If the circumstances aligned perfectly, being a personal guard was a lot like courting. 

Princess Morrow could expect every appointment she had to end with Devesh Odrasi waiting outside of the room for her like a beau with flowers in hand waiting for their partner to leave work.

The two of them would spend countless hours walking across the palace together and when the princess left the grounds, Dev was there to open the carriage door for her and offer a hand to steady her. Princess Morrow was, of course, used to this behavior from Tove, but every one of Dev's gestures was branded in a distinctly... romantic way.

Dev flustered the princess to no end, but as any distinguished royal would attest, the princess had no intention of showing it. She would continue to writhe with glee in the silent gaps of her lessons while her professors thought she was working.

The princess' lessons were lax that first day back in the city due to the impending full moon. Most people spent the eve of the full moon with family, abstaining from meat and dairy, and cleaning. As with most households, golden bells were strung above the doors so newcomers were heard, and werewolves were fended off.

Both Dev and Princess Morrow had this knowledge engrained in them from an early age. Princess Morrow grew up under rituals disguised as games, as most children were. Dev, being without family to properly teach her, learned through observation.

As lunar metals like silver enhanced the effects of lycanthrope, solar metals like gold hindered them. The Emperor embarked on his travels all those years ago not only the hunt for wolves, but also gold. It was also for this reason that Dev's armor was embellished with gold, her shield lined with gold, and her sword was dipped in gold.

Dev walked a step behind Princess Morrow on the way across the modest campus where the princess' studies took place. The House of Scholars wasn't far from the palace, and was attended by the children of other courtiers and politicians. Even with this rich history and famous clientele, the princess still stood out.

Dev attributed it partially to her princess' appearance. She often wore a studded, gold-threaded net over her hair that glittered against the black, and in the sun of the central courtyard, she glowed amidst its halo.

Clusters of the princess' peers chatted in the shadows of the pergolas. Everyone passed in groups, coupled up, or at the very least, in pairs of three. It was the day of the full moon, and only the second day Dev had witnessed Princess Morrow's academic life in person.

Dev came to walk beside her despite the onlookers. The princess spared her a brief glance before Dev asked, "I've noticed you don't talk to many of the other students."

Princess Morrow took a deep breath, her gaze anywhere but Dev's. Tove was always subtly and silently aware of how othered the princess felt. Her distant, secondary guards weren't seen or heard close enough to the princess to voice their opinions.

"I learned early on that my peers only care about me in relation to my parents," she explained. "So I shut them out when I was younger. We all grew up together, and they remember every socially embarrassing thing a princess does as a child. It's better this way."

Perhaps it was better, and the reassurance in Princess Morrow's voice was sincere enough to convince Dev.

Dev imagined what it would feel like if her brothers and sisters in the knighthood remembered her as a child eating insects and discovering what foods in the wild she was allergic to by trial and error.

"I see. I recognize some of them from your father's birthday party."

The princess shut her eyes and resisted the urge to laugh. "It wasn't a birthday party. Birthday parties are for children."

"I'm appalled that you would disrespect birthday parties like this, princess."

"You—! I'm astounded that you hold birthday parties in such high regard!" she said, bordering on a laugh. She continued walking, leaving Dev to follow after. "In my opinion, they're excessive. There's a far better use of both time and money than on an event like that."

As Dev was taught, sometimes it was better to keep her mouth shut than to needlessly argue. She and the princess grew up on polar opposites of society, and Dev didn't know what it was like to have a birthday party every year. The princess was merely desensitized by the constant affirmations of gratitude from her parents for being alive. She didn't know what childhood had been like for an orphan like Dev, and how Dev had forgotten her birthday as a child with no one to remind her of it.

Dev suspected she was born in the summer, when the cicadas were at their loudest in the muggy heat. It was an unknown factor of her existence she would never know the answer to, and this was the truth.

By the end of Princess Morrow's last lesson, which ended early that day, the courtyard had cleared out and the campus was silent. Their footsteps clicked in discord across the stone tiles; Princess Morrow with her short, quick trot and Dev with her long, languid strides. The carriage was waiting for them, as was the additional detail the Emperor assigned for the full moon.

As Dev opened the door for her, she asked, "Could we pick up a new book on the way back?"

Even if Dev wanted to say yes, she knew the doors would ultimately be locked. "Stores close at noon today, princess," she said.

The princess fidgeted a moment on the carriage step, glancing up at the sky. Above them, the clouds were drawing in. Ages ago, it was believed that clouds on a full moon were good luck, but it was now proved to have no affect. The moon, even filtered through the clouds, would impact the beasts all the same.

Dev offered her hand, thinking to herself how lucky she was to know what it felt like to have the princess press down on her palm with her dainty fingers as she lifted up to the carriage seat and settled in. Only then did the princess relax her grip and let her fingers slide off Dev's leather gloves.

"Thank you, Devesh," Princess Morrow said.

Dev gave a curt bow and said, "Anything for you, princess."

The moment they returned to the palace, Princess Morrow skipped past the royal dining room where her parents were having one last festive meal with a handful of select courtiers. Dev nearly questioned the maneuver—only to recall from Tove that the princess often skipped meals the night of a full moon.

Princess Morrow strode along, swift and with purpose until the moment they arrived at her quarters. Dev opened her mouth to ask a question, maybe, or promise to be right where the princess left her, but the door shut in her face before a word could escape.

Dev, only mildly disappointed, turned away and resumed her post beside the door.

A second later, the door opened again, and Princess Morrow's head popped out, long hair swishing forward. "Oh, Devesh?"

Startled, Dev said, "Princess?"

For a moment, Princess Morrow regretted popping back in to speak. She nearly apologized for the interruption, too, but in the end, powered through. "Could you... Have you heard anything from Tove, by chance?"

Dev blinked. She hadn't separated from Princess Morrow's side since the nightshift, but by then Tove was back in a medically induced slumber again. "Not especially. Would you like me to investigate?"

"Ah, no. Thank you. I'd just like to visit her before we leave," she said, and Dev agreed to it.

There was a cellar beneath the palace where the imperial family spent the full moon. Often times, only the princess and the Empress stayed underground, along with other courtiers with access to the cellar chambers. Every month, the princess and Tove were locked in one such chamber before the Emperor and his guards resumed full moon festivities above the surface, which generally involved bonfires on each of the city watch towers and a rambunctious night watch in the event that wolves veered too closely to the walls.

Wolves were best extinguished by fire, when proximity allowed it. Too close, however, warranted a golden bullet or a golden sword through the skull.

Dev tightened her grip on the pommel of her sword as she waited for the princess. The cellars were calm on the full moon, so she was assured that no wolves would make it so far deep into the imperial city. It would just be Dev and Princess Morrow. Alone. In a room together.

All night.

Dev's grip on her sword tightened all the more. The night couldn't come soon enough!

The door to Princess Morrow's room opened and was followed by the princess's soft-soled shoes padding over the threshold. They were accompanied by the princess' lady-in-waiting.

"Zoyla, this is my temporary guard Devesh. Devesh, this is Zoyla," the princess said.

The older woman stooped into a bow, saying, "Nice to meet you, sir."

Zoyla wasn't a stranger to Dev the way Dev was just another knight to Zoyla. As a primary participant in the princess' court, Zoyla's official title was lady-in-waiting. She was attentive and skilled in the delicate art of orchestrating Princess Morrow's schedule.

The court lady's temper, however, was known primarily by soldiers who frequented the grounds and happened to be caught goofing off. She would show her irritation with a snap of her finger that lit a literal fire under their asses.

Suffice to say, Dev had no plans to be on the bad side of her princess' personal sorceress.

Dev gave a deep nod. "You as well."

"Zoyla will be joining us tonight," the princess said.

Dev's grip on her sword all but disappeared. She stood, stunned, as Princess Morrow and Zoyla walked ahead, speaking in low tones about this or that which Dev couldn't focus on beyond her own crashing demise.

As Dev's hypothetical romantic getaway dissolved into ash, the trio commenced a visit to the infirmary where, by some miracle, Tove was awake and merely under the influence of a drug Dev had only ever experienced once and never wished to experience again. While the pain was momentarily banished, it promised to come back full force once Tove's metabolism burned away the effects.

Tove was there on the cot, leg suspended above the blankets, and head tipped to the side against a crooked, dopey grin. It was hilariously wholesome of Tove to be smiling at a time like this.

"Princess...!" she preened as she was then surrounded on all sides by Princess Morrow, Zoyla, and Dev. In the princess' presence, everyone else may as well be chopped liver.

"Good to see that you're awake," Princess Morrow said, hands clasped together over her stomach. Her thumb fidgeted over her knuckles.

Tove's crooked grin was slanted ever so slightly by the bruise swelling on her right cheek. "Told you it'd take more than that to kill me."

The princess's taunt concern twisted her brow into a scowl then. "Don't push it. I'm surprised the shock didn't do you in back at the camp."

"Or me when you returned. Aye!" Zoyla cried, throwing her hands up over her head. She stepped around the princess to yank Tove by the ear and give her a shake. Tove uttered a squeak of protest as Zoyla seethed, "I could kill you for being so reckless!"

"Careful! I might have a concussion, you know!"

"Might? I'll make it a fact—"

"Zoyla, please—!"

"Though, to be fair," Dev offered, halting the scene in which the spritely older woman had her hands on Tove's throat while Princess Morrow attempted to pry herself between them. All three sets of eyes blinked in Dev's direction, who was rendered momentarily speechless by the attention. She cleared her throat.

"I wouldn't call Tove reckless," she went on with a nervous wave of her hand. "No one saw the second wolf until it was on Tove. If anything, it was the scouts' faults, and mine for not protecting her."

"That's right," the princess said, quickly, and while Zoyla relented ever so slightly, Tove was given the space to breathe again.

"Like I needed your help, you oaf," Tove said with a smug, yet hoarse, diabolical laugh.

The princess separated Zoyla and Tove with both arms out, now fully between them. Zoyla jerked her hand in the direction of Tove's thoroughly mangled leg and said, "You've gone and maimed yourself! You're lucky you weren't off on your own."

Tove being unhinged wasn't a side effect of the medication, but rather proof that she would pull through. It was a relief to all parties that day.

"Devesh?" the princess asked, which was immediately answered by Dev's needle-sharp attention.

"Yes, princess?"

The princess' smile could melt Dev's heart into a puddle—or perhaps that was Zoyla, watching them with her heated, fiery eyes.

"Could you give us some privacy, for a moment?" the princess asked.

Dev hesitated to bow and consent. She was required to follow the princess' orders, of course, but they were closing in on the full moon. The lockdown was due to start at any moment.

Dev was impatient to get them moving to the cellars, despite knowing that everything she anticipated from that night was now under Zoyla's watchful, judgmental eyes that could set Dev's bones into a pyre at a moment's notice.

"We will be fine, Devesh," Princess Morrow insisted with a reassuring smile.

Dev spared a look at Zoyla, whose posture had resumed its poised and perfect alignment. She was sharp at all her corners, with her arms folded, hands pressed to her biceps. Dev became nothing more than a dog detested by the figurehead of the house.

"I'll be just outside, princess," she reassured, and backed away toward the exit.

Frosted glass, which lined the infirmary doors, was an optimal deterrent of accidental prying eyes. Purposeful prying eyes, of which Dev possessed, could lean within a centimeter of the glass and capture a warped visual of the princess' back turned to the door while Zoyla and Tove listened closely to what Dev could only describe as incomprehensible gibberish.

Surely Dev knew the princess, but not well enough to glean when the princess was nervous, or even what she was nervous about. It was ingrained in her rude silences as far back as the hunt, and how early she went to bed in the nights that followed. One would think Princess Morrow cared deeply for her beauty sleep, but the shadows under her eyes said otherwise.

And now she was expected to spend the full moon with the object of Princess Morrow's sole, inexperienced attraction.

Princess Morrow bit into the hollow of her cheek as the panic dug its heels into everything else in her life that loomed over the infirmary. Despite every thread tying her life into knots, she had accepted the brilliant, shining gold thread as it was: her affections for Devesh Cormaic (Odrasi to us). Until now, she could manage to pine from a distance knowing that nothing would become of it.

Dev was too morally sound to risk sullying her reputation with the Emperor. The thought of Dev publicly proclaiming her intent to court Princess Morrow was and always would be a figment of both of their dreams.

But even isolated, under the full moon, Princess Morrow couldn't risk being alone with Dev. As tempting as it was, she would be an idiot to let herself be carried away by her juvenile feelings.

"You'll have to..." Tove started with a deep sigh that seemed to stall half-empty. She let it out with a shake of her head. "You'll have to tell him the truth. Honestly."

"I don't see why this even needs to happen," Zoyla said. "It's too much of a risk, and your parents would understand if we assigned Sir Cormaic a post outside the cellar."

Princess Morrow paced away from them, her skirts swishing in the gridded, evening sunlight through the windowpane. Her nails bit into the backs of her palms, sharp enough to sting. "Devesh won't..."

"He'll understand," Tove said, and when both the princess and her lady-in-waiting turned incredulous stares onto her, Tove shrugged. "Maybe. I mean, I'm not at liberty to say."

Zoyla put a firm yet reassuring hand on the princess' shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "Sooner, then. So you can relax knowing all this is behind you."

Perhaps after this night, she and Dev would become closer. Friends, even, if nothing else.

She glanced back at the door where Dev's shadow leaned away into a blurry, dark blob. Dev put her back to the wall out of view, the metal at her shoulder blades clanking into the stone. On the other side of the door, Princess Morrow hesitated to leave the comfort of this trio.

"Who knows? Maybe we'll be a quartet tomorrow morning," Tove offered from the cot.

"You'll have to bite me to make me sing," Zoyla teased back, which earned her a raspberry from Tove.

Princess Morrow sighed, tersely, as she reached for the door handle. She caught Zoyla's eye before they could get much further. "Just do me a favor, please, and follow my lead."