Zai needs to sit down, his world starting to spin counter-clockwise.

  A hand shot out, grasping the edge of the chair as he struggles to breathe, struggles to respond. “I-I’m not…”

  A traitor? A tyrant? A monster?

  You are his son, a child of his sacred essence. You have his blood in your veins. You have the spirit of the Hangman, of the King of Corpses; you are the Prince of a Dominion that has eaten its own sons and daughters in the vast desperation of starvation, you are the Prince of a Dominion that has sent its people into the meat grinder for mere meters of mud.

  You, in every capacity, can be a monster too.

  He breathes, almost an entire minute spent choking on his own fear.

  Prince Zai Tianci is alive.

  He looks up, absolute determination as this young man stares down Guardsman Mori Fushimi and speaks the words to her in a measured, ice cold voice. “I’m not like my father.”

  The smile curls on her lips, at this correct answer that has now come into his consciousness. “There we go, Zai.”

  He takes the time to compose himself, feeling as the panic recedes from him; from his stabilizing breath to his returning vision.

  The Prince of the Dominion focuses, once again returning to the task at hand. “Mori, even if Sophia is not attempting to play intrigue now, then what’s stopping her from doing so later? Once we return to Landfall, she’ll have access to the High Court; my father, the Apparatus. What’s to stop her from taking all of it for the Imperium?”

  Mori sighs, taking the now cooled cup of tea and handing it over to the Prince.

  Jasmine tea; bitter, flowery upon his lips and tongue.

  They both think the question through, the long minutes passing in silence as they watch the three suns set in the west.

  And Prince Zai Tianci looks at his Guardsman, speaking out his own train of thought. “There’s the hard way, and the easy way.”

  “Tell me.” Mori requests. “But let’s go easy first, I’m too emotionally charged to go all in right now~”

  The joke hits its mark, the Prince allowing himself a small scoff.

  “The Lower Court could block her.” Zai makes the move, the intrigue playing out as he attempts to predict the growth pattern that this cancer within the Dominion could take.

  “Really?” Mori raises an eyebrow. “The Lower Court? Now, after all that legislation from the High Court and your daddy?”

  “No, you’re right. Not after… not after what my Father did.” He concludes. “And if I do attempt to reverse it; try and give the Lower Court back the Stamp and the Veto…”

  He stares Mori dead in the eyes as he says this. “If that happens, will you protect me, Mori?”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Guardsman Mori Fushimi smiles as she sips from her cup, the conversation lightening up considerably. “Sorry, I’d rather have history not remember me as the one who committed regicide, thank you very much.”

  They both chuckle at the traitorous words.

  Prince Zai Tianci takes a long time to really consider this second option, the selfless sacrifice for his people demanded of by any true leader. So trivial, so simple; yet carried within was of the highest level of intrigue possible for this one Crown Prince of the Dominion.

  Guardsman Fushimi takes the lowered, longing glance of Zai to its absolute extreme interpretation. “Zai, you’re not thinking of having her…”

  He shuts down that line of thought immediately. “If she disappears, even by your standards, they’ll find out. And when they find out, they’ll burn it all: Yunclair, Gwangju, Landfall, Sennokura… they’ll turn the Dominion into a mass grave. And more so, she’s a Tianci too now. Her life is your life.”

  Zai could tell from Mori’s confused look that even she couldn’t conceive of this plan he was setting forth, of this most obscene act he would have to commit in the name of patriotism, of a love for a people who did not love him, and for the future of his entire line.

  “There’s only one way to stop her.” Prince Zai Tianci says it with tragedy, of a weight that crushes him as he speaks it. He stares into the vast, swirling blue storms of Unudo; their parent world that has watched over them all since their dawn of history, and speaks the one word to save it all: “Me.”

  A strange glare from Guardsman Fushimi towards her Prince as that meaningless word of self fails to bring forth any plan or goal in this grand context of Dominion politics. “You?”

  There’s a long silence as the Crown Prince thinks of the best way to approach this topic, finding it in his own vast education.

  “How much of the Ensolian Religion do you know about?” Zai asks her, watching as that confusion draws itself on the face of his Guardsman. “Humor me for a moment, Mori.”

  She leans back in the chair, relaxing considerably now with a smirk. “Well, you know me. They scream ‘Goddess’ whenever you scare ’em; and also have a really thick book to read through.”

  “Mori.” The Prince presses his Guard for seriousness. “Do you know what their Goddess did to her own kind? That Goddess of theirs betrayed her people, her own race to save humanity. What could make a deity, a god, do that?”

  Guardsman Fushimi nods with a raised eyebrow, keeping silent as Zai continues from his rhetorical question. “When the old gods, her kind, waged war on humanity; she took up her blade against them. She killed every last one that refused to join her in her betrayal. Every. Last. One.”

  That was the common denominator for all their faiths: from the Goddess to the gods, the divines all came from the same place and waged the same war.

  And humanity won it the same way.

  Mori asks the major question. “So why did she betray her people?”

  Zai Tianci stares at her, completing this story taken from the people to the north of the Wailing Fang. “Because she fell in love with a human boy.”

  Oh.

  This was the ultimate sacrifice: this act of a Crown Prince for the protection of his people from the Imperium.

  This was not an enemy that could be defeated by regiments of rifle guards, doses of poison snuck into teas, or the collected letters of blackmail. The Imperium had power: they had the aerostatics, they had the Impericutta, they had the hundred legions; the industries, the culture, the patriotism, the grace and fear that they had earned over a millennium of stable rule.

  But in their arrogance, as they reached the apex of power upon this tiny ball of dirt, they placed their own Goddess into the fold of a foreign nation; to kill, to conquer, to tear it apart from the inside.

  They had forgotten that they were still human.

  Guardsman Fushimi makes the realization as she stares into her Charge’s eyes, a wide grin pulled on her face from just the sheer irony of his next words. “Oh Zai… you aren’t thinking of~”

  “I am.” The Crown Prince looks at her, and for the first time in months, perhaps even years, he truly smiles. An expression not of joy or happiness, but of clarity: a path forward. “All I need to do… is make Sophia Elise the Eighth fall in love with me.”

  giveaway so if you sign up you're not in a lot of competition for it...)