The evening sky bloomed orange-red, like something newly born — bright, vivid, untouched by anything that had come before it. Warm in that particular way that makes you want to slow down, even when you don't know why.
Two figures walked beneath it.
Xavier moved with the stiff, overly careful gait of someone trying very hard not to do anything embarrassing. Beside him, Princess Jasmine walked with an effortless grace that only deepened the natural beauty she already carried — long white hair catching the light, hazel-green eyes that stood out from anyone else he'd ever known.
"Xavier," she said softly.
"Yes?"
"I've been meaning to ask — how do you feel, now that your brother has taken the throne? Now that he's Emperor?" She glanced at him. "You must feel something about it."
Xavier was quiet for a moment, turning the question over honestly before answering. "Honestly? It feels strange. I never imagined a day where my brother would become someone even more... immense than he already was. He was already the prince. Already the most gifted person alive. I didn't think there was room for him to become more than that, and now he has."
He looked toward the dimming horizon.
"The brother I grew up with was charismatic, but cold. Distant from almost everything that didn't interest him. Most people found him unreachable — his gifts, his strangeness, it all kept people at arm's length. But to me, to Big Sis, to anyone who actually knew him — we understood. He just wasn't built for expressing things easily."
"And when he did," Xavier continued, voice softening, "it always caught people off guard. Because he meant every word completely. It didn't just touch you — it settled somewhere deeper. Your soul, almost."
He paused, watching the sky fall further into dusk.
"So today — watching him take the crown Grandpa always wore — it put something complicated in my chest. Sadness and joy, both at once." He exhaled. "I know it'll be harder now, spending time with him like we used to. That's the sad part. But it's small compared to how proud I am of him. He finally gets to do what he always wanted — protect the people he loves. Protect the people who can't protect themselves."
"He told me once — that strength and talent aren't gifts you get to enjoy. They're a weight you're supposed to carry for other people." Xavier's jaw tightened slightly, something reverent in his expression. "I admire him for that. I always have. Today, more than ever."
"I want to make him proud," he said. "Make Grandpa proud. Make Big Sis proud. Everyone who's ever stood beside me — I want to bring them joy. Peace. All of it."
"Especially—"
He stopped. His eyes drifted ahead, to where Alcmena strolled in his cat form, utterly unbothered, several paces in front of them.
"Especially my Master," Xavier said quietly. "My one and only master. I can't fully say it out loud, but — to me, he's the father I needed after mine died. He still is."
"I used to wish so badly that Papa would come back. Grandpa and Big Brother tried to comfort me, and I love them endlessly for that — their love never had conditions on it. But some nights, deep down, all I wanted was for Papa to walk through the door and hug me one more time."
"And now that Miss Anastasia's retiring as a maid — I don't think of her that way anymore. Maybe I never really did." He gave a small, almost embarrassed laugh. "Maybe she's the mother I always wanted, even if I never had the words for it. I never had a mother growing up. Only a father. Big Sister Violet was the closest thing to one, for a long time. She still is."
"Master Alcmena. Miss Anastasia." He said the names like they were something sacred. "They're the only real parents I have now. I don't know if we'll ever look like a normal family — the kind other kids my age have. But all I want—"
He pressed a hand to his chest, eyes bright with something fierce and sincere.
"—is to make them proud of me. That's the only thing I've ever really wanted."
Jasmine, who had been listening the entire time, felt her eyes well up before she could stop them. She blinked hard, trying not to let her own emotion spill over and disrupt the moment — but it was useless. She understood him too completely to stay composed.
A silence settled between them, letting everything Xavier had said simply exist in the air for a moment.
Then Jasmine spoke. "You know — you might be the only person besides my best friend Violet who actually understands this the way I do."
She looked out at the darkening sky. "I grew up the same way, Xavier. No mother or father of my own to call by those names."
Xavier's face went white. "WAIT, REALLY?!"
"YOU DON'T HAVE ANY PARENTS?!"
Jasmine burst out laughing at the sheer scale of his shock. "Everyone knows this, Xavier. I'm honestly stunned you didn't. Do you even pay attention in Miss Seo-yeon's geopolitics class? No wonder she scolds you more than any other student at the Academy."
Xavier rubbed the back of his neck, laughing through his embarrassment. "Yeah, I get that a lot. I can't help it — history and politics are just... boring. My brain only locks in if it's about something cool. Or heroic. Probably why I'm failing everything that isn't math or science."
"How very boyish of you," Jasmine said, smirking.
They laughed together, and without quite deciding to, ended up settling onto a bench overlooking one of the many ponds scattered through the Tsarigrad Citadel grounds. The last of the sun spilled gold across the water's surface.
— ✦ —
"So," Jasmine continued, picking the thread back up. "To start from the beginning — I'm actually half noble."
"HUH?!" Xavier nearly fell off the bench.
She giggled. "I get that reaction a lot too. My father — my grandmother's only child — fell in love with a kisaeng."
"A what?"
"It's what we call a court musician, back home."
"Ohhh." Understanding dawned across his face. "Wait — so your dad fell for a commoner?"
"Exactly that," Jasmine said. "My father was the Emperor of Korea at the time. Brilliant. Wise. He had noblewomen and royals from every nation throwing themselves at him — and he chose a commoner. A singer."
"He faced a storm of public backlash for it. People still talk about it, even after his death." Her voice softened with something fond. "Grandma told me he used to sneak away from the palace, down into the lower districts, just to feel normal for an evening. And one day, he heard a voice. Singing. So clear and graceful that everyone nearby simply stopped — frozen, listening, like they'd heard something holy."
"He followed the sound until he found her. A black-haired woman, beautiful in a way the world hadn't touched yet. And her eyes—" Jasmine paused, gesturing to her own. "Hazel green. The same as mine."
"He came back every day after that, just to see her. Brought gold, jewels — and every time, she refused them. She thought he was some kind of con artist trying to set her up for trouble with the guards." Jasmine laughed, eyes glassy with the memory of a story she clearly loved telling. "That's my favorite part. This brilliant, legendary man — completely undone by a woman who thought he was a petty criminal."
"It all changed the day he saved her life. There was an accident — she nearly died, along with several others nearby. And right there, in front of the crowd that had gathered to thank the man who'd just saved them, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him."
Jasmine grinned. "Apparently my mother was pale as a corpse from the near-death experience, and then this same man who'd been pestering her for months shows up, saves her life, and proposes on the spot."
"Before she could even process it, people in the crowd started recognizing who he was. And that's when my grandmother arrived — furious, ready to drag her son back to the palace for running off again."
"But my father, stubborn as ever, pulled my mother close and declared — right there, in front of everyone, including his own mother — that he was marrying her. No opposition allowed."
"My mother hadn't even said yes yet, technically. But she didn't refuse him either — she'd fallen for him just as hard, from the very first day. So it was only a matter of time." Jasmine's voice grew warm. "She became the first commoner — a singer, no less — to become Empress of Korea."
"She was kind. Loving. People said her beauty rivaled my grandmother's. She became something like a symbol of hope for every commoner in the kingdom." A small, proud smile. "And then I came along. Half noble, half commoner. Future heir to it all."
Xavier looked at her, wide-eyed with pure admiration. "Wow. Your family's love story sounds like it's straight out of a novel. Your dad is so cool for asking out his crush like that. And your mom must've been amazing."
Jasmine smiled and reached over, ruffling his hair — which sent an immediate, helpless blush to his cheeks. "You're right. Both things are true."
"My father really was that brave. And my mother really was the most beautiful woman alive, supposedly." She tilted her head. "People always say I look just like her, with my father's features mixed in. And, apparently, her personality too."
Then her expression shifted — the warmth dimming into something heavier, the sky around them suddenly feeling colder despite the gold still in it.
"But," she said quietly, "every story like that has to end eventually. And ours did."
"I was still an infant. My parents and I were traveling back from one of our family's retreats when a storm rolled in. Lightning struck the carriage. It went off the cliff road, into the river below."
Xavier went very still beside her.
"By the time anyone reached us — my grandmother included — it was already too late. They'd both used their own bodies to shield me the whole way down." Her voice didn't waver, but something underneath it did. "It worked. I survived. They didn't."
"My grandmother was destroyed by it. The entire kingdom was. People grieved for years — some still haven't stopped, if I'm honest. But no one carried it like she did."
"She stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Blamed herself completely — convinced that if she'd only looked far enough ahead, she could have stopped it." Jasmine's gaze dropped to her hands. "She's the most gifted time-user in our bloodline. Rivals even Merlin the Wise, Mother of Time, one of the Seven Great Heroes. But her gift doesn't work like that. She can see years into the future sometimes — but never on command. Never when it matters most."
"She's blind, you know. Has been since birth. But she can see further into tomorrow than almost anyone alive, and she still couldn't see that. She couldn't save her own son. Couldn't stop her granddaughter from becoming an orphan before she'd even learned to walk." Jasmine's voice cracked, just slightly, at the edges. "She still blames herself. I don't think she'll ever fully let it go. I've tried."
She looked toward the pond, watching the last of the light ripple across it.
"I grew up an outsider among my own peers. Not fully noble. Not fully common. Just — both, and somehow neither. I never really had friends growing up. Not until the Academy. Your sister Violet was one of the first real ones I ever had."
"I admire her so much, Xavier. She's brave. Bright. She doesn't let anyone's opinion of her change who she actually is." A small, self-deprecating laugh. "I've never managed that. Not the way she does. Not willing to risk everything for what I believe in, the way she would without blinking."
"I inherited my mother's gift — singing — but I'm terrified to use it in front of anyone. Terrified of being judged. Being a princess means I'm supposed to be fearless. Future ruler and everything. But mostly I just feel... lost. Scared, in a quiet way I don't know how to fix."
"So I eat." She said it almost like a confession, a little embarrassed by how honest it was. "That's my coping mechanism. Stuffing my face while I sing my mother's old songs to myself, alone in my room, from the journal she left behind. Violet's heard me. A few close friends. My grandmother. That's the whole list."
She turned to look at him, searching his face for a reaction.
Xavier hadn't moved. He'd just listened — completely, fully, the way he listened to almost nothing else in his life.
"You probably think I'm a coward," Jasmine said, trying for lightness, though it didn't quite land as a joke.
Xavier didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice had dropped into something unusually serious, and it caught her off guard. "No," he said simply. "I don't think that. If anything — everything you just told me makes me see you even more clearly than before."
"...Really?" Jasmine blinked. "You mean that?"
"Yes." He meant it with his whole chest, and it showed. "I've always seen you as— " he hesitated for half a second, like he'd almost said something else entirely, then continued, "—like a mirror of my sister. Someone brave. Someone who can't stand watching injustice happen in front of her. Someone who'd throw herself between danger and the people she cares about without thinking twice."
"If you were really a coward," he went on, voice steadying, "you wouldn't have stepped in for me and Jupiter back when we were kids getting bullied. You wouldn't have helped him restore the drawings he made of his mother — the ones he thought were gone forever."
"If you were a coward, you wouldn't have left everything behind to follow my friends into a country you've probably never even been to, just because I ran away."
His eyes were bright with something fierce now, something that had clearly been sitting in him for a long time, finally given permission to surface. "You're not a coward, Jasmine. You might show it in your own way — quieter, different from Violet — but that doesn't make it any less real. You're the bravest, most beautiful person I know. Don't let anyone, including yourself, convince you otherwise."
The words landed somewhere deep in Jasmine's chest, somewhere she hadn't expected anyone — let alone a ten-year-old boy — to reach. Her eyes filled before she could stop them.
She hadn't known he saw her that way. It had genuinely never crossed her mind that he thought of her with anything close to that kind of reverence.
"You're a pretty admirable guy, you know that?" she said, wiping at her eyes — only for Xavier to wordlessly offer his handkerchief instead. She took it, pressing it gently to her face. "Seriously. You act nothing like a nine-year-old. I've met grown men three times your age with less courage and maturity than you carry around like it's nothing."
"I'm actually ten," Xavier mumbled, a shy smile tugging at his mouth — the kind of smile that, for just a half-second, made him look like someone holding onto far more than he was letting on.
Jasmine flushed, caught completely off guard — not just by his sincerity, but by the warmth pooling somewhere in her chest she couldn't quite name. Something unfamiliar. Something that didn't have a name yet, even as it stirred.
She opened her mouth to respond.
But a voice cut through first — unfamiliar to Xavier, instantly recognizable to Jasmine. Smooth, warm, carrying an authority that didn't need to raise itself to be heard.
"My, my. You really are quite the charmer for a ten-year-old, if this is how you sweep women twice your age off their feet."
Xavier spun around to find the source — only to feel two arms wrap gently around his shoulders from behind, something warm and weighty settling against his back. The hair brushing against his cheek was long, white, threaded faintly with blue.
"M-Master?!" Jasmine choked out, completely blindsided.
"Master?" Xavier echoed, frowning, utterly lost.
"Yes," Jasmine said, voice gone a little shaky. "The woman behind you is my Contractor. Across the Four Realms, she's known as one of the Seven Great Heroes — the one who defeated the Lord of the End ten thousand years ago. The Former Empress of Korea. Herrscher of Time. Archdeacon of Chronos. Consul of the Unforeseen Fate."
"One of the founding ancestors of House Lee. Beloved Daughter of Chronos. Grandmother of Time." Jasmine swallowed. "Merlin the Wise."
The realization hit Xavier like a dropped stone. Panic flared instantly enough that he reached out telepathically to Alcmena without thinking, a wordless help sent ahead.
"Yup!" the woman chirped, voice suddenly bright and childish, utterly unbothered by the gravity of her own titles. "That's me, alright! The one and only legendary hero — Merlin the Wise!"