Lily's Box of Memories

Side Story: Jacques The Prince of Headal

Spoiler Warning: Read only after chapter 88

Jacques - Prince of Headal's Point Of View

There is only one kind of magic that can affect the realm of the dead: Shadow Magic. Furthermore, it has always been restricted to the royal family. Faeries of darkness are not fond of the living. They prefer merely watching rather than acting, and magic that lets you talk to those who have passed is dangerous, thankfully only on matters of knowledge. If it let you control the souls of the dead it would have been truly terrifying, we can at most make you feel displeasure, or force you to look beyond the veil. It can be considered very weak magic, but knowledge is power.

In certain countries, like Ristaze, shadow magic is completely forbidden. Any who awakes to shadow magic are killed, and that includes the royal children though the Royal family of Ristaze was built on people blessed by faeries of darkness. Usually faeries wouldn't bless someone what could have a huge risk of getting killed because of it, but faeries of darkness cease caring. When it comes to the Ristaze royalty, I've heard that the faeries of darkness bless their children once in a while to make their royal family face their shame.

---*---

I was blessed with shadow magic at the age of five. While I cannot see hiding faeries, I can see the spirits of the dead, and the shape of people's soul.

That's why I knew that Jesmaine was special from the first time I saw her. Her soul was all wrong, but mild and sweet. At first I thought a ghost has possessed Jesmaine's body, but with a bit of investigation I found out that she was not a ghost. Still, she seemed to have memories from another body, and she was failing at pretending to be a child. The other kids didn't like her because she ended up being like a mother to them, and at the same time she was waaaaay too clever for her own good.

I impulsively decided to keep her close.

Jesmaine is... reckless... she runs off on her own away from her bodyguards, dashes to the kitchen where we never kept the most... orderly servants... skipped through the garden and touched every flower she found... had she been in Ristaze she might have ended up dead... and yet she kept insisting she wanted to go there.

It was a very, very bad idea.

We have never been on friendly terms with Ristaze, and just because she is sweet they won't be kind. It's Ristaze.

She has yet to realize the amount of times she's been attempted killed either. Not that I have not attempted telling her, but she's... quite timid when it comes to believing people to be cruel. Except with Lily Celeste and Lionel Tepet. She's terrified of those two. Talking about them usually made her legs quiver.

Still, her tendency to think of me as paranoid and evil is beginning to be too much. At least she's stopped running down to the kitchen after I gave her one for herself. She was angry with me, but this is better than having her surrounded by men gazing at her and trying to touch her. That is not friendship Jesmaine, they desire you. Needless to say she claimed me to be paranoid again.

---*---

A short while before Jesmaine was to enter formal magic education she ran off again, and to my horror it was to Ristaze. I have no count of how many diplomats have returned to us in a coffin after they 'died in their sleep'... and what was worse, at this point we were getting ready for a full scale war!

I know I didn't tell her, but she is obsessed with the nobility of Ristaze. She cannot be there at this time, not when something this big is going down. Something like Headal, Crinia, Semor and Zocria attacking at the same time is not something she would ever get out of alive... so I had her brought back forcefully.

As of now she still hasn't spoken to me after we brought her back, but I value her life over her pleasant mood. If she found out about the attack before it was started, she might actually attempt to run back over the border... but she would not live through that.

The Tepet soldiers are reasonable, but the Ristaze spies are not. Any tool put in their hands will be used. I cannot let her go through that.

I'll return once House Tepet no longer exists. Once one of the few thing she seems to fear is gone, hopefully she will calm down enough to listen to logic. Though, I sincerely doubt it.

For now I've demanded the person 'Claire Talwen' brought to the castle, should she be found on the battlefield. The same with a certain 'Helena Fox'. They're people she made friends with and have been obsessed with since childhood. Sadly, this is as far as I can spare the people of Ristaze.

...May Ristaze fall swiftly and peacefully.

[AN: A little tidbit of randomness that doesn't fully belong in the main story. Not really any big surprises, other than him Jacques actually caring a bit for Jesmaine]