Future chapter notes/quotes.

Quotes

Old servant: 'Honestly is the greatest gift a princess could receive.'

Alex: 'Then you spoil me.'

Old servant: 'Your brother is emperor your father wanted you to have something of your own.'

Alex: 'That's honestly for you. Even in ****, he did not know what to do with me.'

Old servant: 'Or he didn't want sulking in your brother's shadow.'

Alex: 'I like the shadows. You can hear more honestly there.'

Old Servant: 'You will make a wise lady.'

Alex: 'A lady? Now there goes your honestly.'

Emperor and princess arrangement dissolved:

"What kind of world is it to bring up children where your own sister can ask you that question. Eh?

"You crossed a line." Pistol cocked and aimed in-between the Emperor's eyes.

"Excuse me?"

"You crossed the line!"

"The Line?"

"They're using my boy!"

"How many fathers? Hom many mothers? How many sons and daughters, have you cut, killed, murdered fucking butchered innocent and guilty to send straight to fucking hell ain't ya?! Just like me!" The words were fung from Alexandra's brother's mouth, along with his spit, with pure hate. "You fucking stand there. You, judging me. Stand there and talk to me about crossing some fucking line."

He leaned forward pressing the end of the barrel, leaving a circular imprint on against his forehead. "What's is it? Looking for an honourable reason now to pull that trigger? Fucking get on with it and stop acting like a little girl."

Alexandra thoughts on her father:

It didn't matter where I was or what was going on. The old man's voice was always ringing in my ears. When I first saw the castle, looking up at the towering emplacements and the sweeping battlements, the ugly brutish hardpoints and thinking how strong they looked just like the old man's hands whenever they told me one of his tricks. They were old and scarred but they looked like they'd stand forever. It wasn't until I grew up that I realized just how frail they actually were it didn't scare me finding that out it lit my fire as he said. Meant I was going to have to do more. Be more. So I ran further pushed up faster swung harder and shot straighter, most important when somebody knocked me down I got up and I got up quick. On the ground is no place to be when you're in a fight and when you were born a Drakenire you were always in a fight even if you couldn't see it at that precise moment.

After he died, I had a shot and I took it. Notations for command exceeded expectations on personal engagement and I managed to make it past battle after battle. I made my first siege I was spent. After the fifth, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. When the time for a triumph came around I was on the line with every other lord and general who wanted the right to call themselves Victor. I wanted it more than anyone else there. Wanting something doesn't mean you get it though and that's a bitter bite to take.

I didn't wash out. According to my brother, I got stamped with something called 'Royal Protector.'... My common tongue is shit. But the designation mostly meant I was right on the line. All it would have taken was one person getting sick, getting slapped with insubordination or missing a single step and I would have been in their place. I got sent back to my men with a salute and a well done from my brother who ran the selection process, It was the only praise he'd given me and had no idea what I was supposed to do with it.

I'd earned a short leave to put myself back together and I spent most of it drinking and fucking. I didn't have some kind of epiphany that made me realize my true purpose I didn't hear any dark whispers coming out of the void. I just drank till I puked, slept until I couldn't anymore then picked myself up and got back to the front line, there was still work to do. I knew I had a sickness I couldn't function without something to fight.

I got promoted and then promoted again not because I was the best there or because I had some special insight but because I knew how to show my men how to do something, sometimes I only had to show them once and sometimes I had to go through it half a dozen times, either it being how to dig a trench or raid an unexpecting village I got it drilled into them.

Richard's sister:

She had the high aristocratic features of the kind of women one would usually see fawning at the arm of some watery-eyed official.

Peace. Kira sighed and closed her dark blue eyes rubbing one of her hands over them. Fighting the peace was almost as bad as fighting the wars. Peace gave way to boredom and then boredom gave way to the damned nightmare.

Kira had learned in her years as a noble that she got more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word or a gun.

Playing the stupid noble was a trademark of hers, you could grill a man when you needed to but most of the time it wasn't required if you acted disarmingly ineffective at your position, a trait shared by the reigning emperor and all but unteachable to his sister.

Doddering demeanour.

The Princess **** a smile. "There's nothing to fear from Gelt, my dear Count. The Physician has been given a latent poison. We administer an antidote in his meals. Without the antidote, the poison is triggered--he'd die in a few days." "Withdraw the antidote," the Count said.

"But he's useful!"

"And he knows too many things no living man should know."

"You said the Emperor doesn't fear exposure."

"Don't play games with me, Princess!"

"When I see such an order above the Imperial seal I'll obey it," the princess said. "But I'll not submit to your whim."

"You think it whim?"

"What else can it be? The Emperor has obligations to me, too, Count. I rid him of the troublesome Duke." The Princess studied him, noting the stiffness of jaw muscles, and the careful control. "Ah-h-h, now," the princess said. "I hope the Emperor doesn't believe he can move against me in total secrecy."

"He hopes it won't become necessary."

"The Emperor cannot believe I threaten him!" The Princess permitted anger and grief to edge her voice, thinking: Let him wrong me in that! I could place myself on the throne while still beating my breast over how I'd been wronged.

The Count's voice went dry and remote as he said: "The Emperor believes what his senses tell him."

"Dare the Emperor charge me with treason?" And the Princess held her breath with the hope of it.

"The Emperor need to dare nothing."

Suitors Assiassation attempt Notes:

[SUITORS]

In the heat of battle at the edge of the unknown

Somewhere in the shadows lurks an agile deadly foe

We have the advantage, we've the numbers and the might

No, you don't understand it. This woman plans for every fight

Where is she? Where is she?

Keep your head down, he's aiming for the torches

Our weapons, they're missing!

She's using the darkness to hide her approaches

We're empty-handed up against an archer

Our only chance is to strike her in the darkness

We know these halls, the odds can be tilted

[Alexandra]

You don't think I know my own palace?

I built it