A woman opened the door to her home, exhausted by her long day, and was unsurprised—yet mildly irritated—to find the halls illuminated with the lights her daughters left on and the windows left open. She tired of reminding them, and let it go. Despite the tiresome stress, her day’s work went well, and she found herself gladly in the comforts of her own home hours sooner than was usually expected. She could pretend the looming celebrations to be days away, and that her duties as lord could be postponed for another hour or so.

She removed her sword belt by the door, a habit obtained years ago from her early motherhood. Struggling with the leather straps of her heavy breastplate, she huffed her aging dark hair from hazel, smile-wrinkled eyes. Both items of work she placed on their rack, a full-sized bamboo figurine beset with the rest of the armor bodice, in the large entry-way. As a last measure of comfort, she pushed off the steel plated boots that trapped her feet daily. Relieved from the weight, she sank into the cushioned couch and childishly wrapped blankets around herself, amusing herself with the tussling birds outside.

As much as she would have liked to nap there, the lord forced herself to rise when the creatures ended their bickering and began furthering their species. In the kitchen, she found a salad that had been prepared, but not eaten, and she shrugged, picking a lettuce leaf from the bowl. The plant, still chilled from its time in the ice box, exploded with flavor on her tongue. She spat it out, finding the taste too bitter for her liking.

A clatter sounded from the floor above, and the woman rolled her eyes. Her daughters always found an excuse to bicker, though the arguments rarely became violent. She ascended the staircase to her daughter’s room, adorned in pink from wall to wall. A hairbrush lay abandoned on the floor by the far wall while her daughter struggled with her hair at the vanity. The style, a difficult pattern for the deftest of fingers, captured the fingers of the girl’s right hand. This scenario struck the mother as odd. On a normal occasion, her youngest daughter would help the older sister with these things.

Without drawing the attention of her daughter, the woman left the doorway and peered down the hall to the other room. Perhaps her daughters were fighting—but, no, the room was empty. Her other daughter could not be found.

“Kris,” she said finally, drawing the girl’s focus away from her mirror. “Where is Natilia?”

The girl’s face fell further into a scowl, and she twisted back to the mirror. “Out with friends. She abandoned me here to fend for myself, going off to play swords with the village boys. Can you believe it, Mother?”

The lord Aphmau bit her tongue against the usual sarcasm she used with her captains. She could believe it, because even she knew the vanity of her older—and temper of her younger—daughter. Natilia had always been more boyish than Kris, often preferring swords over eyeliner, but she had her moments of dress-up now and then. Natilia was often asked, if not expected, to arrange her sister’s hair or make-up in some appeasing mask.

Kris glanced at her mother through the mirror, and Aphmau realized she expected sympathy. She quickly schooled her features, attempting a nonchalant motherly tease. “What, did you want to inform her of your latest conquests?”

As expected, the young heiress’s face flushed deep red as she twisted in her chair. “Mother!”

Aphmau couldn’t stop the jubilant laugh from escaping her lips. “What?” She demanded. “I’m married, dear. I know all about this stuff.”

Kris sniffed. “Yeah, but you married Dad. It’s not the same.”

Aphmau’s eyebrows rose as she came to sit with her daughter. “And what is that supposed to mean? Are you saying your father is unattractive?”

“Yes. Unbelievably so, Mother.”

This time, it was Aphmau’s turn for her cheeks to redden. “First off, I will have you know that your father was very attractive in our prime. All the girls simply gushed over him.”

Kris gave her mother a single disbelieving look.

“You don’t believe me?”

A slight shake of the head.

Aphmau stomped her foot. “Fine, then. Be like that. I won’t go on to describe abs and scars and everything else—.”

“Dad had abs?! Since when?!”

“Ha! You do care.”

“My Irene, my parents are old.”

“Ha—EXCUSE ME?! What was that now?”

“Have you seen the amethyst earring set anywhere? Natilia was supposed to leave them for me before she left.”

Despite the irritation at the heiress’s earlier comments, Aphmau fell for the distracting change of topic. “Amethyst? Why would she leave those for you? Wouldn’t she want to wear them herself?”

Kris shrugged. “I asked her to. Why wouldn’t she?”

Aphmau bit back a lecture of her daughter’s way of thinking, instead dismissing herself under the pretense of preparing for the party. Kris’s behavior bordered on unusually snappish, and Aphmau found herself growing worried. Again, she checked Natilia’s bedroom, but still found no sign of her.

Aphmau realized with a start that there was nearly no sign of anything. Though the Lycan family only visited this vacation home on their infrequent trips to Phoenix Drop, the room felt uncharacteristically bare, devoid of any personality. After decades of being Lord, the constant target of assassins and the like from hostile neighbors, Aphmau had learned that her incessant paranoia was not always a bad thing. On a whim, she searched the room.

She found nothing. No trace that her daughter had ever lived there. No trace that her daughter had ever existed.

A growing layer of dread settled deep in her stomach.

Chiding herself over what was probably nothing, she strode hesitantly back through the halls, turning off the lights as she went, making her way to her study at the back of the house. The room was nearly an exact replica of the one in her house in the Capitol. She used the room mainly for her busy work, and often enjoyed signing paperwork at the great mahogany desk amidst her great collection of books, and a window that overlooked the calm blue sea. In the back corner she kept a two-way radio, a system she used to communicate with her captains in a way so as not to arouse suspicion. Her hand hovered over this system for a moment—two—until she swallowed the feeling that she was being childish and set the hand dial to a single specific captain.

“Garroth?”

The was a heartbeat’s pause before he answered on the other end. “Yes, Lady Aphmau?”

“This is probably nothing, but—.”

“My lady, it is obviously not ‘nothing’ if you feel inclined to call.”

Choking on her words, Aphmau thought of several excuses to dismiss herself. To dismiss her motherly paranoia. She forced herself to strangle these thoughts. “Have you seen Natilia, lately?”

The sound of his surprise was audible over the line. “The little lady? No, my lady, I haven’t seen her. She usually isn’t the type to cause much trouble. Is something the matter?”

“Again, it’s probably nothing. Kris is just unusually snappy today and I can’t seem to find her.”

He laughed. “That’s because you have too many children.”

“You’re probably right,” she admitted, “but you can’t un-adopt children, even those that have grown-up.”

He hesitated. “Listen, Dante, Laurance, Travis and I are preparing to leave for Bright Port, but if you’d like me to stay and help you search, I—.”

“N-no, no!” She said quickly, remembering suddenly the shipments she herself had appointed him to oversee. She felt guilty for interrupting his preparations. He didn’t need her silly problems on his mind. “No, that’s alright, Garroth.”

“You’re sure?”

She took a reassuring breath. “Yes, I’m sure.” She said. “I have Aaron to help me with these things. I’m sorry.”

He chuckled. “Wow. Go Aaron. Point for Aaron. Aaron is totally better than Garroth.”

“Watch yourself, Ro’Maeve,” she chided. “You’ll get an update when you stop being so sassy.”

Aphmau cut off the signal before he could respond, pushing her hands through her hair. Too frenetic to sit idly by, she stood and walked to the front door, snatching the heavy bodice off the rack as if it weighed no more than a hairbrush, pushing her feet back into the metal work boots, and sliding the sheathed sword back into its holster at her belt. She lugged the breastplate behind her, too preoccupied to put it on. A guard stood at the end of her drive, likely only passing by, but Aphmau called out to him.

“Lieutenant Commander Liochant!”

He turned at the sound of his name and smiled. “Having problems?” He teased, seeing her disheveled appearance.

She tried to laugh it off. “Walk with me.”

“Gladly, my lady.”

He waited for her to catch up, discreetly offering her a comb. She took it in her hands gingerly, as if it were a foreign object. “Is this how you keep that awful haircut in fashion?” She asked.

“Har, har,” he grumbled, slowing long enough to allow her to buckle the breastplate around herself. “You humor yourself too much.”

“It is a blessing to find humor in our line of work.”

“On that, I can agree.”

Liochant was still young, a mere teenager when he had joined the Dragon Ward seventeen years prior after rising rapidly through the ranks of Baton Academy. Though, formally, he served General Katelyn Valcrum, he maintained a permanent station among Lord Aphmau’s personal guard. Aphmau often suspected that Katelyn allowed him to keep that position to ensure Aphmau wouldn’t do anything stupidly foolish or dangerous. He did his best, but he often did not manage to succeed with this mission.

With insistent ochre eyes, tousled hazelnut curls, and permanently suntanned skin, Liochant had no problems at all in the ladies’ department, and to Aphmau’s knowledge, happened to be secretly engaged. He was naturally polite, and carried with him an incredibly meek air, so at odds with his skill in a fight.

Over the years, he’d become one of Aphmau’s most trusted men. Trust had been hard for him to earn, especially from those like Captain Garroth. Liochant had been one of the first Tulian immigrants when the first brittle peace treaty was enacted. He’d stayed in Phoenix Drop to fight against his former kingdom when the treaty was rescinded only two years later.

“I take it something is wrong, Lady Aphmau?” He said suddenly as they reached the village at the end of the path. He faced her only with his eyes, likely as to not arouse suspicion from the townsfolk. The bustle of the city covered their words.

“Not particularly,” she lied. “Natilia is somewhere in town, and I suspect sparring with any random sort.”

Liochant chuckled. “It is not uncommon for people to come looking for the little lady for a chance at victory. She wins quite a bit betting on her own success at fights like those.”

This brought Aphmau up short. “My daughter is betting on fights?”

Liochant looked at her curiously. “You did not know?”

“I’ve never had any knowledge of this. I thought she spent her free-time at the grounds of the Academy, sparring with students.”

“They’d be mad to fight on Academy grounds,” Liochant muttered. “Lady Aphmau, the use of steel is forbidden at the school.”

Again, she paused. “They fight with steel? They must be mad—she’s fifteen. She could get hurt.”
“I’ve never seen her with any sort of injury.”

“They surely can’t be fighting in town. I surely would have been informed of this.”

“I only ever see the losers, limping away bruised.”

“Do you suspect that’s what she’s doing now?”

“Anything is possible, I suppose.”

“Mother of Irene. Who else do you suppose knows of this?”

Liochant caught himself about to shrug. They both looked at each other with the same irritating thought. “Ro’Maeve.”
 
“You’re kidding me…” Aphmau growled under her breath nearly an hour later, standing on the threshold of the Ro’Maeve’s Phoenix Drop estate with Liochant, speaking to the Lady Barbara Ro’Maeve.

The Ro’Maeve’s had two children; a son and a younger daughter. Barbara was mother to neither, and it was no secret that she absolutely loathed the children; just as it was no secret that there was no love in the marriage between her and Captain Garroth. Aphmau was never exactly sure why Garroth had married the woman, though she suspected it may have been only an obligation of gratitude. The previous Lady Ro’Maeve had passed from an illness contracted in Tu’la. Barbara had been a physician at the apothecary she was sent to, the one tasked with nursing the Lady back to health. By the time news reached the Capitol and Garroth was able to make it across the two continents, it was too late. Transportation was arranged for both Barbra and the deceased Lady within the week. They were married within the year.

“I’m not,” Barbara was replying, her voice layered with thinly veiled disgust. “He’s lucky that Garroth is leaving, or he’d never be this disrespectful. I specifically instructed him not to leave the house until the celebration, and he openly and obscenely gestured at me before walking out the door. Honestly, I hope something tragic happens to force the boy back into reality.”

She said all of this as if Aphmau were to be responsible for Jacob Ro’Maeve’s punishment. Aphmau resisted gesturing at the woman herself.

“He’s been much too enamored by the idea of girls lately,” she continued. “He spends more than too many hours with them daily, and I have no clue what he does with them. It’s all beyond me—they all must be quite stupid. If—.”

“So, you have no idea where he is?” Aphmau stopped the woman, unable to listen to another word; one of these girls Barbara so easily spat upon was Aphmau’s own daughter, and Aphmau briefly wondered if she knew that.

“Not the faintest clue. After today, that little brat is officially Garroth’s problem. I—.”

Aphmau twisted from the doorway, letting Barbara continue for as long as the woman pleased. The paranoia that had plagued her earlier returned at full force, twisting her stomach into another knot of dread.

Jacob Ro’Maeve had not been home. After hours of enquiring, Aphmau confirmed her other suspicions to be true as well.

Dimitri Ron Vonsenberg was not at the Scarlato household.

Kimberly Valcrum was not at the Valcrum residency, nor at the Academy where her schooling was held.

Luca and the Lupine twins were not at the Lupine Farm, nor the apothecary their mother ran, or the market stall their father owned.

These six were at the core of Natilia’s friend group. None of them were in town. Which only served to beg the question; if not in town, where were they? Coincidence? Aphmau thought not.

When she reached home, Aphmau didn’t bother with the removal of her armor. She sent Liochant to inform the barracks of a possible emergency and ran immediately back to the study. Her radio calls grew steadily more frantic as her soldiers confirmed that no one had seen any of the seven since before noon earlier that day. Now the sun had begun its sink below the horizon; at this time of year, that left more than seven hours since the last time they’d been seen.

She hurled a dagger suddenly across the room, where it imbedded in the bare south wall above the desk. Frustration often pushed Aphmau to this point. She often threw things to relieve her stress, though they were rarely as sharp or hazardous as knives.

On her way to retrieve the knife, she passed the desk. While it was uncommon for her to merely pass by this main point of her work, she realized she hadn’t taken the time today to actually look at it. The surface was littered with reports, new and old, and a single folded slip of paper.

The knot of dread finally burst. Ransom, Aphmau thought.
Her hands shaking, she slowly reached for the parchment. She took her time opening it, unfolding the edges with deliberate care, her heart high in her throat.

Mother, it read in a familiar looping, elegant scrawl.
        I know, I promised—but I couldn’t stand another moment. I know you never believed me, but please, trust me now. You know what I’m doing, just not where I am. Please, Mother, I beg of you, don’t tell Father. You know how he is; he’ll try to stop us. I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to worry about me, or any of them. We’re all together, we’re all looking out for each other, and I promise we’re all safe. Hide this note, please; if Dad finds it and comes after us, he’ll only put himself at risk. I’ll send soon, I promise, but it won’t be what you’d expect.
        I love you, Mom. A lot. Give Dad a hug for me, okay? I’m really going to miss you both, but we’ll see each other soon.
--Natilia Skylar Lycan (Your loving daughter.)

Aphmau read through the note again, then a third time, waiting for the message to sink in. Where was the ransom? Where were the demands? But no, this was much worse. She refolded the note and pushed it urgently between two books on politics her husband and remaining children would never read.

Natilia had come to her months ago, warning her this would happen, and she’d ignored it. Now her daughter had run away with half a dozen of the Academy’s best soldiers. Why? Aphmau wanted to know. Hands clasped in her lap, she turned to the window and begged for her answers from Lady Irene. Why would she pick now? Why does she want to run away?

Even as she begged the silent orange skies, she knew these weren’t the real questions plaguing her fears. Why does Natilia yearn to fight so badly?