After a painstaking night of not sleeping and obsessing over her performance in the final trial, the sun rose, lighting up the infirmary and waking Gwen. She pushed herself off the bed with her good arm and winced at the pain in her head. She put on a brave face before trudging towards the doors, hoping to avoid the nurse ordering her back to bed.

"Where do you think you're going?" a strict voice asked.

Gwen turned around guiltily, meeting the reproachful eyes of the nurse.

"You said I could leave in the morning," she muttered tentatively. "I just wanted to go find someone to tell me how I placed in the trials."

Nurse Abigail ran her hands through her wispy white hair and rolled her eyes.

"I suppose there's nothing I can say to convince you to rest for a couple more hours?"

Gwen shook her head and shot the kind nurse a rueful grin before darting out the doors towards the cafeteria.

Gwen hurried down the now familiar halls, keeping an eye out for Rowan or Xander. When she got to the cafeteria, she barely registered her growling stomach, noticing with surprise that Rowan and Xander were sitting across from each other at a table in the back.

Gwen hurried over to the two men glaring at each other, muttering back and forth and hesitated for a second, before sliding onto the bench next to Xander.

"You're okay!" Xander exclaimed, shooting her a dazzling smile. Gwen laughed at his enthusiasm.

"Of course I'm okay. You saw me last night and I was perfectly fine."

Rowan's head whipped towards her, anger flashing through his eyes.

"Last night?" he asked in a low voice, eyes narrowed. Gwen sighed, catching the smirk on Xander's face.

"Never mind, now can either of you please tell me what happened with the trials? I've been tearing my hair out over this. You know this is my whole life we're talking about here."

Xander opened his mouth quickly to answer her but was cut off by Rowan.

"You made it!" he exclaimed, clearly wanted to be the one to break the good news to her.

Gwen jumped to her feet, a huge smile blossoming on her face. She felt a lightness in her heart that she hadn't felt since she was a child.

"Are you serious?" she yelled, hugging Rowan, who had also jumped to his feet, tightly.

"Yeah," he said chuckling. "I wouldn't joke about that. I know how much it means to you."

"So what happens now?" she asked, gesturing to her wrapped up arm.

"Well usually the new guards begin training right away, and at the end of training everyone is ranked based on your rank in the trials and training. You are then assigned a position of castle guard, city guard or village guard. But since you're injured, you'll take the month off before beginning your training," Rowan explained.

Gwen frowned.

"If I starting her training a month after everyone else, how will I be able to keep up and be ranked with all the other guards?"

Rowan hesitated, looking over to Xander for reassurance.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," he said quickly. "I know you like doing things yourself, but I thought with the circumstances you could use a little help."

"What did you do?" she glared at him.

"I spoke to my father and asked if you could be a castle guard. I went through the same training as the guards myself, and so did Xander. He said if we were to catch you up on your training with the other guards before the final assessment and you ranked in the top half he would give you a place on the castle guard."

Gwen went over the idea in her head. Traditionally, you had to rank much higher than the top half to make castle guard. It wasn't as exclusive as the Elite Guard, but the royal family only took the best guards to look out for their personal safety. She sighed. Her family had always been very strict on not accepting charity from people. It was hard to get over her pride and accept help from someone like Rowan, but it seemed like her only option.

"Fine," she said, laughing to herself at the surprised faces of the two men in front of her.

They had obviously expected her to put up more of a fight.

"But I'm not waiting a month to start training."

"You're injured!" Rowan protested. "You can't start training like this."

Gwen scoffed. "You can't tell me what to do."

Rowan narrowed his eyes at her. "Oh can't I?"

She narrowed her eyes right back at him, not caving to his sense of power. "I'd like to see you try."

Rowan huffed out an exasperated breath, "Why do you always have to act so childish? You just can't let my life be easy for once can you?"

Gwen took a step back, astonished. "You think your life is hard?" She looked around the fancy cafeteria in disbelief. "Really?"

His hands curled into fists at his side. "Just because I grew up in a castle does not mean I've had an easy life. You have no idea what it's like being the 'perfect prince' all the time. One mistake and everyone thinks I'm unfit for the throne. You don't have to deal with the pressure of knowing the fate of the entire kingdom will be in your hands some day. You just sit around all day whining about how hard everything is for you and you don't do anything about it!" Rowan spun around and marched out of the cafeteria, not looking back at her or Xander.

The rest of the guards in the room were all staring at their table, most in disbelief or surprise, and some just flat out angry. Gwen turned to Xander helplessly, and was surprised to see him staring at her with some annoyance.

"What, you agree with him? You think I can't do this?" she asked, anger rising in her chest again.

"Well he's not wrong about you making things difficult. Obviously we both care about you and don't want to see you hurt. We've both been through the training and know how hard it is. While I don't necessarily like him, I really think you should wait a while," Xander said slowly, carefully thinking over his words before he spoke them.

Gwen grabbed her hair in frustration and shot a scathing look at Xander. She spun on her heel and stormed out of the cafeteria towards the training room.

"Wait!" he called, hurrying after her. "You can't go on your own."

Gwen laughed sharply, "You have got to be kidding me," she said, before taking off down the hall.

She jogged for a while; glancing back to make sure he wasn't still behind her before slowing to a walk.

She walked for a while, not noticing much of the commotion going on around her. She was still seething over Rowan and Xander when she started to notice the maids and guards acting strangely. The maids seemed to be hurrying around more frantically than usual, and an increasing number of guards started passing her, running the direction she was going.

Gwen picked up her pace again, following the guards down the hall, towards the main entrance of the castle. She heard yelling up ahead, and when she emerged into the large hall with the huge double doors wide open she came to a dead halt.

Usually it wouldn't have been a big deal that people were coming in the doors. The guards who were stationed at the gates that were a hundred yards ahead of the doors allowed every person who came into the castle in. There was always a large group stationed there to keep out unwanted visitors.

What made this case especially alarming was that the gates were open as well, and the people pouring into the castle were heavily armed with bows and swords, dressed all in black.

Gwen watched as the first guards reached the scene, one yelling loudly, "Rebel attack! Rebel attack!"

One by one a well-placed arrow shot down the guards rushing towards the rebels. They crumpled to the ground one after the other.

"Rebel attack!" the guard was still yelling, until he too was shot cleanly through his throat.

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I am so sorry this took me almost a month to put up. I've been super busy with school and haven't been able to find the time to write it. I can't believe this story is almost at 2000 reads, that is so crazy to me. Please please keep voting and commenting if you like it. Comments are really one of the main reasons I've gotten as far as I have with this story.

xoxo,

 Emma