Reality hits me far too quickly. I managed to sleep for a few hours after exhausting myself with my men, but as soon as I wake up, I know it’s time to take on my responsibility.

Just before I drifted off to sleep, Tamara came in, letting me know that there had been no change in my mother’s condition. I felt guilty for not sitting by her bedside, but what good would that do. It was far more important to reinstate the bonds with my Guardians, whose help I’ll need now more than ever before.

I’m to rule. I have no idea how to do that. I’ve tried learning more about the Realm, about how my mother keeps everything going, and how she deals with her Council. I’ve been to most Council sessions, so that will definitely help. I know them all, and I know some of their weaknesses and strengths. I’m sure there will be members of the Council who will not approve of me taking over while Beira is sick.

Theodore, the physician, and Magnus, the treasurer, aren’t my biggest fans. They probably see me as a threat to their own power. Luckily, Tamara, Gwain and Ada are all on my side. I’m not quite sure about Algonquin and Zephyr, but I know that if I get one of them to support me, the other will follow.

In the end, they will all have to follow my mother’s wishes, but it’s on them to decide whether they’ll make it easy or hard for themselves. We’re at war and there’s no time for infighting. I hope these men aren’t too stuck in their traditions to realise that.

“Ready for today?” Frost asks me softly, noticing that I’m awake. I’m sandwiched between him and his brother, with Arc’s arm flung across Storm so he can have his hand on my hip. When I concentrate on it, I can feel a trickle of energy flow between the four of us. Our bond.

I don’t know where Crispin is. Maybe still with my mother. He didn’t join us last night, even though the bed would have been large enough to accommodate him as well. It’s in his right to be angry with me though. There’s no excuse for what I did. I should have kept control, even with the unicorn sparklies clouding my mind.

Frost pulls me closer and I remember that he asked me a question.

“I wouldn’t call it ready. I don’t think I’m prepared for this, but I’ll do what’s required of me and will try and fill my mother’s role as well as I can.”

“Spoken like a true Princess.” He smiles and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Storm will be with you in the Council. You won’t be alone.”

“What about the rest of you?”

He chuckles. “We’ll be busy preparing for war.”

Before I leave the room, I wrap a colourful scarf around my head to hide my bald patch. I need to find a better solution for this soon, but I don’t have the time right now. A scarf will have to do. And unsurprisingly, my new Demigoddess beauty is making me look good even with this on my head.

When I arrive at the Council Chamber, Gwain is waiting for me outside. The Master of Arms is looking distraught, a look I’ve not seen on him before.

“Your Highness… a word?”

I nod and he leads me along a corridor, away from the Council. When we’re out of earshot from any curious noble, he stops and looks at me with a pained expression.

“Ada has disappeared.”

“What?”

Ada is his second in command, a woman with her own harem of Guardians. The last time I’d seen her had been with the dragon prisoner in the dungeons. She’d been in charge of interrogating him, although even she hadn’t managed to get much out of the dragon shifter.”

“She left last night. There’s a note…”

I frown in irritation.

“Last night? Why am I only hearing about this now?”

He shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “Tamara told me to wait until today to tell you, she said you were busy.”

Now it’s my turn to look uncomfortable. I was busy indeed, exploring my Guardians’ bodies inside out. Still, I would have made myself available for something as important as this.

“What’s on the note?” I ask brusquely and he takes a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket.

I stretch out my hand to take it but instead, he unfolds it.

“It’s written in code, Your Highness. Even knowing the cypher, I can’t make much sense out of it though. She says she needs to leave, that she has to do something that will aid the war effort. She doesn’t say what. There’s several sentences in which she apologises, and that she hopes we won’t treat her as a traitor.”

“Why would we do that? A deserter, perhaps, but a traitor?”

Gwain clears his throat. “Ada isn’t the only one who’s gone. She took the prisoner with her. The dragon.”

Anger fills me. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

I had hoped that the Master of Arms would support me, see me as a worthy heir. Instead, he didn’t even bother to inform me that a prisoner escaped.

“We didn’t make the connection until about an hour ago when the guards told me that the dragon was gone.” He pauses, then looks at me gravely. “I’m wondering if he managed to bewitch her somehow. Manipulate her. We know almost nothing about the powers dragons possess, and it could well be within the realms of the possible that he made her leave.”

He’s right. When the prisoner was caught, Algonquin provided us with all the books on dragons from the Royal Library. There weren’t many and most of them were based on legends or hearsay, not on actual facts.

“What about her men?” I ask.

“Gone.”

“Then I doubt that she was manipulated to leave. She would have needed some excellent arguments for them to come with her. The dragon convincing her, maybe, but also the three men? No, I think she must have a genuine reason.”

I sigh. “Are we going to search for her?”

“Usually I’d say yes, but at the moment, our soldiers are needed more urgently here and in our outposts.” He clears his throat again. “I propose that Storm takes her place. I know he is head of your personal guard, but you have three others to keep you safe. We need his expertise and authority.”

To be honest, I had already planned to give Storm a more important role on the Council. This might actually turn out to be quite convenient. Not that it doesn’t upset me that Ada left. We’d had a few chats about being in a relationship with several men at once, and had begun to form the beginnings of a friendship.

A gong sounds through the corridor, the signal that the Council session is about to begin.

“Anything else?” I ask Gwain, mentally preparing for yet more bad news.

“No, nothing that needs your attention personally.”

“Good, then let’s get this over with.”

I turn and stride along the hallway, leaving him behind. I feel like a real Princess, suddenly, strong and confident and a tiny bit ruthless.

Everyone but Theodore is in attendance. He’s looking after my mother so that Crispin can get some rest. I make a mental note to seek out my healer Guardian after this meeting, to check if he’s alright. It must have been exhausting to stay with Beira all night. Maybe it’s made him even more resentful towards me. I sigh inwardly. Even more issues to fix. How did I manage to break so many things during one week of grief and madness?

Instead of my usual place on my mother’s side, this time, I take the seat at the head of the table, the chair that looks almost like a throne. It’s surprisingly uncomfortable. No wonder my mother always keeps these sessions as brief as possible.

“You’ll all know by now that my mother won’t be able to attend the Council meetings for a while,” I begin. “She’s asked me to take her place until she’s recovered.”

I watch their reactions. Tamara is smiling at me reassuringly, as is Storm. There’s pride in his eyes, and it makes my stomach do little flips of happiness. I made him sit in Ada’s usual place, so that it’s immediately clear to all that he’s taking over her role.

There’s been no protest about that. They all know he’s the right person for the job. He’s been ready for more responsibility for a long time.

The problem with Guardians is that they live forever. They don’t usually retire, so to move up in the hierarchy, Guardians have to hope that their superior moves, disappears or dies. No wonder there’s so much intrigue in this place.

Zephyr is smiling at me as well. That’s a good sign. The Master of the Wings is a hard man to read; I’m never quite sure if his confused appearance is real or fake.

The librarian, Algonquin, is looking at me with a blank expression. Time will tell if he’ll support me or not.

However, I’d much rather take his blankness than the outrage Magnus is openly showing. What was he expecting to happen? For him to take my mother’s place? Or for the Council to take over and rule together, rather than be the supporting advisors?

As much as I support democracy on Earth, for the Realm, it doesn’t make as much sense. Beira is a Goddess, the Mother of Gods. Even if she wasn’t ruling, people would still turn to her for help. She’d never be able to not play an important role – or the most important role.

She’s a Queen through and through, and that won’t change. I can’t wait for her to be back on her feet.

I turn to the Mistress of the Household. “Tamara, I believe you have an update on my mother’s health?”

She nods. “She’s stable and was talking a little this morning. She repeated her wish that Princess Wynter acts as her replacement.”

I smile at her, grateful for the reassertion. The more often Magnus and Theodore hear this, the more likely it is that they’ll support me eventually. Pity the healer isn’t here. Maybe I should ask Tamara to spread the message throughout the Palace, so that everybody knows what’s happening. It will need some thinking about. I don’t want my mother to appear weak, but at the same time, I can’t afford for people to think that I don’t have the authority to enforce whatever I need to do to win this war.

“Good. You will have noticed that Storm is sitting in Ada’s place. Ada has left on an important mission and will likely not be back for some time. Therefore, Gwain and I have decided to promote Storm to Deputy Master in Arms, reporting directly to Gwain and myself. One of my other three Guardians will take over his role as the head of my personal guard, so don’t worry, I won’t be left defenceless.”

I smile drily. I don’t think most of them are aware that Storm isn’t actually the leader of the four. They’re all equal, and they let him pretend to be the head of my guard when it’s needed. He is the most dominant of the four, so the role fits him.

“Now, I believe Gwain has some more to update us on.”

The Master of Arms stands and gives me a small bow.

“Yes, Your Highness. There have been attacks on the Southern Gate. We managed to defeat the Summer soldiers, but we took heavy losses. I’ve dispatched reinforcements and additional healers to all the Gates. We need to prepare however that eventually, they will manage to break through. I don’t know if you’re aware, but two decades ago, Angus managed to get some of his warriors into the Realm without the use of the Gates. In response, Queen Beira strengthened the invisible defences of the Realm, but we don’t know how long they will hold. Especially now…”

I swallow hard. I know that story. Those were the Summer soldiers who killed my father. Yet another reason to hate Angus.

“If he attacks and breaks through one of the Gates, how quickly will we get the rest of the army there?” I ask and am surprised when Gwain averts his eyes.

“Usually, Queen Beira would transport a large number of them, giving the rest time to fly there themselves. But now… we’ll have to spread out our forces across the Realm, making it easier for them to congregate in one place should the need arise.”

“When the need arises,” Tamara corrects. “There’s no question that we’ll be attacked soon. Who knows whether it will be Angus first or the Morrigan, or maybe they’re working together and will combine their forces.” She looks straight at me. “Princess, I think you should have a talk with your mother and see if you may perhaps have inherited the power of transporting others across distances. Other Gods can teleport themselves, and maybe one or two others, but Queen Beira is the only one besides Angus who can take large amounts of people with them. If you had the same power, well, we’d have an additional way of fighting them.”

“I will speak to her later today,” I promise. I was planning to talk to her about my new lightning powers anyway. I’ve never heard of anyone having lightning magic before, but maybe I’ve just not talked to the right people. It was a shock to have yet another new magic. Maybe it was the sparklies that caused it. Maybe it wasn’t real lightning after all, just a side effect of all the unicorn magic I’d absorbed. Whatever it was, it had been incredibly powerful and explosive. If I could harness that power, it would be a powerful weapon against our enemies.

I cringe. Here I am, talking about enemies and war and death. Not long ago, I was an almost-human on Earth, having romantic notions about living in the Realm as a Princess. I never imagined there’d be war. I didn’t think anyone would dare stand against my mother.

And now, we don’t have just one enemy, but several. If what Chesca said is true, the Morrigan is controlling the demons that are attacking our borders almost daily now. Then there’s Angus and his twisted hate for Beira. Bad enough to have one, but we have two, one as powerful as the other. Angus may have the better warriors, but the Morrigan has a mind more cruel and evil than I can even imagine. I shudder when I think of what she did to Crispin. How she manipulated him into hurting and killing others.

“Tamara, any news on the Morrigan? Did the man who brought us the message give us any leads?”

‘Message’ sounds a lot better than ‘the chest that contained my dead mother’s hand’. The messenger took poison when he arrived, dying almost instantly.

“We retraced his steps for a bit but then his tracks disappeared. He came from the North, and he was on foot, he didn’t fly.”

I frown. “So he wasn’t a Guardian?”

“He was. He’d had his wings removed.”

A collective gasp echoes through the room. I didn’t even know that was possible. Our wings aren’t like you imagine angels’ wings, always visible, always connected to our bodies. They only pop into existence when we call for them, and even then, they’re ethereal, not quite as solid as they should be considering that they carry us through the air. I’ve got enough practice now that if someone gripped one of my wings, I could make them disappear before they could hurt me. So how did the Morrigan cut off this man’s wings?

There’s no doubt that it was her. It’s such a twisted thing to do, something so evil and cruel that I can’t imagine Angus being responsible for it. He’s a brute and he’s single-minded about what he wants. He’s out in the open and makes up his lack of subterfuge in numbers and his warriors’ skills.

I decide not to ask about the details of how the man was tortured before he brought us the message.

“Any idea where he might have come from? What’s in the North?”

Algonquin gets up and takes a rolled-up map from a shelf behind him, before spreading it out on the table in the centre of the room.

The Palace and the surrounding towns are in the centre of the Realm, slightly more West than East. I recognise some of the names of smaller towns and villages from previous Council meetings. Most of the inhabited areas are in the Southern half of the Realm, with only small dots showing that people are living in dwellings further North.

Algonquin points to a strange runic symbol on the top of the map, straight at the Northern edge of the Realm.

“There’s a ruined Gate up there, but it’s been broken for centuries, millennia even. I believe it’s checked on every year or so, but maybe someone should take a closer look, just in case.”

“How does a Gate break?” I ask in confusion. I thought they were unbreakable, eternal gateways between the Realms.

Algonquin gives me a strange look. “By a demigod travelling through it while having a magic flare. The Gate exploded, and so did the demigod.”

I shudder. “Who was it?”

“You wouldn’t have heard of him. He died on the day he came of age, when his powers erupted. He’d been in the Realms to visit his parents, and everybody thought that his magic would develop the next day, but they got it wrong. His raw, untamed power tore the Gate apart.”

I swallow past the stone that seems to have lodged itself in my throat. I travelled through a Gate in the days after my own magic had flared up several times. Had I been in danger? Could I have destroyed the Gate we used?

I shrug off these uncomfortable thoughts. “Okay, check on the Gate. If it’s working again and letting people into the Realm, we need to know about it.”

"Yes, Your Majesty," Algonquin says with a bow, before his expression changes in embarrassment as everyone in the room suddenly seems busy clearing their throats.

It seems like the librarian is on my side after all.