Hi!

Thank you for all the support you showed last updates when I asked what you thought of the pace.

Your opinions were all helpful, and they helped me feel like I was indeed going in the right direction :)

Even those who had something to say that could be a bit negative managed to say so in a rather nice way, so that was also appreciated. I really have the best readers on Wattpad;)

Also, I'm sorry I don't have the time to personally answer all of your comments, but I want you to know I still read all of them and they are each highly appreciated!

Enjoy this chapter!

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Chapter 27

I was sleeping soundly in my hammock, with Autumn next to me in another one we had set up just before going to bed, when I was woken up by a shrill, incessant sound.

I sat up groggily, trying to make sense of what was happening, but Autumn was instantly up and alert.

"Is that the fire alarm?"

I shrugged, even though she couldn't see me in the gloom.

"How should I know?" I muttered. "Kind of stupid to do a fire drill in the middle of the night, if you ask me."

"Earth to Hailey, you can catch up on your sleep later, but I highly doubt this is only a drill. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the real deal, so get up and move," she said, jumping out of her hammock.

With a yawn, I stumbled out of my hammock and almost walked into Autumn while she was opening the door.

We stepped into the hallway just as Carson ran up to us.

"Princess, Autumn, this is an emergency. Enemy forces have been spotted heading straight to Sol. The whole village and castle are being evacuated immediately."

The information registered slowly into my brain. Enemy forces? Grandpa had showed me a map of the Kingdom of Aeolus, and the cities under attack were much more North of the kingdom than Sol was. How was the enemy here already?

"We have a good head start, because according to the scout who saw them they are still about two hours from here, but we still need to move," Carson said.

As he ushered Autumn and I down the hallway, I had an unsettling sense of deja-vu. How long has it been since I left my house with nothing but the clothes on my back? It seemed like months, but it couldn't have been more than weeks. I stopped walking and looked down at my tank top, pajama shorts, and bare feet. There was no way I was rushing outside unprepared again. I sprinted back into my room and grabbed my pair of jeans, ignoring Carson's surprised, "Princess? But... What?"

I didn't even bother taking my shorts off as I jumped into my jeans, put on my sneakers in record time, and, at the last minute, grabbed my new bow from an otherwise empty bookshelf. I had no arrows and had only used a bow once in my life, but I'd worry about that later.

I ran back to confused-looking Autumn and Carson and jogged past them, yelling behind me, "Come on, the city will be under attack in less than two hours, don't just stand there!"

I heard Autumn's short laugh and both Winged soon caught up with me. There was a puzzled look on Carson's face, as if he was still processing what had just happened. To be honest, that was understandable. On top of there being an attack, some crazy girl had just taken the lead when he had expected to be the one to be the one in charge of leading us to... wherever we were going.

"Hey, Carson, where are we going anyway?"

A sense of purpose returned to his eyes, and he stepped in front of me.

"Follow me!"

Without breaking stride, he headed straight for a large opening in the wall, jumped out, and barely half a second later, opened his large, camouflage green wings.

My first thought was that I had always figured that opening was a window whose window panes were being repaired or something, but as I had just witnessed things worked differently in the Winged world. My second thought, as I skidded to a stop, was that we might be under attack, but I still wasn't going to jump to my death out of a window.

"Don't worry," Autumn said as I carefully swung my legs outside, "You actually fly way better than you realize, you can do this without a problem."

I stood on the window sill precariously, opened my wings as much as I could in the cramped space, and jumped out. There was the usual rush of air as my wings opened against the wind, every feather quivering against its blow. I didn't plummet to the ground, or- what was it that I expected anyway? I didn't know, but I still couldn't help the feeling of wonder that went through me every time I realized I was actually flying.

"Come on, Hailey, we've got to catch up!" Autumn called behind me.

I followed her down to the lawn in the front of the castle and couldn't help a smile as I realized Autumn seemed to trust in my flying skills even more than I did.

Even though it must have been around two or three in the morning, the night wasn't dark as a nearly full moon illuminated the scene in white light. Far from electric lights which fill human cities, the sky was sprinkled with a multitude of stars. For a second, I wondered if this sky, these constellations, were the same my dad could see from home.

As soon as my feet touched the well manicured grass and my eyes took in the frantic people in front of me, I was brutally reminded that this wasn't a fun midnight flight, but rather that we were about to be swarmed by numerous, unpredictable enemies.

Villagers were standing there, looking either unsure of what was going on or completely panicked. People carrying weapons , some of whom I recognized from the training fields, were running or flying around in a hundred different directions. I caught a glimpse of flame-red hair and lilac wings, but the girl was gone too fast for me to know if it actually was Bree.

I smoothed out the tips of my wings and folded both of them back. Suddenly, as if just noticing my presence, every eye turned to me. The conversations stopped, and everyone seemed to look at me almost expectantly.

"Princess, thank the goddess you're here!" Someone said. "We don't know where Anselm is, and..." He trailed off, unsure of what to say. "So, what do we do?"

Uh, good question. I opened my mouth and closed it again. Everyone seemed to be waiting for my answer with baited breath, like only I had the answer to their salvation.

That's when it hit me. Being a good princess wasn't about wearing pretty dresses like children's book suggested, or about being well-liked by everyone. It wasn't about being a comforting presence for the king, an entertainer for the kingdom, or even about trying to gain respect from everyone and to know everything there was to know about the kingdom and its people.

No, it was much simpler and much more complicated at the same time. Being a princess was about being the light in the storm, the reassurance that we'd pull through, that she - I - was there to lead them and keep us standing strong. After all, I didn't become a princess when my grandfather revealed his relation to me, I became one when the kingdom's people decided to look up to me as one.

"First off, everyone calm down," I started, just to say something. "We still have time until the enemy attacks, and panicking won't help."

I saw some heads nodding in agreement, waiting for me to continue.

I scrambled to think of something else to say and suddenly recalled Anselm's words when I had asked him for advice in the castle library, 'how can you help in a situation if you don't know what is going on?'. It might seem obvious, but it was nevertheless true, and just the kind of thing I needed to decide on the next step of action.

I swallowed once and, keeping my voice strong and steady, said,"First, I need to know everything that's going on. Someone find me that scout. I want to know how far are the enemy is and what their numbers are. What did the officers in charge decide for a plan of action? Get me Bree and Chase immediately, and follow any orders they gave efficiently. If they haven't said anything about that yet, I want people evacuating the whole village." I then gestured to the stone-paved plaza in front of the castle gardens. "Gather everyone here. Also, what do you mean, you don't know where Anselm is?"

A man came over to me hesitantly, and bowed his head quickly.

"I was in charge of bringing the Royal advisor down, but I couldn't find him." I frowned and he added, "I looked in his room and at all the stairways, as his wings are too weak for him to fly out of an emergency exit."

"What about the library?" I interrupted.

The guy sent me a look that said, 'who cares about the stupid library? We're under attack here.'

"Princess, with all due respect-"

"Did you or did you not check the library?" I was growing impatient.

"Well, no, but there was the alarm, and-"

"He probably takes off his hearing aid to sleep or something," Chase cut off, appearing behind me. "Now go!"

The Winged flew off hurriedly.

I smiled at Chase with evident relief.

As usual, he had his sword strapped around his waist, but now he also wore leather bracers on both forearms.

"Thank God you're here, I have no idea what I'm doing." I admitted.

"Sure doesn't look like it," Chase reassured with a twinkle in his eyes. Then his expression became stern again, as he took a look at his watch. "Only an hour and forty minutes to prepare for an attack by a full army."

I grimaced. The clock was ticking, and it almost felt like the upcoming army was a time-bomb. Hopefully the scout who had estimated the time we had left knew what he was doing. I watched a girl fly past, and looking down at the bow hanging limply from my hand, shouldered it as she had done.

"Just how precise is this hour and a half estimation?" I voiced my thoughts.

"Don't worry, our guy knows what he's talking about," Chase reassured me. Just as he said this, a young boy flew up to us.

"Chase! Bree has ordered for all the elite archers to gather and get fully armed, although two or three are still missing, so if you see them, send them to the armory. Carson said the evacuation is going smoothly as can be expected given the circumstances. The most vulnerable parts of the city are clear, everyone should be out in about fifteen to twenty minutes. There's no panic yet, but it's barely under control."

"Thank you, tell them Anselm should be down any minute now, that Hailey is here with me, and to start leading people towards the forest. Remind them they'll need to fly low. No plan of military action has been decided yet."

The boy nodded briskly and flew away, quicker than I had ever seen someone fly yet.

"Wow, he's fast," I commented as his yellow wings faded away.

"That's why we use him as a messenger," Chase smiled, before saying with evident relief, "Ah, here comes Anselm."

The man from earlier led him down carefully, as Anselm's old wings had trouble bearing his weight alone, and landed besides us.

"You were right, Princess, he was in the library. My apologies."

"May this serve as a lesson for next time," Chase said, "Now, go help with the village evacuation, there's no time to lose."

I turned to Anselm, who was clutching to his chest a book with a title written in Braille.

"Are you okay, Anselm?"

"Yes, Hailey, thank you. Although I have to admit I am quite confused."

Chase started to explain, "A scout saw enemy troops about an hour and half away from Sol, heading straight here. They appear to be like ones that were spotted North earlier, same emblem and all, and their numbers are about equal. However, there's no way that same army could have gotten here from Lyara so fast and without withstanding significant losses. Since they come from the West, I've deduced that the only reasonable scenario is that their troops in Lyara are only half of their army, the other half used the distraction to come here unnoticed."

Anselm nodded, "That is good deduction. You always showed lots of promise in military strategy. Now why do you think they came here, specifically?"

I interrupted them, "This is all very interesting, but can we concentrate on how we keep everyone from dying?"

"Hailey," Anselm reprimanded, "The only way to defeat your enemy is to understand him."

"They probably came here because they knew the army would be sent North and that only a handful of guards and the Junior Unit would be left." Chase said, "Hailey's right, though, we have to figure out what we do next. Offense is not an option, our numbers are too small, and many are too inexperienced to fight a real battle in cold blood."

"Question," I interrupted carefully, "What's a Junior Unit?"

"Aiden and I are part of the Junior Unit. We're basically still in training, but when we become older and more experienced we'll go to the Senior Units, which are the Kingdom's actual army," Chase explained.

I smiled in thanks, appreciating how he never sent me a look that said 'what a stupid question', and always explained everything to me to make sure I understood well.

"So, if we can't go on offensive, does that mean we go on defense?" I asked. That seemed like the most logical thing to do.

"Normally, yes. The problem here is that Sol wasn't built for defense, but for leisure, as the builders had assumed there would never be any threats coming from this side of the kingdom. The village forms a sort of half circle around the castle. There are no fortifications, no walls, no nothing. We're basically just open to any kind of attack."

Ah. Yeah, that might be a problem. I had no idea what we were supposed to do then, besides running away as fast as we could. I was about to voice my courageous opinion, when Anselm spoke up.

"Yes, that must be it... Sol is the king's official place of residence..."

Chase's eyes narrowed, "And if you attack with the hope of conquering a kingdom, as they certainly seem to, you want to take the place of their leader."

"Exactly," Anselm agreed, "Take the throne immediately, keep the king as hostage, and there's no need to lose men on the battle field, you already have the kingdom."

"The king's not here though, he's in..." I trailed off, "I can't remember the name."

"Yeah, but they don't know that, do they?" Chase sighed.

He looked questioningly at Anselm, who shook his head. He was out of ideas.

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So, what do you think? :p

Personally I'm pretty proud of this chapter, not only because it's longer than usual, but also because this is a major part of the plot.