It was early morning the next day when I opened the door of Lesya's room to find her gone. Jazzy was there, lying on the bed as if she was the empress of Eurasia, greeting me with one flick of her tail.

It took us a year of hunting and yarn balls for her to finally like me. When she arrived in a golden cage as a cub, she took immediately to guarding Lesya. For the first month or so, no one could touch the princess, and the Lesya couldn't even get to the bathroom without the tiger with her.

Even now, Jazzy wouldn't take orders from anyone except Lesya. I could only give suggestions which she usually ignored or did the opposite of, deliberately.

"Dearest queen Jasmine of Lesya's bed..." I said, nearing the gigantic tiger. "Do you know where Lesya is?"

She looked at me for a minute, wondering if I was worthy of her response. If I was any other person, I'd be mauled already. "Jazzy, is she in the closet?"

I heard her rumble what I could only think was a tiger's version of annoyance, as she stood to her full height and led me to the bathroom. "Thanks." I gave her a pat on the back.

"Lesya, I'm coming in, I hope you're decent!" I opened her door to see her submerging herself in the tub, fully clothed with her tattered pajamas. Sleeping with a tiger all these years, even getting licked would tear the cotton.

Her head was covered in a thin nanosheet protruding from her ear, and she was talking to Raza with her eyes closed, probably seeing text projected onto her closed eyelids. "Hey, Akim Ogamras from the privy council is here to brief you."

I couldn't hear her, but her mouth shaped the words "I don't care if you're in Nepal, you'll seal it before the queen comes."

She couldn't hear me, so I walked to look over her and knocked at the nano sheet. The moment she opened her eyes, the sheet folded itself back into her ear, and the contact flopped and disappeared into the water. Lesya caught it though.

My hand stretched out to her, and she took it.

"You should have knocked." She coughed, as she emerged from the water. Lesya then started jumping with her head cocked to the right. "I think I have water in my ear."

I got a towel around her. "Well, you have to change. Jazzy needs to hunt today, and we'll be moving around a lot."

"Are we going to China?" She asked.

"No. We're setting up the bots in Russia. China is dense in Siberian Tigers right now, Jazzy might not want to hunt with their pee all over the place."

"Why is Ogamras here?"

"She'll be briefing you about the tributes you'll be meeting today."

She stopped walking towards the door the moment I said the plural word. "Tributes?" Lesya looked at me. "How many will there be today? Uncle is busy?"

"Yes. The Antarctican, he'll meet you in Russia. Then you'll be meeting Japan this evening."

"Okay. Two. I can handle two." She said, nodding to herself. She didn't like it at all, but at least she was ready to meet them.

"Of course, you can." I smiled.

She went to her closet, happy that Antarctica didn't give her a dress to wear. I didn't tell her yesterday, but queen Aridni truly knew how to dress her. Tino, the prince probably didn't know what hit him when he saw her. I surely didn't know what hit me when I did.

Lesya always thought she was paler than she was, frizzier than she was, uglier than she was. Her skin was the color of coffee with a little too much milk, her hair was a halo of curls in white and the lightest of sun rays, her eyes weren't pink, they were a deep purple in the outer ring, fading into white with a dot of a small golden circle in her left eye. When I told her she was a goddess, I didn't mean her status.

"I'm not wearing the things Raza gave me today. I don't have solution so maybe the contacts are contaminated and yeah." I heard her shout over the door, making excuses for herself.

Raza didn't trust me anymore to relay information to her. I don't know what he's discovered yet, but maybe it was for the best.

When she came out, she was in thermal leggings, riding boots, and a turtleneck under a puffer vest. "I don't think Hassan will approve of that-" Leggings weren't pants, and puffers were only for skiing or horses.

"Antarctica didn't send a dress... and it's Russia. It's always cold." She remarked.

I went into her closet and took a tweed blazer that almost matched the color of her boots. She needed some texture that wasn't plastic. She was the empress now. "Give me the puffer."

We've both been going to fashion shows since I arrived in the continent, and even though I was always near the back row behind her, I felt like I learned more. I paid attention at least.

She gave me a dirty look but complied. When she went out, Jazzy followed her, with me in tow. I wasn't dressed in guard garb today, which made me a little more comfortable.

No duty today so I wasn't even supposed to go. For now, I wasn't her guard, today I was her friend. But when I saw Akim again in the living room, I resolved to be her guard again.

I would be Lesya's friend in closed quarters, but as long as she was not alone-

"Your imperial highness." I heard Akim say. Ogamras was harmless.

"Hello. Please sit." Lesya said.

I positioned myself behind her loveseat, watching over Jazzy as she walked around Akim like she was prey.

"Your schedule for today, your imperial highness, is a meeting with Mr. Theo Velez from nine to lunch time, and then a meeting with Prince Akihito in the afternoon. All parliamentary duties have been suspended for you until your coronation. Tomorrow, you will spend the whole day with Prince Yudaveer Wadiyar. The rest of the princes will arrive by Saturday, and you will meet all of them at your coronation ball."

"Is it wise for me not to work? All twenty-five in one night?" Lesya raised an eyebrow. "Why do the five get to see me privately while the rest don't?"

Akim swallowed. "It was a first come-first served basis-"

"Why are you lying to me?" Lesya replied in a tone so sharp and cold I almost mistook it for King Solomon's.

Akim was lying? I tried my hardest not to reach over to ask her what bothered her, but I doubted she'd appreciate that.

Akim bit her lip, seeming to have come out of a confident daze. She looked more like a high school girl now. "Well... England has priority since it has Queen Aridni, a princess of Eurasia. We didn't anticipate that Prince William would bring Prince Konstantinos."

"So, Prince Konstantinos was not a priority" She cocked her head. "And Antarctica? Japan? New India? Why?"

She was tarrying.

Akim sighed a shaky breath. Lesya was going in too cold. Akim didn't seem to have enough walls around her, at least not as much as the ministers. "Answer me."

"Antarctica has the largest standing army second only to Eurasia, and it has a strategic and expanding territory. It's best they be our allies than our enemies."

"But Chancellors come and go."

"Yes, but Theo Velez also is the only contender with similar interests as you such as aviation." Akim said, projecting her files for Lesya to see. Lesya averted her gaze as she did yesterday when I pulled Tino's files. She's spent her whole life with people knowing so much about her at a first meeting, at least she had the decency to extend some respect. "New India has the largest number of patents and voters. We intend to nationalize the patents and have the people's approval. The Wadiyar family is in good standing as of now so it would be advantageous. Prince Yudaveer is also of pure ancestry, he has no foreign blood, so if he accepts you, New India will follow."

"If he accepts me?" Yudaveer was a goner.

"Prince Akihito is the best match for your DNA. He has an opposite immune system as yours, and it's also been a few generations since an east Asian consort." Akim closed her projection. "As for the rest, they're qualified but not desirable."

"And what if I marry any of the others?"

"Um." Akim said.

"Well... work on those simulations. I know it's in the best interest of the country, but I don't like that you think your council can choose for me without my consent and pass it off as coincidence. You're here to advise me, not direct me." Then she stood and left for the elevator without a departing remark.

Akim was still standing, shaking slightly. Although I pitied her, there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. She should be better.

"Officer Malak-" She swallowed a sob, fixing her face into the fiercest she could manage. "I... she... her imperial highness needs to approve the new additions to the council, and I don't know what to write on the note of the painting she's sending to Prince Konstantinos-"

"That's not my job." I said. "But nevertheless, send the files to me and I'll inform her of approving the appointments. As for the painting, just sign in 'Da vinci' with nothing else."

"But it's a Monet." She said, lording over her knowledge of art over my ignorance with an arrogance extremely contrasting against the residue of fear in her voice.

She was of the Privy Council, and I was Guard. I should be trying to win her favor, and she made that clear. But the thing is, when you had the favor of the empress, there was no one else to impress.

"Sign it with 'Da vinci.'" I said again. Lesya's cold anger was not exactly warranted, but if there was something I did not believe in, it was the illusion of chance and opportunity when in fact equality was absent.

In Lesya's world, she was the only one immune to the law... or at least most of it. Every other citizen was on equal footing. Any structure standing against that was something that should not be birthed. "If you can't do your job with transparency towards your own sovereign, quit. Lesya's the most powerful woman in the world, but God has blessed us with her ignorance of, and intention, for that fact to be false. If there's anything she believes in the most, it's equal opportunity." She'd been denied it most of her life. "If you disagree with that ideal, you have no place in her administration."

×+×

Lesya signed the appointment of some promoted council member and Hassan into the privy council before we took off. In the big runner we were in, Jazzy lay her head on Lesya's lap, while I was reading up on Antarctica.

I helped Lesya read up yesterday about all the tributes and apparently, back pre-nuclear age, it was a barren, frozen land owned by no country. But after the alarms rang throughout the northern hemisphere, the survivors made their way down to avoid the radiation. There, they created their own country inside tents, then inside buildings, and in three hundred years, they managed to almost surpass Eurasia, if not only for the fact that they started a little earlier.

Eurasia was the worst hit. People went closer to the center; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, some in Mongolia. The rest either migrated, mutated, or died blood-poisoned deaths. It was like that for generations while the Plutonian - the Ascenders, whatever it was Lesya's people were called back then - were surviving underground through intermarriages and tunnels.

Billionaires married billionaires; royal blood ran thick. Peoples sold their countries in exchange for rations.

Apparently, the bunker system was created far longer than that, but was only made for specific families - the ones who funded their building. But when the sirens came, they opened their doors to every survivor... that act of mercy was practically mercy-killing suicide. There weren't enough resources for everyone.

And so instead of forever, they stayed for three generations.

Solomon, the first, rose to the surface first and saw the sun his people almost forgot even existed. They erased the worst parts of their history; they had wars- genocides- after the ascension. All of which are hushed now, forgotten.

Egypt remembers, and so do I.

By then those who didn't make it to the bunkers... they didn't even look like people. They had colored hair in shades of silver, blue, green and it wasn't even dyed. Their skin had patches, or stripes, or hair all over. They didn't have a government, they didn't have diplomacy, but they had abilities no human had.

The Ascendants became Eurasians, and they killed the Onus who didn't give up their land... which was all of them. Now, I was sitting beside Eurasia's empress, a descendant of an Ascendant and yet looked like Onus. In the continent or in the North, she would have been worshipped albeit for two very different reasons.

"What?" She asked. "Do I have something on my face?"

I'd been staring at her for a while now. "No."

She sighed, stroking the tiger's head. "I don't know if I like the Antarctican."

"You haven't met him." I shrugged. "Maybe he's the person you won't be able to live without."

"I think I can manage to live without anyone." True.

"Me too, but we're on this to find someone who'll change that." I moved closer to her to show her the photograph of the man she'd be meeting today. Of course, she looked away.

"I don't think I can live without-" She whispered under her breath.

"You won't have to." I said. I hoped.

Soon enough we were landing on the front lawn of Kuscovo Palace. It was this pink palace with a garden and a few buildings dotting the expanse inside the forest surrounding it. Despite making you feel as if you're in a country estate, the palace was smack in the middle of Moscow.

When I was younger, after Lizaveta convinced her grandfather to grant me citizenship, we spent our first winter at Kuscovo. The king had a ball inside the palace while Lizaveta and I hid in a small cottage surrounded by trees on the main house's left-side field.

I cried as the new year's fireworks lit the sky with light, all I could remember were the shells dropping from hundreds of feet to kill everyone I knew.

Lesya wrapped her arms around me the entire night and never let go. It was only in the morning, when I saw her wet pillow that I realized she was crying too.

"Kuscovo..." She whispered. "I think it's big enough for her to hunt, right?"

I nodded. It was three hundred hectares. "I chose it since we can have a better perimeter and you can walk in the gardens with the Antarctican, maybe he'll like that."

"We'll go to the woods."

"But Jazzy's hunting."

"She won't hurt me."

"But the Antarctican..." She smiled and I shut up. "So, we leave his security detail inside the main house?" I checked the seven guards he brought. "They probably won't allow that."

She cupped Jazzy's face with both hands and kissed her nose. "No eating people." Then she looked at me. "She won't eat them."

Although I had apprehensions, the tiger always did as she said under every circumstance with human-like understanding. "Okay. So... I'll be controlling the bot, and I'll also be tracking Jazzy while she hunts. I'll make sure to direct her somewhere far from where you're at."

Lizaveta simply nodded.

I opened the door for her, and there he was, pretty boy number two.

First thing I noticed was that his eyes were almost the same color as the whites - the lightest blue green I've seen a human have. Unnerving.

The second thing I noticed was that he was dressed like me. Same pants, same white button-up under a knit vest, identical overcoat, and the shoes were exactly the same- same brand even. Lesya noticed it too, turning back to look at me then back at him.

Huh.

"At least Tino had the decency to be himself." She whispered to me, as I started to realize the date would be an utter failure.

Before they could say their greetings, I went to the tent set up for Jazzy's hunting. The tiger followed me there, but I kept her outside.

"Good morning!" I told everyone. "We'll be having how many?"

"Three stags." The man at the controls told me. "The people at the lab improved their muscle density but the robotics team said they used the old skeletons..."

"The skeletons are still functional?" The last time we were in China, Jazzy destroyed them. Lesya insisted on robots with lab-grown flesh harvested from stem cells to be hunted by jazzy instead of real animals. Lesya insisted on eating the same type of meat too.

Jazzy needed the hunting, but she didn't need to kill... so this was the compromise, robots with synthetic flesh.

"Yeah, they fixed them."

I saw the trackers on the screen- saw Jazzy make her way into the dense wood that covered the estate. One man took the controls of one stag, I took the other, while the woman to my right directed the one left.

Bets started exchanging hands. Who would stay alive the longest?

As expected, the security detail chose to stay inside the palace, maybe to give the first son some privacy, maybe in fear of Jazzy. Lesya and pretty boy number two, Theo Argentine Velez, were walking through the gardens at a good pace.

Jazzy took down one of the stags, and the man threw down his controller, pissed that he got eliminated first. That was a hundred denari for me.

The people in the tent laughed as Jazzy took to eating the robot's carcass. Everything seemed to be going well until I noticed the dots of Lizaveta and PB 2 stop a few meters into the woods. They were exactly two feet apart- the kind of distance Lesya made between her and her opponent before she'd tackle them to the ground.

"Get me eyes on the empress." I said to the drone guy, the hair on my neck standing.

And then out of nowhere, a deafening roar pierced the silence of the estate. With one look, I knew Jazzy was already headed towards Lesya, and within a split second I was running too.