It was already late in the night when we finally returned to our respective quarters. I was currently resting comfortably on Chloe's plush bed while she lay stretched out flat across my chest, her breathing steady and warm.
"You've managed to gather quite the eccentric menagerie of supernaturals," I remarked quietly, running my fingers through her long dark hair.
She nodded against my collarbone and nudged herself deeper into my embrace.
Though I hadn't yet gotten close and personal with every single operative in her unit, I intuitively knew that every last one of them was deeply unordinary—standing miles above even the baseline supernatural population.
"Yes, they are all uniquely talented. I didn't actively go out and gather them, per se," Chloe murmured. "You could say that I simply chanced upon each of them at various turns of fate."
"Oh? Would you be willing to share the stories of those encounters?"
"You're feeling curious, are you? Well, I suppose I could narrate at least one of them to pass the time," she said, shifting her weight to make herself even more comfortable against me before continuing.
"Which tale shall I pick to start with? Let's begin with Eric's story, seeing as you crossed paths with him first." Chloe tapped a delicate finger thoughtfully against her chin before launching into the history of her meeting with Prince Eric.
"Eric, as you likely already know, is a Fae prince. Although the royal position itself carries immense prestige and unassailable majesty, the title of prince isn't exactly rare—after all, there are at least hundreds of princes and even more princesses running around the higher courts. The sheer volume of royal progeny would normally make for a brutally bloody succession rite. That is, of course, unless the reigning king arbitrarily decides to bypass tradition and directly pass his throne down to a specific heir, like he did with Eric. Naturally, this sparked intense discontent and bitterness among his numerous brothers and sisters."
"Eric's father, after all, is the Fae king who has reigned the longest out of all current monarchs. Nothing in the political landscape indicated that he would suddenly decide to abdicate his throne a couple of years ago. Still, the spoken word of a Fae king is absolute law, so his siblings could do little more than begrudgingly accept the decree."
"Pause," I interrupted, lifting my head slightly. "I heard a completely different version of the rumor. Word on the street was that Eric was banished because he slept with numerous high-ranking women—among them, the beloved wife of another rival Fae king. The story went that he was exiled because his father wasn't politically strong enough to shield him from the fallout. At least, that's what Stella told me when I first met him. From what you're explaining now, I'm strongly sensing things aren't nearly that simple."
Chloe affected a deeply wry expression, letting out a soft huff. "So that's the curated narrative he's been peddling to outsiders..."
"You mean to tell me none of it is actually true?" I asked, genuinely shocked.
"Not entirely—it's not an outright lie, per se. Fae creatures are constitutionally incapable of uttering a direct falsehood. Instead, he simply manipulated public perception by being aggressively selective with the truth. The Fae folk are absolute masters of that specific art form."
"As I was saying, his father is one of the Fae monarchs who has maintained the longest unbroken reign among the six current rulers. Naturally, for that feat to be possible, he cannot possibly be weak. In fact, nobody knows the true extent of his real combat strength. Even with his capabilities shrouded in mystery, while he actively sat the throne, none of the other rival kings dared to openly challenge him."
"If his father had actually been present when Eric was put on trial and sentenced to exile, the entire proceeding would have played out drastically differently. Somehow, however, the king was held away in some distant domain, dealing with pressing, unknown matters of state."
"So, Eric deliberately misled Stella regarding the primary catalyst for his exile. That doesn't mean what he told her about his dissolute, womanizing nature was entirely fabricated—it was simply only a fraction of the truth. His envious brethren cleverly weaponized his hedonistic reputation as a convenient, socially acceptable excuse to railroad him out of the realm."
"They publicly claimed they couldn't afford to politically defend themselves against the potential, catastrophic wrath of a rival Fae king if the scandal escalated. Most likely, the inconvenient fact that a royal woman promised to another Fae king ended up in his bed was indeed engineered as a deliberate piece of the broader framing scheme."
"You need to understand: Eric is fundamentally unique, even among the upper echelons of Fae royalty. Not only was he born with a rare, absolute mastery over the light element, but he also awakened an entirely separate, terrifying power that quietly frightened every single Fae aristocrat—he possessed the ability to actively manipulate and feed directly off the raw emotional energy of living beings."
"Those two distinct powers, viewed separately, weren't overly alarming. The true nightmare lay in the fact that by feeding on surrounding emotions, his light-manipulation capacity grew exponentially stronger without any apparent upper limit. The two disparate powers had developed a deeply synergistic, compounding loop."
"Anyone with basic strategic foresight could easily project that within a couple of centuries, he would have easily breached the higher spectrum of power in the Fae realms—potentially claiming the absolute pinnacle just beneath the gods themselves. For his rival kings, his ambitious brothers, his sisters, and various shadowy political factions operating behind the scenes, that was a deeply terrifying prospect."
"Consequently, he was systematically framed, legally cornered, and summarily exiled."
"I still don't quite understand one detail," I interjected, frowning. "Aren't the other Fae kings themselves incredibly powerful beings? Surely someone among them would have simply thought to quietly assassinate him instead of going through the trouble of a trial? What was the ultimate point of such an elaborate framing scheme?"
"You fundamentally misunderstand the underlying mechanics of Fae existence," Chloe explained patiently, her fingers absently tracing slow, soothing concentric circles against my chest. "On the native Fae plane, every single resident entity is fundamentally undying by the ancient decree of Nik, the God of Time. Because of that divine law, the only definitive way to permanently kill a Fae individual is to forcibly banish them entirely to another external dimension—such as our mortal realm, for instance."
"I see... Still, if that is the absolute rule, why bother with a shady, convoluted trial and a formal condemnation? Couldn't they have simply tricked or lured him across the dimensional threshold into our plane in the first place?"
"This relates directly to the rigid cosmological importance of a formal 'banishment.' A Fae citizen who is legally banished loses their foundational, metaphysical anchor and connection to the Fae plane. You can visualize it as being legally orphaned by your own home dimension. Only once that umbilical link is severed can they actually be targeted and permanently killed. If his brothers had simply lured him here without a formal decree, they certainly could have ambushed and mutilated his physical body, but the moment someone carried his physical remains, ashes, or even a microscopic particle of his being back across the threshold into Faerie, he would instantly resurrect."
"That is utterly insane. What a thoroughly cheated race of people," I exclaimed. "I suppose having a primordial deity personally looking over your cosmic well-being is a pretty sweet deal."
"I honestly don't think you are in any logical position to make that observation," Chloe chuckled with rich amusement.
"Yeah, you're right." I—the absurd guy who never seemed capable of staying dead for more than a few hours—was hardly qualified to judge them.
"So, I venture you happened upon him precisely while he was fleeing for his life from the hounds?"
"Indeed. He was running from the executioner hounds, as you put it. That chase continued relentlessly until they inadvertently crossed the territorial borders of our clan holdings. The massive magical commotion kicked up by the ensuing battle would have inevitably alerted mundane human authorities had our frontline patrols not intervened promptly. Prince Eric at that time was devastatingly powerful—far more powerful than the diminished state he currently operates in. Even the past version of myself couldn't easily compare to his peak."
I was only mildly surprised by that revelation. After all, I had postulated a similar baseline strength for him when we first met. I gestured silently for her to continue.
"However, the violent psychic backlash of his newly severed connection to Faerie weakened him severely. Royal-blood Fae naturally maintain the strongest inherent connection to their home plane among all Fae kin, meaning the shock hit him infinitely harder than it would have crippled an average, low-born Fae citizen. Because of that debilitating feedback, he was steadily losing ground to his relentless pursuers. Had I not chosen to intervene when I did, he would almost certainly be dead today."
I couldn't help a fleeting mental image: I would have genuinely loved to witness the normally cheeky, facetious Eric operating at the height of his golden-age power.
"In any case, he was so profoundly grateful for his salvation that he immediately proposed marriage to me. In his mind, offering his hand was the supreme expression of his cultural gratitude."
I coughed abruptly out of sheer surprise, and my face darkened into a scowl.
The utterly shameless bastard.
"I naturally flatly refused, and the rest, as they say, is history. He eventually elected to enter my employment to systematically work off his perceived debt. One major psychological idiosyncrasy of their kind is an absolute, obsessive fixation on debts—whether real, exaggerated, or purely perceived."
"I see... Did they ever dispatch follow-up hit squads after him? And didn't his powerful father ever return from wherever he vanished to check on his favorite son?"
"No, and no. To this day, I genuinely don't know whether his father ever emerged from wherever he disappeared to. As for the wider Fae courts, while they are undeniably a formidable and dangerous race, openly antagonizing both our ruling Crimson vampire family and a resident demigoddess simultaneously in this plane is simply not a wise geopolitical move for anyone."
"Clarisse? Our resident eccentric demigoddess?" I asked, raising my eyebrows in genuine surprise. "How on earth did she get tangled up in this?"
"Well, she naturally sympathized with Eric as a fellow involuntary evacuee," Chloe said, a flicker of awkwardness crossing her features.
"Ah. Right, of course. She was also historically banished from Faerie. Still a deeply baffling detail, by the way," I nodded, putting the pieces together.
"To conclude, the Fae courts simply weren't prepared to start a multi-front war with one of the most powerful vampire dynasties in existence plus an active demigoddess backing us up. So, they ultimately had no choice but to tuck their tails tightly between their legs and retreat back home," she finished, a thick layer of schadenfreude coloring her melodic voice.
"You seem particularly pleased by that outcome—and I mean far beyond the baseline satisfaction of managing to rescue a valued friend."
"Well, centuries ago, I was once dispatched on a formal diplomatic mission to Faerie to meet with one of their regional kings. Let's just casually say that I found their royal aristocracy to be deeply, profoundly unpleasing during the two agonizing centuries I was forced to spend stranded there," she explained grimly.
"WAIT—let me pause you right there. I thought you were casually sitting in your early twenties?"
"I am. But time passes vastly differently when you're trapped within the overlapping temporal folds of Faerie."
"I see... That is genuinely spooky."
"Yeah, 'spooky' is an exceedingly charitable term for the psychological trauma I endured during that assignment," she grimaced, shuddering slightly.
I instinctively sensed there was a heavily juicy, dramatic story buried beneath that casual drop, but I decided to let it slide for the moment.
Tomorrow, we plunge into real battle. We desperately need to rest and conserve our energy. Well...
"So, are we planning to actually drift off to sleep right away, or...?" I drew out the tail end of my sentence, shifting my gaze down to look at her body in a heavily suggestive manner.
Her eyes instantly flared a brilliant, molten red. Let's just politely say that we ended up spending another two solid, highly active hours wide awake.