That night, I let Natasha in again. My mental state was no excuse for rudeness. She told me it would be better to do the scan in the hospitals like the Chaves Center where there would be more accurate imaging, but I didn't listen.

The country just lost their king, they just went through a traumatic fireworks display, and they didn't need another reason to worry. The empire couldn't take another show of weakness. They couldn't know I was there.

After a while she took note of all my metals, my necklace, my anklets. I couldn't take them off. The key was at the crypts somewhere in the rubble. Eventually she adjusted the machine to ignore the metals.

"Your imperial highness... did you adjust the rate?" Natasha pointed at the roller clamp of the IV now on the stand in the other room. I could see her from a small window across the ring I was currently lying in, making the claustrophobic tube a little less so. "We need to put that back by the way."

"Um... no. Why?" I wanted to make it slower since the cold was bothering me, but I rolled it up once and it only got worse. This was why I chose not to go the medical route... I was much better at smashing things that taping them back together.

"Well, I guess you weren't that close to the explosion as Malak was." She smiled at me, relieved. "I thought you were there together. At least you're completely fine. Malak is having hearing problems even with the earplugs he put on so some tinnitus. I can't imagine how it would have affected someone without mufflers."

"Yeah, I was far from him actually." Lying was easier now without Ilyaas.

She nodded back at me as I came out of the ring. "No internal bleeding. If there were cuts or bruises, the nanites took care of them."

"I had a bleeding ear..." The ringing was nonexistent by the time I arrived at the House, but it still bled every now and then.

"Was probably a ruptured eardrum... I didn't see much damage when I took a closer look earlier, your imperial majesty, the nanites must be working faster than I'm used to."

"So, I'm fine." I hoped I was. I already got the ear cleaned before I was put inside the loud machine, and my hearing seemed normal already despite the blood. The princes would arrive today with the grandfather's sister. It was already two in the morning, and I hadn't even slept.

"Hot and cold compress near your ear if you feel uncomfortable. That's it."

"Thank you, Natasha..." I stepped off the machine. "And I'm sorry for snapping at you earlier."

She blinked at me, and a corner of her mouth turned up. Her smile brightened. "I understand, your imperial majesty. You made sure the people were safe first."

"He would have done the same." I said, referring to my grandfather, as she finished putting a new needle in with the same bag.

"I highly doubt that."

Natasha went through the automatic sliding doors first, looked both ways and gestured for me to follow her out. She was nicer than I thought.

The marble was cold underneath my bare feet, but I liked it somehow. After feeling the heat of that explosion earlier, anything cold was welcome... Except the nanites.

"Your imperial highness, it would be advisable if I have the ability to take off your jewelry, especially for emergency purposes."

I looked at my anklets. "Yeah, I guess so." The key was hidden somewhere in the dark crevices of an empty tomb I had to intention of going back to. "I don't know how to get them off." My hand found the thin solid choker around my neck. "But if it's silver, nitric acid should do."

As we walked towards another elevator to get me to my room, she started fidgeting. Her hand was in her pant pocket, then outside hanging, then inside her coat pocket. I noticed her breath quicken; a little bit of pink rose to her cheeks.

"Natasha?"

She nodded. "Your imperial highness-"

"Natasha, it's a mouthful, you can call me Liz."

She nodded again, looking down at her white shoes. "You... Liz, have you heard from Raza?"

A cold tingle went down my spine at the mention of his name, but I nodded. I would do well not to get a visit from him for a while. His glowing eyes still haunted me in flashes in my dreams.

"I know it's unprofessional, Liz, but we were-"

"Together." I guessed from the blush she was sporting.

"You knew?" Her voice shrilled a bit from her embarrassment.

"Just now. You confirmed." I couldn't help but chuckle. "As long as it doesn't interfere with your work, I don't care." I said in all honesty. Despite her lover being Raza, I was in awe at how easy it was to find someone you actually liked when the fate of a country didn't depend on finding that someone.

Natasha gave a sigh of relief and stuffed her hands into her pants again.

"You haven't heard from him?" I asked. Weren't people who were together obliged to talk to each other at least once a day? It would be such a hassle. At least courtship was not in my schedule. The problem was finding someone tolerable.

"It's supposed to be normal." She took a shaky breath in. "He does this every time he's on a mission... he called me last week, and that's it."

I pursed my lip. "What did he tell you?"

"That the investigation for the king's killer was going rocky."

He never brought it up with me. He only talked about the Ravens, whom I believe tried to make a pyramid explode. "Go on." He should be looking for my brother.

"Well... I saw reports from the bureau, and it shows that the flight path the king took was taking off from a trajectory much lower than America, the Sauds, even Africa."

"Antarctica." The word was colder than Raza's name.

She nodded. "We always advised the king to have a satellite for himself to track him in case anything happened. He was confident, however, in his runner. Always said no one could follow him up there, no one could hurt him, and that it was an inefficient use of resources."

Sounds like him.

"So, we only have clips from satellites not focusing on him, we don't know where he went. We only know he was coming back." She stopped in her tracks. "But that's not what he was talking about." Natasha fixed me in her gaze, her eyes bewildered, unbelieving, and scared as we stopped at the elevator door, I was supposed to rise in.

"He said the drone came from Eurasia."

×+×

"Why didn't you choose the dress?" Uncle Hassan scolded me as we were flying over the snowflake of the city towards the landing pad of the Chaves Center. "Aunt Aridni gave that to you for today."

"I'll wear it later. I can change later." He said the drone came from Eurasia. Natasha's voice echoed in my head. Raza could be wrong... but he was Raza.

"Yes, that may be so, but why jeans?!" He said it as if I just chose to skin children for my pants.

I sighed. After visiting the injured in St. Lorenzo's, without the flash of cameras and without the doctors ready to greet me, I got around better. I met all the injured people who were still not allowed to go home. They didn't say much other than thanks.

Most of them were just shocked I was there. One of them tried to get out of bed to bow to me, and I had to make him lie down again. Only one of them voiced a concern about the possibility that the Ravens were responsible. I reassured her they were all gone.

Because they had to be gone even if they weren't.

As the runner started descending, I heard the clicks. With a glance out the window, the drones were converging on us. Cameras, the mechanical prying eyes of the public, surrounded my runner. "Who informed them?" I whispered. Of course, it should be expected... I didn't know why I sounded surprised.

Then I regretted the jeans. Uncle Hassan and possibly every other girl my age knew how to dress better than I did. It was an unwelcomed but undeniable reality that I had no sense of fashion except matching colors.

"St. Lorenzo did, your imperial majesty." James, my guard for the day, said.

Uncle Hassan looked as if he was going to cry. "Your first documented public function... and you're wearing jeans." He sobbed to himself, rummaging through his purse. In his hands, he produced a silk scarf with purple on its trimmings, printed with horses. "Put this in your hair." He said as he wrapped it around my head like a head band.

I just let him do as he pleased. His crying wouldn't look good if the cameras got it, and maybe the headband would distract from my face. "You're not even in heels. God, help you."

"The hospital is clear." James nods to me, his eyes glazed a little as he saw the data roll down his eyes through his lenses.

"You know it wasn't real leather." Uncle Hassan sighed to himself. "Absolutely cruelty free."

The flashback to the shoes that mimicked chopsticks was a terror that plagued me. "They're not cruelty free if they're cruel to me."

Ignoring the clicks and lights of the cameras slowly hovering and descending on me, I stepped out of the runner. Eyes forward, balancing on tight shoes, I went through the doors of the Center, already guarded by Imperial Guard, and down their elevator to the lobby.

Chaves Center was a monument of curved lines and silvery glass. The elevator was see-through, not bullet-proof though, so the guards surrounded me on all sides. From eyes looking in, it would have looked like a purple and white capsule plunging from the sky.

If only I wasn't surrounded, I would have readied myself for the crowds awaiting me.

Just as the doors opened, the guards poured out before and after me, to reveal a line of white coats. They were in their best finery; their cleanest uniform, their clearest glasses. All at once they bowed to me and said "It is an honor, your imperial majesty."

I bowed my head. I should be the one bowing. "Um. Are these all the doctors?"

"Your imperial-" The only woman to my right started saying.

"Oh no. Please go back to your patients!" They all laughed at me. "I'm serious."

"These are the doctors who are handling the ICU patients from yesterday's incident, your imperial highness." The woman said. She was way too young to be a doctor, right? "My name is Nicole Chaves, Empress Lizaveta, chief surgeon and-"

"Daughter of the great Nenita Chaves, founder of the hospital." I smiled at her, extending my right hand for a shake. "I know."

Her hair was a weird shade of green, I noticed, the color of dried moss. "This is Doctor James, of our anesthesiology department" She gestured at the Asian woman with warm eyes. "...Doctor Handel of trauma, Doctor David and Doctor Carter of cardiology and neurology..."

I seemed to have shaken twenty hands, all of which were precise, steady, and warm. After each hand came a flash from the photographer standing a few steps away from me.

"They all volunteered to help our ICU staff with the patients who arrived yesterday. We have all of them here since St. Lorenzo's was overrun by the injured due to its proximity to the garden."

"Thank you so much for meeting me. You may go to your patients now; I have Doctor Nicole with me." I nodded at James, who walked three paces behind me, and Uncle Hassan, who was also done shaking hands.

They chuckled and went off, but despite the loss of the twenty doctors, people stared. It was a frenzy of people out and about in the lobby - people just coming in, people with cameras, staff suddenly stopping in their tracks to stare. I could hear many people saying "It's really her." or "Can she pose for a photo?"

I simply looked at them with the brightest smile I could muster. It only lasted for a second, but my eyes were reeling from the flash of lights that attacked me. I was blinking profusely when Doctor Nicole said, "You must not like the crowd that much?"

"Not dislike, more of... I'm getting used to it." I had to smile again. My resting scowl had no room in this new life.

"Well, only handheld cameras are allowed in the ICU. Some news outlets are already there, I limited it to five so the patients aren't disturbed."

"Thank you." We rounded a corner into a much more deserted hall, heading to the ICU. "You seem awfully cool about this. Everyone seemed a little... scared of me."

"I'm doing my best for the cameras, your imperial majesty. This is the best publicity this hospital has gotten in quite a while."

"I like your honesty."

"Veta, I'm so glad we tied your hair down." Uncle Hassan pointed at the threshold of the ICU, a small room of sorts where air blew downward at the two guards that went in before me. "It would have ruined everything."

"It's a sterilization chamber." Doctor Nicole said.

After we got in, the whole place was just a matter of beeps. One photo, one heartbeat. Four were still unconscious. They were in varying degrees of tubes, wires and bandages. Despite the leaps in health and medicine, we still couldn't prevent death.

"Will they survive?" I whispered to the doctor.

"They're surviving right now. They're in medically induced comas... one of them lost a leg, but we're trying to make him one and do an attachment as soon as it's possible to harvest some cells from him." She pointed at a man in his thirties, sleeping with a tube in his mouth.

"Is that covered by insurance?"

"No. That's also why we're waiting on him to choose if he wants an attachment."

"I'll cover it."

Nicole smiled. "Thank you."

I moved from bed to bed, holding their cold hands, willing my warmth to go through them. As I did that, the doctors came in one by one, hovered over a patient for a while before they moved on to another.

In their white coats they reminded me of a word I didn't know the meaning of- Diwata. I heard it when I was young... a group of nymphs who resurrected the dead. That's all I remembered. And just as quickly as the thought emerged, it abandoned my mind.

The woman on the bed seemed tired, but she was awake. Her whole left arm was covered in bandages, a part of her hair buzzed off. With all the strength she could muster, she gave me a kind smile, and the glint in her eyes showed me her she'd survive. "Empress Lizaveta."

"I'm so sorry." Was the only thing I could say.

"My name is Aqua."

My smile gave way to silent pain. She must be hurting so much. "I'm so sorry, Aqua." I took her left hand and kissed it. "Doctor Nicole is going to take care of you, and you'll be good as new."

She sighed. "My family... I'm a single mom to two boys...." Breaths seemed to be hard for her, and her smile melted into tears as well. "I can't work for a while-"

"I'll make sure they go to school and are provided for... for as long as you're here and in therapy. I promise." As a monarch I shouldn't be making promises, but I felt like what happened yesterday was my fault. I felt her burden as if it were my own, as if her scars were also mine, and my heart ached.

It was good to have Uncle Hassan, though. He stayed with her, asking for her details, promising the same things I did. I had to move to the next bed before I broke down.

A boy lay there. The lack of straps and tubes made me feel a little better for him.

"Princesa Liza?"

It was the boy from yesterday. The intonation and the accent were identical to that of the girl I met.

"Ola." I said. The heaviness in my chest lightened a little, knowing that he was alive.

"I... I meant emperatriz. My sister still calls you princess, though. I can speak English." He stuttered, looking down, shy at his slip.

"How do you feel?" Running under a falling pyramid was worth it. I didn't want to think... what if I left him there? "Do you still hurt?"

"Um... my ribs are broken, and my hand too." He raised his hand, now encased in a plastic cast.

"He has some shrapnel in him too. His lungs were also quite... he almost died of smoke inhalation." Nicole swallowed, shaking her head.

"Oh no..." I patted down his hair, scorched in some places. "Well, you have to heal up so you can play with your sister again."

I should have brought Ilyaas. Smoke inhalation. If we didn't get him out as soon as we did, I would have had to attend a funeral instead of a hospital visit.

"We're actually transferring him to his own room soon, your imperial highness." Doctor Nicole said. "We also need help for his therapy."

"Therapy?"

"Yes, the trauma has caused some memory anomalies." She whispered to me. "He was found in a pagoda far away from the pyramid, but he claims to have been closer-"

"Hey, I saw what I saw." He argued, his breathing labored, his voice raspy. "A guy was under the pyramid, and he made the fireworks go down instead of up. There was a pit there, they were hiding the fireworks there, and he made the fire go down."

"What?" I didn't want him to speak, as it was obviously hurting him. It was nonsense. Fireworks never went down. And yet here I was, encouraging a boy with a wounded trachea to sing for me.

Yesterday, I saw the pyramid's base was empty. I only saw one person go under the pyramid yesterday... the guy who recognized me.

Circling around the ICU, I looked for a head of curls. If he was that close to the fire, he'd either be here or dead. Too small, too short, a woman, too skinny... he wasn't there.

He wasn't there. And no one died.

"He waved them down and then they all caught fire. And then-" The boy's voice broke my anxiety.

"We need to address his trauma-" Doctor Nicole proceeded to say.

"What did he look like?"

Don't say curly. Don't say curly.

"Tall. Taller than you..." His eyes were honest. It was a matter of fact.

"His hair, what was his hair like?" Don't say curly. Don't say curly.

His eyes squinted, trying to remember. "I think-"

"Was too dark to tell?" No. The fireworks lit the sky up.

The boy beamed, finally remembering, and my blood went cold.

Don't say curly.

"Curly."