habit of shutting down when upset. She almost knew it before this moment, but had not formally thought it through. No wonder he avoided her so damned often. Not that she had to like it or accept it, but at least it wasn't only her that had to deal with his attitude.

Rileus-as was more usual for them-was the one to break out an explanation."By the time courage is gathered to write such a letter, others have been grumbling far worse for quite a while. Between this and a few overheard conversations by guards, we figured that someone would make their objections more physical, eventually. Although I am surprised that it came to pulling out a knife in sight of your protection like that."

Althalos responded with a description. "Lightweight, easy to pull over a bench, but still strangled like any living creature. I've not tested it, but I suspect it's a Seeded Wife. It won't give us anything, and should go insane in a couple of hours."

"Well, that gives me no interest in checking in on the prisoner until tomorrow morning." Rileus turned deliberately back to the letters in front of him.

"Seeded Wife?" Esme was lost with that.

Something far more neutral Althalos had little problem explaining to his betrothed. "Tree-imbued Aelfine-normally called Reedlings-make them. They can have real offspring or grow a sham descendant-for a single purpose-often bought by people who want a stored assassin. The parent doesn't even know how their descendant is used. They have little past to tell you and quickly lose their sense of the world as they fall apart."

"I've heard tales of tree-folk growing up, but didn't think they were real."

"They aren't really a separate people. Some Reedlings are even human."

"You say that like being human is awful."

Althalos couldn't help snorting at that. "I do not think that. Being human is just short-lived. Pretty much any human and other Aelfine blend is longer-lived than their human parent. Since Reedlings aren't an inherited people, they are the strongest blend with humans. Instead of increasing the human lifespan, they just bypass aging altogether. It's not like that for any other Aelfine. And then they go back to living when the ability departs. Shortest span has been a year, longest is nearly as old as the Crystal Queen."

Her glare was just barely under accusing. "Why hasn't your mother taught me about them?"

"Probably because we have none in the kingdom right now-until this creature that attempted to kill you, that is."

"Great," A hand slammed on the table, normally meant as dissent, but this more stemmed from exasperation on the Princess' part. "what other creatures from child's tales are there?"

"Most all of them. Few of them officially live in the cities, not even the Leeches."

"Leeches, as in bloodsuckers?"

"Sort of." By this point Althalos had learned to mask his irritation at having to explain and name the most mundane things to this woman, mostly because he didn't like seeing her clench her jaw and jut it out obstiantely until he gave in and just lecutred her into running away from him. Besides, these moments were becoming far more rare, as she caught up to him. "Real leeches cut you open and let your heartbeat the blood into them. The leeches I'm speaking of have tiny tooth like projections from their fingerprints. They abrade you and lap up the weeping from your skin-they're less interested in your whole blood than your lifewater, as it separates from the blood."

"They are fond of the dead, aren't they?" Rileus had stayed out this long, finishing off the letter that they interrupted, before speaking.

"The fairly fresh dead's blood starts to separate. That's something they'd tear a body open to get at." Trust Althalos to know that about them.

Esme shuddered. "I'd suspect that they would make their living as knackers, then. They always handle the dead, out there."

Rileus shook his head. "We check those over regularly to keep up their licensing. Most likely they sell to any leeches, not are leeches themselves."

"Any which way, they keep a low profile-if none of us are aware of any, directly," mused Althalos. "Unfortunately, we don't have enough control of the Shards to keep all manner of ill out."

"So, you had been hoping to topple more of the Shards than the guilds?"Esme could smack herself for not thinking further than her people. No wonder these men were so wound up over her thwarting them.

Rileus conceded that point. "It was the closest to the surface ill that comes out of there, but we have plenty of time to take another day to cover it. Both of your talking is interfering with me finishing these letters, and I wish to meet with Grandfather before dinner. Please go."

Althalos nodded before he stood and offered his betrothed his hand. Her grip on him was hard, as emotions roiled through her about returning to their apartment, especially if it was to fight. His mouth tightened as the bond echoed his own mood at him.