The training grounds were, to Irielle’s surprise, genuinely interesting.
Ruby had dragged her there with the energy of someone announcing a festival, and Irielle had followed mostly because the alternative had been staying in the library and pretending she was not at least a little curious.
She had expected noise, sweat, a great deal of unnecessary shouting, and perhaps some theatrical demonic brutality designed to impress observers.
The grounds spread wide behind the western side of the castle, half open arena and half disciplined military space.
Rows of soldiers moved through drills under the lowering afternoon sun, blades flashing, boots striking packed earth in hard rhythm.
Some practiced in pairs with spears, others with shields, others with magic flaring in controlled bursts under the watchful eye of captains who barked corrections without wasting a single word.
Steel rang against steel.
Fire magic cracked.
Dust lifted into the warm air and turned gold where the light caught it.
It should have looked chaotic.
Instead it looked alive in the way living things often did when they had been forced into order through repetition, exhaustion, and skill.
Irielle slowed near the edge of the main field and simply watched.
A squad of soldiers to the left practiced close-range defense, the formation tightening and loosening like a single breathing creature.
On the right, another unit was working through paired sword sequences, their blades moving fast enough to blur at the edges.
Farther back, magic users stood within marked circles and launched controlled attacks at training dummies reinforced with old enchantments.
One dummy lost an arm.
No one seemed concerned.
Ruby, beside her, spread both arms with theatrical delight.
“See?
Better than old dead ancestors.”
Violet folded her arms.
“To be fair, almost everything is.”
Irielle did not answer immediately.
Something in her chest had gone strange.
Not painful.
Just full.
She had always loved watching people train.
Her mother had been the reason.
Long before she became queen, before grief took her and left a palace colder than winter glass, Irielle’s mother had been a knight.
Not a decorative noblewoman with a ceremonial blade and polite applause following her through festivals.
A real knight.
A woman who rode in armor, commanded respect, and once met a young ambitious elf prince on a border inspection where, according to the story Irielle had been told a hundred times as a child, she’d nearly knocked him flat in a sparring match because he’d spoken to her like she was ornamental.
That was how they had met.
That was how love had started, with metal ringing between them and his stunned admiration.
When Irielle had been little, before the court swallowed all softness, her mother sometimes took her out to the smaller practice yard behind the palace gardens.
She would place a wooden sword in Irielle’s hands, adjust her stance with patient fingers, and say again and again that grace meant nothing if it could not hold against pressure.
Later, when Irielle grew older, lessons in etiquette had swallowed more of her hours, but she had kept the habit in secret or in private.
Sword forms.
Footwork.
Ice magic, which had come to her with frightening ease and then settled in her bones like a second language.
Watching the demon soldiers now, she felt that old part of herself stir.
Not the princess.
Not the pawn.
The girl with a wooden sword and scraped hands and a mother who smiled when she hit correctly.
Ruby noticed the shift in her expression first, of course.
Irielle allowed the smallest nod.
“Yes.”
Ruby looked delighted.
“Good.
I knew you had taste.”
Violet tilted her head, studying Irielle more carefully.
“You know what you’re looking at too.”
That made Irielle glance at her.
“Some of it.”
Ruby grinned.
“Ah.
Secret skills.”
“It’s not a secret.”
“It is to us.”
Irielle let her gaze return to the grounds.
A captain with dark horns and scarred forearms was correcting a younger soldier’s grip, shifting his wrist with brutal efficiency before ordering him to repeat the motion again and again.
Another group was practicing magic-infused blade work, and Irielle found herself tracking the timing instinctively, judging the weight of movement, the moments where balance nearly failed and was recovered.
“My mother used to make me train with her,” she said after a moment.
The twins both went quiet.
Not uncomfortably.
Just attentively.
Irielle continued because the words had already begun and there was no point stopping them halfway.
“Before she became queen, she had been a knight.
That was how she met my father.
Sometimes, when I was younger, she made me train with swords and magic.
I never stopped entirely after that.”
Ruby’s expression softened in a way Irielle was beginning to recognize.
Ruby felt with her whole face.
“That’s actually really cool.”
Violet nodded.
“It explains a lot.”
“What does it explain?”
“The way you stand,” Violet said simply.
“And the fact that you keep looking at everyone’s footwork.”
Irielle blinked.
Ruby made a triumphant sound.
“I told you she notices everything.”
Irielle looked back toward the field to hide a smile that had arrived without permission.
“You two are insufferable.”
“And yet,” Ruby said, “still your favorite guides.”
Before Irielle could answer, a burst of fire magic flared in the central training ring, drawing all three of their eyes.
Two higher-ranking soldiers had begun sparring in earnest now, blades meeting with bright explosive sparks each time magic collided.
The watching soldiers shouted encouragement and insults with equal enthusiasm.
The whole thing had a roughness to it, a lack of polished court distance, that made it feel more real.
Irielle found that she liked that too.
“One day,” she announced, “I’m going to be captain here.”
Violet snorted.
“You just got better at waking up before noon.”
Ruby ignored her magnificently.
“No, listen.
That’s the plan.
First, become demon captain.
Then find the love of my life, a woman older than me.
Then get married.
Then have children.
And when I’m tired, I’ll retire.” She paused dramatically.
“But only after becoming a hero.”
Irielle looked at her.
Ruby stood there in the sunlight with one grey eye and one purple blazing with certainty, red hair like a banner, and for one brief second Irielle felt something almost painfully fond.
The ambition was ridiculous and earnest and entirely unashamed of itself.
She smiled.
“Well,” she said, “that’s nice.”
Ruby beamed as if she had just been knighted.
Violet, who was immune to sincerity on principle, said, “She is a bit delusional.”
Ruby whipped around.
“Shut up.”
“You cannot schedule heroism around children and retirement.
That is not how glory works.”
“It can if I’m talented enough.”
“It can if reality is drunk.”
Ruby pointed at her sister with offended grandeur.
“You are jealous because my dreams have range.”
Irielle laughed again, softer this time but easier.
It came more naturally now, which she was not sure how to feel about.
Then, because curiosity had arrived and was apparently just as undisciplined as the rest of this family, she asked, “You are into older women?”
Ruby turned back toward her without a trace of shame.
“I love women with experience.”
Violet let out a dry, long-suffering sigh.
“Says the twenty-year-old.”
Ruby rolled her eyes.
“Twenty is a very respectable age to know what you like.”
“That sentence sounds worse every time you say it.”
Irielle looked between them, the warmth of the sun on her face, the clang of steel and sparks and shouted corrections filling the air around them, and had the absurd, unexpected thought that she had not felt this light in a very long time.
Maybe ever.
It frightened her a little.
Not enough to leave.
Ruby hopped down from the rail then, landing neatly on both feet.
Her attention sharpened as she looked at Irielle from head to toe, taking in the controlled posture, the elegant stillness, the watchful eyes that had not once drifted from the training floor for long.
A grin spread across her face.
“Let’s sword fight, Irielle.”