Adon and Rosslyn emerged into the practice room with a dark cloud still hanging over them.

  The butterfly thought for a moment that it would be obvious to everyone else once they laid eyes on himself and the Princess, but he was wrong. In fact, when they stepped through the door, no one seemed to notice them for several seconds. The group was already engrossed in their own conversations at the opposite end of the space. Frederick was talking animatedly to Goldie, while William was having a quiet chat with Samson. Meanwhile, in the center of the room, Sir Jaren was pantomiming fighting while the spiderlings watched with rapt attention. Apparently they were interested in learning some moves.

  Gosh, I guess this is the first time I’ve ever seen them all interacting without me or Rosslyn being involved, Adon thought.

  Besides Rosslyn, Goldie, and Samson, it was easy for Adon to sort of imagine that everyone else disappeared when they weren’t within his view.

  Clearly, that was not the case.

  Right. I’m not actually that important. The sentiment was surprisingly comforting. Adon guessed that was because it was so familiar. In most of his past lives, he had been so lame that it had been impossible for him to believe that he was the ‘main character’ of his setting. It had been depressing in some ways, but it was also very low pressure. Really, this incarnation, in which he felt the fate of a nation might rest on his nonexistent shoulders, was an extreme anomaly.

  Adon took further stock while he and Rosslyn remained unnoticed, observing the body language a little more.

  He was pleasantly surprised to see that Frederick and Goldie seemed to be getting along well, despite the young lord’s seeming prejudice against mystic beasts from when they first met him. Adon had less idea what to make of the interaction between William and Samson. They were too far away for the butterfly to hear what they were saying, but William’s mannerisms gave him slightly conspiratorial vibes.

  Then again, that might just be because Adon was in a mood to be suspicious and hostile toward almost anything William might do.

  Adon flapped his wings differently to alter his flight path, trying to more or less hold in place in midair, and turned to Rosslyn to see how she was reacting to the group interactions. She gave him nothing, though. She did not slow down to keep pace with him or look in his general direction to see why he was decelerating.

  She didn’t even seem to be perceptibly thinking, and the cloud of emotions around her had thinned out to almost nothing.

  Is this the telepathic equivalent of the silent treatment? Adon wondered.

  As he had that thought, the room finally seemed to take notice of the Princess and the butterfly. All eyes turned toward Rosslyn, whose presence as she strode into the center of the room seemed to fill the space. She looked like a woman on a mission.

  Sir Jaren was the closest, and he stepped up to meet her first.

  “Your Highness, I was told that you wish to spar with Lord William, and you will need me to serve as the referee?” he said.

  Rosslyn nodded. “Yes, thank you very much, Sir Jaren.”

  “Would you like me to track points, or…?”

  “We will continue until one of us gives up or is disarmed,” Rosslyn said firmly.

  “Very well,” the man-at-arms said. He stepped back away from Rosslyn and raised his voice so that the entire room could hear him. “This will be a one on one bout between Princess Rosslyn and Lord William, with the use of mana to enhance the body, weapons, and other equipment permitted. However, use of magic for any other purpose would likely wreck this room, so I request that both combatants refrain. The bout will continue until one fighter surrenders or is disarmed. Everyone else, please clear the fighting space.” He gestured toward a few chairs positioned to the side of the training floor.

  Frederick stooped low so that Goldie could step onto one of his arms. Then he came over with her and placed his hand on the ground near the spiderlings, and the tiny creatures crawled up his fingers onto the back of his hand. He carried them off to the side and set all the spiders with him down on the chair furthest to the left.

  William similarly served as a taxi for Samson, placing him on the same chair with his siblings and mother, but Adon’s mind remained focused on what he had just seen Frederick do.

  It’s just a few days ago that he was thinking of mystic beasts as “strange monsters,” and “embarrassing reminders of our primitive past,” Adon thought. The power and the curse of his Impeccable Memory was that he could remember exactly what he had seen and heard in the past if he tried to. What changed?

  Frederick took a seat beside the spiders and turned to look down at Goldie. He seemed happy to be sitting beside the arachnids who he had so disdained before. On an impulse, Adon activated Telepathy and pried into Frederick’s thinking at that moment.

  I hope she is comfortable, Frederick thought. You had better put on a good show for us, brother.

  This did not answer any of Adon’s questions except one. The regard that Frederick suddenly seemed to be demonstrating for the spiders might actually be real.

  Perhaps the young lord had used the last few days to research the history of mystic beasts and discovered an appreciation for them, with all the notable deeds they had apparently accomplished in the continent’s history.

  There was some more movement from the others in the training area, and Adon automatically made himself flutter in the direction of the chairs. He needed to clear the fighting space too.

  Then Adon’s attention shifted back to the center of the room, where William was walking up to Rosslyn. The butterfly did not need Telepathy to know what William was thinking.

  He wore a small but cocky smile that said, I’m about to kick some ass.

  Or that was how Adon read the young lord’s body language, anyway.

  And Adon still remembered what William had been thinking back when he last saw the young man, too.

  “Even if she is still unsure of her feelings, she will at least respect my strength after this.”

  Even though Adon thought he knew the lay of the land, he kept Telepathy active. He still wanted to know where William’s mind was.

  “Princess Rosslyn, thank you for honoring me with this duel,” the young lord said, smiling and making eye contact with the Princess.

  On the surface, he seemed every inch the gallant gentleman.

  Inside, his train of thought was, This is the first big step toward wedding bells. Finally.

  An aura of smugness began to ooze out of him. If Adon was not already in a bad mood, the cloud of self-satisfied cockiness from William would have turned his mood in a negative direction. As things stood, it was all Adon could do to hold still and refrain from shooting spines at the young lord.

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  Doubtless, William would have just deflected them with his sword, and Adon would only have wound up making him look cool anyway.

  “The honor is all mine, William,” Rosslyn replied formally.

  The pair stepped apart, drew swords from their sides—Adon thought the blades were probably dulled, but he could not tell visually—and simultaneously gave each other a little salute.

  They’ve done this before, Adon realized. At some point. He felt an alienating sense of a shared history between the two.

  Of course there would be a shared history there. They were two members of the aristocracy, and Rosslyn had been open that she and William had known each other for years. Since childhood.

  Stop being insecure, Adon, he told himself. You already know she wasn’t excited about this duel. She feels weird about it. Adon had completely set aside the question of whether he should feel as possessive of Rosslyn as his line of thinking seemed to suggest he was.

  Then he heard Rosslyn’s thoughts.

  Give me your best shot, she thought. Her eyes bored into William’s with an intensity Adon had only rarely seen from her.

  “I will count down,” said Sir Jaren.

  Both Rosslyn and William nodded, but they did not take their eyes off each other. It was as if they were the only two people in the world.

  “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. You may begin!”

  Then the Princess and the Duke’s son clashed, blades moving blindingly quickly.

  The first strike was a thrust by William that Rosslyn parried. When the weapons struck, the collision made such a reverberation that it made Adon’s whole body tingle as the sound struck him. There was a great power there that Adon had never seen either of them use before.

  The next several minutes continued at that pace.

  Rosslyn went on the offensive this time, swinging and stabbing with her weapon at such speeds that it seemed to Adon to be in multiple places at once. He swore to himself that he could see the weapon chopping at William’s legs and stabbing at the young lord’s torso at the same moment. But that was Rosslyn’s speed.

  William was clearly quick enough to keep up, however, and he gave as good as he got.

  After allowing Rosslyn to push him back several steps closer to the edge of the ring, he sidestepped an attack and threw such a heavy chop at her head that Adon could have sworn William was actually trying to cause injury rather than to secure the surrender.

  Rosslyn blocked the blow at the last moment with the hilt of her sword, but it was a very near thing. Then she was on the back foot, retreating away from the edge she had pushed William into.

  If Adon had imagined that the duelists’ familiarity with each other would make either of them hesitate to fight at full power and speed, he would have been incorrect.

  For the most part, the butterfly could not even track their movements.

  He turned his head slightly so that Sir Jaren, standing just outside the ring of combat, was within his field of vision, and Adon immediately read from the man-at-arms’ thoughts that he could not track their movements either.

  The Princess certainly has grown up splendidly, Sir Jaren thought. I already knew I had nothing left to teach her, but I have only seen her fight like this against that woman. I wonder if young William can measure up to her test…

  The phrase “that woman” came with a mental image, so Adon recognized that the other person who had driven Rosslyn to show her full power was not Sir Jaren or even one of Rosslyn’s other knights, but apparently the slave who hated Rosslyn and her father so profoundly.

  I’ll have to remember to ask more about her at some point…

  Adon gave up on trying to track the specific movements in the fight for a while, and he instead focused on grasping the flow of battle and the moods of the two contestants.

  The duel mostly appeared to move in Rosslyn’s direction. William spent far more time on the defensive than she did, even as the fight dragged on for close to an hour and sweat poured down both people’s faces.

  However, the moods of the two fighters presented a different story.

  Rosslyn seemed to be fighting as if her life was at stake instead of her pride and a nebulous promise to consider William as a suitor. It was possible that she felt as if she was actually in combat. Adon could not sense any thoughts from her other than consideration of the next move she would make and, when she had a moment’s breathing room, what William might do next.

  For William’s part, he fought with equal vigor, but Adon read his mental state as slightly less committed. The young lord mostly kept his focus on the next step in the battle at hand, so it took some time for Adon to confirm his theory.

  But there was a pause, in a moment when Rosslyn stepped back, and Adon caught William thinking in that gap.

  Good, I am wearing her down. Rosslyn always did like to over-commit. She is not defending her blind spot as well now. In a few minutes, she should be worn down enough for me to strike there and take her out of the fight.

  With those thoughts came an image from William’s mind. He was imagining getting onto the side of Rosslyn’s body where she could not see due to her ruined eye, slashing at her arm—and it appeared that in William’s vision of the fight’s ending, the attack might actually break her arm at the elbow.

  He wouldn’t actually try to seriously hurt Rosslyn in this stupid duel, would he? Adon questioned silently. There’s no way William is that desperate to win. He wants her to marry him…

  As if in answer to Adon’s question, William confirmed in his own mind: Yes, a beneficial injury. If she has a broken bone, she cannot enter the dungeon. She will remain safe here while I go and destroy the core…

  Adon got the drift from digging a little deeper into William’s unspoken motivations that the young lord thought Rosslyn would feel compelled to marry him if he ended up having to fight and win her battles for her. To do otherwise would be dishonorable and might discredit her in the eyes of her own people as well as the international community.

  Bastard, Adon thought silently. He managed to keep his body very still, so that no one around him noticed the journey he was experiencing mentally, but the butterfly’s serene exterior hid a terrible tension within his psyche.

  I should have told Rosslyn what William thought of her weeks ago. Ugh!

  But it was too late now.

  Rosslyn and William continued fighting, and Adon watched helplessly as William implemented his strategy.

  As Rosslyn attacked, William dodged and shifted to the side, moving closer to being in her blind spot. She pivoted and placed him in the center of her field of vision again, before renewing the attack. William moved to the side again, and they repeated the dance.

  Adon noted that they were slowing down considerably now. After an hour of hard fighting, they still retained the strength to hurt each other and to block each other’s blows, but the speed and grace was rapidly disappearing.

  As William sidestepped again and slipped into Rosslyn’s blind side, Adon’s entire body stiffened with tension.

  Rosslyn managed to dodge the next slash, a heavy blow aimed at her arm, but it seemed like a near miss to Adon. She staggered slightly after throwing her body to the side, a consequence of not knowing how far away to move because she could not see William at the moment he attacked.

  He’s really just shamelessly taking advantage of her weakness…

  Barely thinking about it, Adon began using Transformation. However, this time was far different from his Transformation in the bedroom earlier. This time, he was being much more subtle.

  The butterfly first turned his bottom pair of limbs invisible, then began extending them, stretching them out into long strings and reaching closer and closer to the fight. He didn’t know quite what he intended to do, but he had semi-consciously decided that he did not want the fight to end with William winning. At least not by attacking from Rosslyn’s blind spot over and over. It was basically cheating.

  With that on top of William’s view of Rosslyn’s role as a woman, Adon was ready to do a bit of cheating of his own.

  William slipped onto Rosslyn’s blind side again and chose his moment to launch another blow, this one aimed for her side. He lunged—and Adon’s long spaghetti limbs struck.

  He imbued a tiny amount of mana into the ends of his legs, and one of them broke the surface of the floor just in front of William’s left foot. The other limb slightly raised the piece of broken surface.

  William’s foot struck the piece of broken floor, his balance shattered, and Rosslyn filled that gap in an instant. It was as if she’d had some sense other than sight telling her exactly where William was.

  Her sword slipped into the gap between his arm and his body as William flailed for balance, and she slapped the flat of her blade against the knuckles of William’s sword hand.

  The young lord yelped quietly—clearly in surprise, more than in pain—and the weapon flew from his hand.

  “The spar is over!” Sir Jaren shouted instantly.