Leon, Elise, and Naiad’s lives returned to something that resembled normal in the weeks following the attack on the villa. Naiad didn’t coerce them into sleeping with her again, but she refused to leave, so when Leon and Elise’s villa was finished being rebuilt, she ended up moving in with them.

Given how their villa had been destroyed, neither Leon nor Elise said much in protest. They had already had sex with Naiad, so it made little sense to reject her presence and accompanying protection now.

For a few days, Leon and Elise took the time to get truly settled into their new home, with Elise making sure her garden of magical herbs and other plants was well-maintained while Leon surveyed the work of the Heaven’s Eye workmen, making sure that the defenses of the villa were properly made.

He also made sure that the trees and bushes that encircled the property and blocked the villa from prying eyes didn’t have any holes or weak points, and he was happy to find that everything was functioning as it should be. The lightning wards were up and running; only a profoundly powerful mage would be able to breach their walls, and no one, regardless of power, would be able to sweep the villa with their magic senses from the outside—though those inside could still use their own magic senses to see outside, which was a feature that Leon didn’t know existed, and he resolved to study this particular enchantment very closely. They were obviously a cut above the standard Legion camp enchantments that prevented spies from without seeing what was within, and if Leon could find some way to make this enchantment portable…

‘Well, it’s worth some study…’ Leon thought to himself.

Leon and Elise were truly cut off from outside surveillance within the villa, and they enjoyed it to the fullest. After sleeping with Naiad once, they thought little of having sex wherever they wanted—they knew that Naiad could watch them wherever and whenever they got down and dirty anyway, so they figured that it was best to simply not think about it and do what they wanted. Naiad barely spoke to either of them during these first few days, so it was impossible to know if she did or didn’t watch them.

Of course, Naiad did watch them, and quite intently, fascinated as she had now become after experiencing human mating first-hand. Every display of affection, every move they made toward and to the other was observed by the river nymph, and she enjoyed every second. She wanted to go and join the other two many times, but always refrained when she thought about how tenderly Leon would treat Elise afterward, and about how coldly he would treat her. Most times, he would barely even acknowledge her presence within the villa, and that brought more sadness to Naiad than she ever would’ve thought.

To a degree, she could understand. Human interaction was still new to her, and time spent together was important. However, her river nymph instincts were telling her that since they were now mates, then they should be accepting of each other, and the fact that Leon wasn’t was distressing.

Even after several weeks, though, Naiad hadn’t made a move to put a stop to this. She wanted to let Leon make the next move now that she had gotten him to sleep with her once, and since her magic power still coursed through her with all the speed that it should, she figured she had time. She didn’t want to force things again. But this involved her squirreling herself away in her guest rooms and not giving Leon the opportunity to make a move.

For Leon’s part, after surveying the rebuilt villa, he was far more interested in spending time with Elise and training his magic to worry much about Naiad. His training with the Thunderbird in his soul realm had paid off in a big way, and he was making progress with water and wind magic far quicker than he had fire—lightning was essentially instant after absorbing all of that lightning from the Cradle, so Leon refrained from comparing his current efforts with that.

During this time, he also put in some time in the Royal Palace. Trajan had assigned him to check in with Lapis every day, which Leon was happy to do since it gave him plenty of time to talk about the stone giants, and he also helped the Prince’s assistants collate the data they received about the Legion’s attempts to subjugate the vampires that had infiltrated the Kingdom. At this point, no one could deny that there was a serious problem, especially when one of Trajan’s own knights was attacked in the very heart of the Kingdom.

Of course, the Consul of the Central Territories was livid about what he perceived as Trajan overstepping his bounds and ordering around Legions that weren’t assigned to him, but in just a few months more than one hundred vampires had been found and slain, so he had little ground to stand on and was forced to hold his tongue. This threat had grown right under his nose, after all.

All-in-all, Leon had to say that things were quiet, peaceful, and relaxing. His problems seemed far away, he was with the woman he loved, and his friends were due to arrive in the capital in just a few weeks in anticipation of their knighting ceremony at the Knight Academy. Life was good.

He had no idea that his villa was under constant surveillance by subordinates of Justin Isynos. When the tall man was killed in Emilie’s estate, Justin had been alarmed, to say the least. He’d lost another seventh-tier mage, a man who was impossible to replace in such a remote land as the Bull Kingdom. His certainty grew that Leon was the boy he was searching for, but he decided to take things much slower and more carefully from now on.

—

A month after his villa was attacked, Leon walked into the Royal Palace as he had done dozens of times before. He expected that the day would be the same as it had been for weeks, meeting with Trajan and discussing the vampire threat, meeting with Lapis for a few hours, then returning home and either training or studying runes.

He was in for a shock, however, for as he walked through the halls of the palace, he happened to pass by the offices of the officials who supervised taxation of the nobility on his way to meet with Prince Trajan. The hallway he took passed right through the atrium attached to the taxation offices, and when he glanced over at the front desk, he saw someone he hadn’t thought about in more than a year: Tiberias Decimius.

He had first ‘met’ Tiberias around the same time he had started in the Knight Academy. The noble had been in the Heaven’s Eye Tower looking for Elise and taken issue with Leon’s friendly relationship with her. Afterward, Leon hadn’t thought much about the young nobleman, but Tiberias went out of his way several times to antagonize Leon, culminating in a pair of his family’s assassins attempting to murder Leon on a galley as he made his way north toward Fort 127 after entering his squireship. He had acquired his invisibility ring after defeating these assassins.

After telling her about this, Elise had retaliated against Tiberias’ family, essentially blacklisting them from all Heaven’s Eye services that she was able to. Leon had never really followed up on that, but neither had he let go of his own personal desire for revenge against Tiberias.

The nobleman didn’t notice Leon, and Leon quickly continued down the hallway. He didn’t wonder why Tiberias was waiting by the front desk to the tax offices, all he thought about was killing the man. The assassination attempt Leon might have been able to forgive, as it was only directed at him, but Tiberias had also harassed Elise, though that mercifully stopped after Elise blacklisted his family. Still, the simple fact that the nobleman hadn’t been able to take ‘no’ for an answer and kept trying to court Elise was reason enough for Leon to hate his guts, and that combined with the assassination attempt was enough for Leon to mentally sign Tiberias’ death warrant.

Of course, right there in the middle of the Royal Palace was no place for that sort of business, so Leon put it out of his mind for the time being. There would be other chances, and his work with Trajan took priority right now, especially since the enemies they were dealing with were far more important and dangerous than House Decimius.

By the time he arrived at the Prince’s part of the palace, Leon had wiped away any fury and anger that might have appeared on his face. As a stoic person by nature, no one had even the slightest clue that Leon had been thinking about murdering the son of one of the most powerful nobles in the realm.

When one of Trajan’s assistants opened the door for the young knight, Leon found Trajan quietly working behind his desk, just as he had been for months.

“Your Highness,” Leon said as he gave the Prince a short bow.

“Sir Leon,” Trajan said, only smiling at the younger man once the door had closed. “Please, come in, I’d like to talk.”

Trajan led the two over to the chairs and sofas by the hearth, completely abandoning whatever it was that he was doing.

“Isn’t that stuff more important?” Leon asked with an eyebrow raised in curiosity, his golden eyes boring into Trajan’s in both amusement and accusation.

“It’s fine,” Trajan said with a dismissive hand wave. “I was just looking over one of August’s proposals. It’s quite well thought out, to the point that I feel that I don’t really have to look it over.”

“What does His Highness want to do?” Leon curiously asked.

Trajan’s chiseled face twisted in a smile and he said, “Perhaps one of the best thought out proposals he’s had in a while. He’s mostly let me take charge since we came back from the Horns, but ever since that unfortunate business in the arena, he’s been trying to take charge a bit more. He realized that I’m not enough backing for him and that he needs to make his own moves, just as he had been doing before asking for my help…”

“And that proposal?” Leon asked again.

Trajan quietly laughed at himself; he’d let his pride in his nephew get the better of him. “A reassignment of Legions. He wants to get as many Legion soldiers out of the hands of his brother as he can, and his reasoning is quite sound. Those Legions in the west, south, and center led by common Legates he wants to move to the north or to the east, reasoning that those are the places that have received the vast majority of foreign incursions of late.”

“Only those led by commoners?” Leon asked. “I assume that he assumes those led by nobles are corrupt or already in Octavius’ pocket?”

“He does,” Trajan confirmed.

“Can this be pulled off?” Leon asked.

“It can,” Trajan said. “They haven’t declared for either of the Princes, but if I ask the Chancellor, Chief Steward, and Spymaster to allow this, then there won’t be much that Octavius can do. He can’t have them removed from their offices without August’s consent, just as August can’t remove any of the nobles or knights on Octavius’ side from their positions without Octavius’ agreement. This is probably the only thing keeping the peace right now… Not to mention we have other plans in the works to take care of things that need to get done regardless of who’s in charge…”

Leon nodded, fully willing to let the Prince rant a bit more, but as he trailed off, Trajan seemed to remember what he actually wanted to talk to Leon about and changed the subject.

“I did some digging into the city’s defenses,” Trajan began with a solemn tone. “I wanted to know exactly how so many powerful vampires made it so far into the city with no one the wiser.”

“Find anything of note?” Leon asked, his own interest piqued at what the Prince just said.

Trajan paused for a moment, then sighed in dejection. “None,” he said. “The city has no walls, no real defenses to speak of. It’s never really needed such defenses, save for around the Royal Palace. Our rituals to detect demonic power should’ve found something, but it seems that the vampires must’ve hidden themselves well, for nothing was detected.”

Leon breathed a secret sigh of relief at his own demonic affiliation continuing to go unnoticed, but he was a bit concerned about these rituals. And now he had a perfect opportunity to dig for more information.

“What exactly do these rituals entail? I’m not too familiar with them…” Leon asked.

“They’re mostly just a collection of knights with great experience in dealing with and identifying demonic activity—specialists in demonology, in other words—taking a few potions or other consumables that can enhance magic senses, and then they simply look for sources of demonic power.”

“That’s it?” Leon asked in disbelief.

“Most rituals are just that simple,” Trajan said. “But, like I said, there are potions to aid in the detection of very specific things, and demonic power can be easily detected by those who know what they’re looking for. To be more specific, it takes a group of a dozen or so powerful sixth-tier mages taking these potions to perform this ritual with any reliability, and it’s quite draining from what I understand, so there’s some time for rest needed afterward before those who performed the ritual can repeat the process, perhaps as long as week even.”

“So, if it’s a magic senses-based ritual, it could potentially be subverted by the standard enchantments on many villas that disperse magic senses? The same ones that are put on just about every Legion encampment that gets built?” Leon asked.

“Yes,” Trajan said, pleased that Leon understood the complexity of the problem they faced. “We do our best, but the Bull Kingdom is large and possesses complex infrastructure. Nothing we do is ever going to be adequate, and that’s why, even now, after weeks of searching, we’re still finding the holes that these leeches have hidden in. I’m not even confident that we’ll ever find them all, especially if there are more of similar power to those you’ve encountered as of late…”

Leon frowned. So far, he’d been attacked by two seventh-tier vampires. One would be enough to upset the balance of power in a state like the Bull Kingdom, and he’d been ‘lucky’ enough to encounter two. Who knew what else might still be out there, hiding, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Who knew how many might even still be in hiding, hunting down Xaphan, and him by proxy.

It was a disturbing thought, to say the least, and Leon’s frown grew deeper.

“By the way, Leon, you never did tell me who that woman was who helped you with those vampires… She seemed incredibly powerful and confident that she could protect you from any future attacks, and you seemed to agree, so I let it be. However, I think I’ve been more than patient, and I would very much like to know who she is.”

Leon slowly nodded and averted his gaze as he thought about what he should and shouldn’t say. If he couldn’t trust Trajan, then there was just about no one he could trust, so he was inclined to tell Trajan the truth. However, he couldn’t be completely certain that Trajan wouldn’t let this secret slip, as he did with his identity to the Paladins.

In the end, though, he knew that he couldn’t keep everything a secret, but he decided to be a bit judicious with what he said.

“I met her in the wilderness when I…” Leon paused, momentarily at a loss for how to describe this without using the term ‘deserted’, “… when I attacked the Talfar forces that one time…”

“I see…” Trajan said, narrowing his eyes at this reminder of Leon’s foolish recklessness.

“She had no love for the Talfar forces, so she gave me shelter for a little while. I suppose you could say we kind of… hit it off, and she eventually decided to come find me after the war ended…”

Trajan stared at Leon in disbelief, both in the story and in that Leon hadn’t told him before this point.

“Really?” the incredulous Prince asked, not quite believing that Leon happened to run into an incredibly powerful mage after going AWOL.

“Really,” Leon definitively affirmed.

“How strong is she?” Trajan asked. He was at the peak of sixth-tier power, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of her aura, indicating a minimum of seventh-tier strength. He wanted to know just who she was and the limits of her strength, just in case.

“Early seventh-tier,” Leon lied without hesitation. Naiad hadn’t been completely up front with him about the power she possessed, but it was easy enough for him to see from her handling of the vampires that she was likely in the eighth-tier, if not higher. But he wasn’t going to tell Trajan the truth and further complicate these matters.

“Seventh-tier…” Trajan mumbled. Incredibly strong, to be sure, but not unreasonably so. He decided that, for the time being, at least, to take Leon at face value and not to press for further details. The woman was on Leon’s side and quite powerful, so it was always better to be over-cautious than reckless and risk offending them, especially since this woman didn’t seem aligned with any organized power. Normally, though, he would’ve wanted to meet her more formally and try to entice her to join the Bull Kingdom, but since she was going to defend Leon, then Trajan let it slide.

“Need anything else?” Leon asked, eager as he was to move on from the topic of Naiad.

“Just one more thing about her,” Trajan began, causing Leon’s heart to sink into his feet. “What, specifically, is your relationship with her?”

Leon blinked, not quite sure how to respond. He could say they were lovers, but that was hardly true. He could say that he was indebted to her, but that would cause confusion and more questions. If he said they were just friends, then he doubted that Trajan would believe him.

In the end, with only a second or two to think, Leon went with the answer he thought would lead to the least amount of questions and help to move them on as quickly as possible.

“She’s my girl.”

Trajan’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull in shock. No one in their right mind would ever say that Leon wasn’t good-looking, but with his misanthropy, unfriendly demeanor, and solitary nature, a lady-killer he was not. In fact, Trajan was already quite amazed that he was with Elise, but he simply chalked it up to eccentricity on Elise’s part. Now that he was told that Leon had a second lover, though, it just about shook Trajan’s entire view of Leon.

“You… she… how did… Really?” Trajan sputtered.

“Yes,” Leon answered, again without hesitation. He looked Trajan in the eye, his golden eyes not wavering an inch from Trajan’s shiny black orbs. He was a realist and knew well enough how he came off to most people, but it still took a bit of work for him to not be too offended by Trajan’s obvious incredulousness.

Trajan nodded and opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He blinked in surprise, and after several long seconds of astonished silence, he finally managed to say, “Well… well done…”

Leon smiled awkwardly and nodded along with Trajan. The awkwardness was extended for almost fifteen seconds as Leon remained silent and the Prince wasn’t quite sure how to move on. So shocked was he that he didn’t even realize that Leon hadn’t even told him what her name was.

Finally, though, after both almost felt like they were about to die of old age from how long they had been sitting there in silence, Trajan just rose from his seat and said, “Follow me. There’s something I want you to attend.”

Leon got up as well, asking, “What is it?”

Trajan paused at the door, then turned to the younger man and said, “I want you to be a witness for the awakening of August’s blood.”