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the heart will clear
in the moon light
after midnight
heaven only knows
the colors you will show
It made sense in the stories, she supposed.
The prince kisses the princess and wakes her from eternal slumber. The princess kisses the frog and he becomes a prince again. Everything she ever demanded Lord Valjakka or her brother read to her when she was confined to her bed, wishing she could have a prince of her own to save her. Wondering if she could ever grow up to love and be loved like that - to see the other side of happily ever after.
Perhaps all those fairy tales with heroes and royalty and knights were simply past, primitive sorcery repackaged to sell to modern children.
Zagan didn’t have to make it sound so clinical, she thought with a sigh, It kind of loses its magic when you explain the magic the way he does. How very unlike a prince he was...
or perhaps how very unlike a princess she was.
She’d set out to distract herself from all of that, wringing out a cool cloth over the sink to replace over Nephteros’s brow. The elf girl had just finished healing Barbatos and all of Chastille’s men attacked by that chimera, only to be overcome by fatigue yet again and collapse into the bed in Chastille’s nap room once more. Barbatos had long since woken and left for wherever he was when he was inside his shadow, and the medical sorcerers took over where Nephteros left off with the other knights. It left Chastille aimless, still hypervigilant after the near-assassination with nowhere to extend that energy. This was busywork. Mindless.
There was an ache in her chest, but so long as she knew what it was she could face it.
Very unlike a princess, and neither was she a prince. But knights could play their own role.
She smiled, wiping the sweat from Nephteros’s sleeping face. “You look like the Sleeping Princess,” she murmured, slipping the cloth behind the girl’s neck to cool the rest of her. Nephteros was burning up again, she worked too hard.
“You’re good at that,” Nephteros said, eyes fluttering open to meet Chastille’s. “I guess you’re good at other things too…”
She hadn’t realized the girl was awake. Chastille felt her cheeks grow hot again.
“Y-you don’t have to say it like that…” she said, pouting.
“I was complimenting you.”
“Were you?” Chastille seemed skeptical. “Well, I can accept it, then.” Nephteros was a terribly awkward girl, wasn’t she? She turned her head away weakly as Chastille brushed her damp bangs from her forehead. “Then, thank you. I’m glad I could pay it forward, then. I’d like to repeat my thanks from earlier, you saved the lives of Barbatos and my subordinates… but you pushed yourself. Try to be mindful of that, you caught a fever again.”
“What are you doing, sounding so mature?” Nephteros asked, huffing in a way Chastille could only describe as cute.
“Hehe, I’m an expert on it, actually! I used to get sick all the time when I was little. My mama and my big brother did all this for me, and scolded me for going beyond my limits sometimes.”
“Huh... you have a brother?”
Chastille felt the same pain she always did when she dwells too long on Ves. “Had,” she answered, and her hands trembled in her lap. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that to Nephteros, not because she was ashamed or wanted to forget or anything, but because it was so hard to talk about and of course people would be curious. And, maybe, just a little…
it can be easier to forget…
Nephteros only blinked and turned away again, as if allotting Chastille her privacy the best she could. “I see. Okay, then.”
Silence stretched out between them, and Chastille quickly realized Nephteros hadn’t fallen asleep in that time, but she also hadn't asked any further questions. An awkward girl, clumsy but so kind, she was reminded of just an hour or so ago, when Nephteros held her and let her cry about her broken heart until she stopped. Like earlier today, she reached out, took Nephteros’s feverish hands in her own and squeezed tight. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Thank you anyway.”
Chastille, in return, decided to pretend that the dark flush that colored Nephteros’s cheeks was just from the fever.
“... so, who’s the Sleeping Princess?”
“You don’t know the Sleeping Princess story?” well, it made some sense. She didn’t think Nephy would know either, the way she grew up. And, what? Would Archdemon Bifrons read her stories when she got sick like Chastille’s family? Somehow, she couldn’t picture it.
When it came to Bifrons, they probably only knew horror stories.
“It’s um, it’s a fairy tale. About a princess who gets cursed by an evil witch to sleep for a hundred years. It’s just a story you’d tell children, usually they’re… I would say they’re stories blessed with happy endings.” Chastille beamed. “Oh, but, I was also just thinking… they probably also have a lot more primitive sorcery in them than I ever realized, especially since Zagan told me about… urgh.”
“About what?”
“Well... do… do you want to hear the story?”
“Why?”
“Well, that’s another thing my mother and brother did when I was sick. They’d tell me fairy tales. It’s silly now, what with everything happening, but I wanted…” silly, too embarrassing to admit. “Um, well, I’m jealous, a little. You look like you could be a princess in a fairy tale, Nephteros.”
Nephteros’s face flushed darker. “You… can do that if you want. Tell me the story.”
Maybe, with a freshly broken heart, the story sounds wistful and almost bittersweet. Maybe it being the dead of night, with no one else around, gives it a slight atmosphere. Maybe the fever is doing things to her. But Nephteros finds herself just as captivated by the simple fairy tale as she believed others were when she sang her celestial mysticism.
It is, however, true, that with a script and a base - or speaking from the heart - orating is another thing Chastille isn’t always bad at (though, sometimes, that clumsy crybaby side ruins things as always). She makes blunders in the most inopportune moments (as she will learn later), but there is reason that others follow her loyally, valiantly. There’s a reason the Unification Faction lets her speak for them. And, with this in particular, she’s heard the fairy tales so many times, read them so often with little else to do, that she doesn’t need to read from anything to know how it goes.
All is quiet in the room except for Chastille’s soft voice, from beginning to - “... and they lived happily ever after.”
“I see what you mean, by primitive magic,” Nephteros said, once she was certain that was the end.
And then the spell was broken, Chastille immediately melting to a stammering mess. One would never guess the person who soothed her fever and told her a story to keep her company was the same girl right now. “R-right!? I-I had no idea about the k-k-k-kiss thing! That’s real!?”
“Um, it’s not that big of a deal. Is it?”
“It’s not? But, isn’t it? Right? It’s not?”
“... well, I don’t think so. It’s just exchanging mana.”
“Do you think it will help you?”
“What?” Nephteros gaped up at Chastille. How could she go between properly caring and gentle, to complete mess, to so completely dead serious in a matter of seconds? “Didn’t you just say…?” Nephteros shook her head, suddenly sinking into the blankets, hiding half her face within them. “Well... I’m not… exactly a princess myself.”
“A-and! I’m not a prince!” Chastille said, slapping her hand to her chest. There were tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, but she was determined. “But I am a knight. Um, knights save everyone, not just princesses. At least I think they should. That’s… part of the vows I took. Um.”
“... okay.”
“What?”
“Okay. You can give me mana like that. It’s no big deal.” She said it wasn’t, didn’t she?
“How do I do it?”
“Why ask? Just… like the story.”
Chastille nodded and stood so fast the chair toppled to the ground. She barely noticed as she tipped forward, leaning her arms on the bed, on either side of Nephteros’s head. Just like the story, then, she’d seen the picture thousands of times. A cartoonish illustration in a picture book. Wasn’t it so much different when it was someone real? No, don’t think about that. She couldn’t. She closes her eyes and presses her lips against Nephteros’s.
She felt Nephteros’s feverish hands hold her cheeks, hold her in place. Her lips were dry yet soft. For a moment, it felt like the fever from Nephteros was starting to transfer, the heat building in Chastille’s body - however the manner in which it spread was wholly different from the fevers she was used to. Her heart beat a little harder, she tipped her head a little more, and a sudden rush hit her. It felt exactly like putting her power into Azrael for the sword to shine, more comfortable and right than she expected.
And then it dulled.
Nephteros pulled away from her, and Chastille jerked back with a squeak.
She could barely see Nephteros’s face through the tears in her eyes, but her color was a bit different. She was a bit less pale. But… “you still feel really warm,” Chastille said, touching Nephteros’s cheek.
“... no, that’s enough,” Nephteros’s voice was shaking, too. Gently, she shook off Chastille’s hand and turned over in the bed. “I’ll sleep the rest off.”
Her voice was quiet. “Y-you should too.”
Chastille touched her own cheeks next. I’m also really, really warm.
It didn’t feel like fever.
“Yeah.” No way could she sleep after that. “Sleep well, Nephteros.”