A small hooded figure was walking up the road.

The scouts at the head of the column had spotted her half a mile out, first as a wavering speck in the afternoon haze, then as an unmistakable child in a traveler’s cloak walking a straight line toward the marching ranks of the Vraven scout regiment.

The captain at the head of the formation signaled a halt. The signal rippled back through the column, each unit slowing until the march had stopped and hundreds of boots stilled against the dirt.

The small figure kept coming.

Her cloak was grey with road dust and the hood was pulled forward far enough that the face beneath it was lost. The captain exchanged a look with his second, and somewhere in the front ranks a spearman lowered his weapon and leaned on it.

"...is she lost?"

"Little girl! You hurt?"

"Maybe she’s retarded," a third voice offered. "Just look at her."

"This is no place for youngsters, go home to your mother!"

The figure tilted her head under the hood, and her hand came up slowly to push it back. Purple hair spilled free into the afternoon sun, and the face beneath was young, too young for a battlefield, but the features were every soldier’s to recognize.

Silence spread through the front line like a dropped stone.

"...wait-"

The captain’s throat worked around whatever he had been about to say.

"Wait-"

Felicity tilted her head sideways, purple hair falling over one shoulder, and smiled.

"Go home to my mother?" she said, amused. "But brave soldiers, please tell this ’retarded little girl’, what should she do if the villain has enslaved her mother?"

The front line hit the dirt like a collapsed wall. Shields clattered and spears hit the ground, and seasoned warriors went to their knees as the prostration rippled backward through the formation until it reached the rear.

"Your Highness!"

"Princess Felicity-"

"Forgive us, Your Highness-"

Felicity giggled into her hand.

"Would one of you be so kind as to take me to my father?"

The captain nearly fell over scrambling to his feet.

...

The reclamation army’s command position sat near the center of the column, where the king could watch the march and confer with his advisors without leaving the formation. Alexios waited there with his hands clasped behind his back and a field table unrolled beside him when the scout arrived at a dead sprint.

Tharion Ravenshade stood at his left shoulder, armored, helmet tucked under one arm. Kaede Fujimori stood to his right, her katana at her hip, her hair bound at the nape. Both turned as the scout skidded up the embankment and bowed three times too fast.

The scout opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again.

"Princess Felicity has arrived at the front line, Your Majesty. She wishes to speak with you."

Alexios went still.

Tharion’s head turned sharply toward his king, and Kaede’s hand settled on the hilt of her katana and stayed there.

"Bring her." Alexios’s voice had gone king-flat. "At once."

...

The army parted for her as she walked through it.

Thousands of soldiers lined either side of the road, kneeling or standing depending on whether they’d seen her pass yet, a rolling wave of prostration trailing behind her as word traveled faster than the procession itself. She walked in the middle of it with her hood off and her purple hair catching the light, a cloaked girl with an honor guard the scouting column had formed on its own.

She was smiling as she reached the command position where Alexios was waiting. His golden armor caught the afternoon light, the same light that was in her hair, and he watched her every step of the way in.

Tharion bowed.

"Niece."

A muscle worked at the corner of his mouth and stilled. His voice was controlled, but this was his sister’s daughter, and she had come to him out of the villain’s keeping with dust on her cloak and no escort behind her.

"Uncle Tharion!" Felicity chirped. She waved.

Kaede stayed exactly where she was, the katana hand where she had put it.

"Miss Kaede!" Felicity waved at her too.

Kaede’s expression held.

Alexios finally spoke.

"Is the bastard listening in?"

Felicity looked at her father for a moment, then giggled.

"Listening in? Father, what do you make of him? A peeping tom?"

"...so he can’t listen in?"

"Oh no, he absolutely can!" She beamed. "But I think he’s busy with something else right now..."

Alexios closed his eyes as he exhaled. His fists tightened.

"That damned..."

Tharion glanced at him, then at Felicity, then back at him, and held his silence.

Kaede did not.

"Your Majesty. This may be an opportunity."

Alexios’s attention stayed on his daughter, but he tipped his chin enough to show he had heard.

"Speak."

"Our intelligence indicates he cares about her deeply." Kaede left it there.

Alexios glanced at the duke on his other side, who offered nothing of his own. But the king remembered the hill, and the quiet words about a daughter whose loyalties might have been reshaped, and the man who had gone silent when his king reminded him whose daughter she was.

Alexios let the silence sit, then turned to his daughter.

"Felicity."

"Yes, Father?"

"Does he intend to use you to attack us in any shape or form?"

She beamed brightly.

"Nope! Father, what do you make of him?"

Alexios held her gaze with a wry expression.

"The continent’s most shameless, biggest opportunistic scumbag that has ever been recorded in our history books. The man who enslaved my wife."

Felicity blinked, and then she giggled.

"Yeah! That’s about right."

"..."

The giggle drained out of her smile.

"But father, I promise you. He’s not doing this out of some evil scheme. This time, he really didn’t do anything besides portaling me close by. I’ve long since wanted to speak with you face to face, and I just asked him to let me do this. I want to talk to you, father."

Tharion moved first.

"Your Majesty. The young princess is at an impressionable age and she has been in his company for months. Whatever she believes of herself in this moment, she cannot be a reliable judge of her own mind."

Kaede picked up without pause.

"We cannot trust what the villain has returned to us. Who can say what he intends by sending her?"

The words hit Alexios from both sides, and for a long moment he held his answer.

He looked at his daughter. She stood where she was, purple hair in the sun and cloak still dusty from the road, and her eyes held his the way they had when she was small and he’d asked her if she’d stolen honey from the kitchens. She’d lied then, badly, and her gaze had betrayed her every time.

The Warrior King’s hands unclasped, and he gave her a small nod.

"Let us speak privately."

Tharion’s mouth thinned at the corners. Kaede’s composure held, but the hand on her katana flexed once and went still.

Neither spoke.

Alexios caught both silences and answered neither. He turned toward the camp interior and gestured for Felicity to follow.