Grounded

Finley Cai Aies Hall: April 18th, 20XX

"Your highness! Didn't I tell you to cooperate with the General?"

I closed my eyes and ignored Esmeralda the best I could while actively purifying the magic in the air. However, no matter how many times I repeated the process, the unclean magic would somehow find its way toward me and would harass my senses until I purified it.

"The Ruan family is the best match for the royal family! I don't think you realize that if you lose this marriage, you'll have to withstand a tournament to choose the next queen?"

A tournament?

She noticed my peaked interest but brushed right past the topic. One would think she'd taught it to me in the past with the confidence she assumed my knowledge of these things.

"I have to see if I can't pull some damage control here, but I hope you'll reflect on your mistakes and think of ways to make things up with the general."

The green fairy stormed out in a flurry, beating her wings irregularly and occasionally staggering in place as she crossed the large room I used as a living space.

A wave of magic assaulted my senses from the direction of the door, and I vaulted off my bed as I realized she'd locked me into the room. Then, I felt another, slightly more potent spell on the outer lock of the building and one on the gates to the land around the building, locking me out of the main castle.

Was she… grounding me?

Like a child?

It was just so wrong on so many levels that I had a hard time repressing the rage that bubbled up in my mind.

She had a nasty habit of looking down on me that I found hard to swallow. It wasn't like I'd never been looked down on in the past, but the longer I spent in this place as a Prince, the less reason I saw to put up with it.

It wasn't even like she'd used powerful spells to seal me in here. Hell, if I sneezed hard enough in its direction, the spell would lose its shape.

I restrained the urge to put my theory into practice and pulled out my mother's diary.

"What's a tournament?"

[A tournament is an organized competition used to ascertain the most powerful competitor. The ritual originated from the goblin cultures, but we fairies adapted them to suit our needs.]

I was reminded that no matter how informally the book spoke, it was little more than a search engine.

"What type of tournament would occur if my 'engagement' fell through?"

[Precedent wise, an unengaged prince and the remainders of the court would oversee a queendom wide competition where all eligible fairies would compete to assert their qualification to become the next queen and win the prince's hand in marriage. However, this has not occurred in many centuries, as it is unlikely for a prince to be unengaged.]

What sort of hellish tradition was that?

I thought of spending even longer than a second here than I'd already promised to, and a toxic wave of bile burned my throat.

"Ugh"

A grunt escaped my throat as I pulled back the urge to vomit and tried to laugh away the burning sensation.

Either way, it looked like I needed to make things up with the General.

I didn't know why she'd suddenly acted as she had, but considering the vicious expression she'd put up when she'd randomly vaulted herself across the hall, I felt safe in assuming her actions of earlier were out of character for her.

My eyes drifted over to the large mirror that replaced the westernmost wall of my room, and my fingers gingerly drifted up to where the gash on my face had been.

Theodulus had warned me to get used to having my injuries heal quickly, so I would panic less when I got hurt in battle. While it was a valid concern, I didn't plan on getting into enough fights to worry about my effectiveness in them.

He often spoke of such things with a certainty that made me nervous. Of course, nothing had happened yet, but the way he talked to me and trained me made me feel like it was only a matter of time.

I rolled off the bed, pulled my wings as close into my back as possible and finished the job by wrapping my back and chest with a thin cloth I'd cut from the sheets on my bed.

Thankfully, when I was in the human world, the transformation spell I'd learned from the diary put them away somewhere, but I couldn't risk transforming like that while I was in the castle. Especially not with strangers around.

Sweat soon poured down my face and body, but I didn't let myself off easy as I usually would and instead pushed harder.

It wasn't like becoming any stronger would have done much in the situation I'd narrowly escaped from earlier, but it made me feel better to know that I could have if things had gotten any worse than they already were.

After exercising until I could barely move, I used a spell to wash clean and collapsed onto the enormous bed.

There was a large bath in another room of the building, but I didn't think the gratification would be worth the effort it took to get there.

I woke up much later than I'd planned to and realized that it had turned into a new day. I waited for someone to come fetch me for breakfast. While I wasn't particularly hungry, it had been on the itinerary for activities to do with the General.

I somehow doubted that she would attend, but I wanted to clear up what had happened earlier if she did. If there was a good excuse for why she'd acted as she had, then I didn't see a reason to call off the engagement.

A small benefit that had come about from this situation was that we now held something over the Ruan family in negotiations. I mean, it wasn't like we'd particularly needed it, but it was a nice dagger to keep hidden in one's purse.

As long as I had this piece of information, I doubted the General would act too recklessly in the future.

I finally lost patience as the third hour dawned and casually broke through the lazy spells Esmeralda had placed around the property.

It looked like she'd had more confidence in her magic than she should have. Or maybe she'd had faith in my inferiority to her.

A few worker fairies tried to fly after me as escorts, but I waved them off. There were so many of them around, and it wasn't like I'd become attached to any of them.

At first, I walked around confidently, intending to get to the dining hall or Cambridge and Corin's offices, but after the thirtieth minute crawled by, I realized something rather important.

I didn't know where the hell I was going.

While I'd been to those respective spaces before, someone had escorted me around, and I hadn't paid the routes much mind.

I slowed down and stood in place, debating whether I should wait for staff to wander by and escort me. But, on the other hand, I could also keep exploring the impossibly enormous building and use the opportunity to learn the layout of the place I apparently owned.

The two choices bounced around my head as I slowly walked, but a sudden yell pulled me out of my deliberations.

"YOU WISH TO CANCEL THE ENGAGEMENT?"