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ᵖʳⁱⁿᶜᵉˢˢ'ˢ ᵒʳᵈᵉʳˢ ;; ᵈʳᵈᵗ ⁽ˣᵃⁿʳᵉⁱ⁾

Summary: Having personal guards is so annoying, but since Xander Matthews is the only one protecting her at night, Arei Nageishi can tolerate it. Warning: DRDT Spoilers (Arei's backstory) Word Count: 2,521 A/N: I meant to post this yesterday to celebrate the end of DRDT’s hiatus, but I got distracted by the actual episode. Anyway, let’s go, we’re going to find out Arei’s killer soon! Can’t wait to see if I’m right or not about my culprit theory, especially since the person I’m the most suspicious of is on, like, everyone else’s innocent list, but I might as well ride it out with that theory until the actual killer becomes clear (I think it’s Whit, by the way. I also thought David might be an accomplice, but that theory may or may not have been ruined with the new episode).

it’s my command!

Supposedly, rumours of the two eldest princesses of the kingdom being sent away for drastic misbehaviour was bad for the kingdom’s reputation. That was what Princess Arei Nageishi was told when her older twin sisters were sent off. As the king and queen, her father and mother were sending out word that they were being sent to stay with family to help understand the lives of others better. Nothing mentioning starting fires near rural villages, messing up trade routes so villagers couldn’t get as many necessities as they should, or any of the other things her sisters did for fun.

Obviously, Arei knew nothing about it. She was the innocent younger princess. Disliked by many, yes, but also the one who had done nothing wrong, in contrast to her cruel older sisters. In her parents’ eyes, she had to stay that way to preserve the royal family’s reputation. That made them come up with the idea that she needed personal guards.

Arei didn’t like it. She didn’t need anyone to watch over her for every hour of the day. She didn’t need multiple people doing that job every hour of the day. Fortunately, her nights were spent with only one guard outside her chambers, but having personal guards itself was so annoying. They probably had better things to do anyway, so if she didn’t want them here, they could go somewhere else! She didn’t even want to do anything destructive anyway! Not anymore, at least.

At least she could have her pick at who could be guarding her chambers at night. She couldn’t remember half of her personal guards’ names and could barely remember what all of them looked like, but she knew Xander Matthews. He would never snitch to anyone about anything she did as long as it wasn’t disruptive, unlike all the others who thought their job was to tell her parents the exact moment she went to the bathroom. That meant she could bother him for as much as she wanted!

Annoying people in the castle’s long hallways wasn’t fun, though. If either of her parents found her—or worse, if both of them did—she would get scolded for at least 10 minutes about how her sisters were disappointments to the family, and she couldn’t join them. It was ironic since they called her the disappointment of the family plenty of times before her sisters were sent off, but they apparently had to show love for at least one of their daughters to keep up the appearance of a loving royal family, even if that daughter was her.

Luckily, her chambers were private enough! The only people allowed coming into it were anyone there to clean, but they couldn’t stay around for long or else they would have to face her. Her parents never came into her bedchambers unless she gave them specific permission to, and she could count on one hand how many times she did that! Especially since there were no snitches to run to her parents, Arei could have Xander inside there with her all she wanted!

One of the things she liked most about guards were their swords that they wore all the time. They were so sharp but so light. Arei was sure she could be pretty good at dealing with swords if she tried. That was why she always asked Xander to hold his sword every night he came into her chambers. Today was the first time he actually let her.

Arei sliced the sword through the air, the sword’s blade looking bright even in the very dim lighting. Xander warned, sitting at her desk, “Careful not to hit anything. If you mark something, your parents might realize I come here, and they’ll reassign me at best.”

“I didn’t know you liked coming here,” Arei responded while she continued swinging his sword. He didn’t have to worry about her hitting anything. She spent, like, five minutes with it. She was basically be a knight now!

“You force me to come here,” he reminded.

“And you like it!” She swung the end of the sword to barely touch his neck. He didn’t flinch. Well, she would get him to flinch with her amazing swordsmanship skills one of these days. “Anyway, you shouldn’t have given me this.”

“I know,” he replied. “Now, you’ll hold today over my head and keep bothering me more to let you touch my sword.”

“I will,” she admitted, “but I’m a princess! Your princess. You’re meant to follow my orders!”

“The only orders I’m supposed to follow are your parents’, specifically the ones that keep you safe.” Xander moved the tip of his sword away from his neck. “I’m already failing at my job since I’m letting you do this.”

“It’s not unsafe if I don’t do anything that isn’t safe!”

“You just holding it would be unsafe in your parents’ eyes.”

“Then it’s good they’re not here!” Arei swung her sword at one of her bed’s four pillars. It grazed against the wood and left a thin line paler than the dark wood surrounding it.

They both went closer to inspect it. Xander ran his finger over it. She noticed they were long. “Someone is going to ask you why that mark is there.”

“I was feeling bored,” Arei suggested, “so I looked through my stuff. I flung one of my old earrings around, so it might’ve made that scratch.”

“You don’t wear earrings,” he reminded, pointing to her ears.

She covered her ears with her hands and found herself wondering if he preferred girls with earrings. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of earrings from when everyone thought I would because every other girl who ever existed did. I can just say I was trying to throw them out.”

“You never throw anything out.”

“I do! You just never see me doing it.”

“You’re throwing your stuff out when it’s the other guards’ shifts?”

“I definitely do!” She just happened to not throw everything out. It wasn’t her fault she received a lot of gifts because she was a princess. Even the one no one liked could achieve that.

Xander sighed, his focus going back to the scratch. “Even though that story is unrealistic, it’s better than the real one... Give me my sword back.”

Arei reluctantly handed it over. Now what was she going to swing around her chambers? Her pillow?

Xander sheathed his sword. “It’s getting late, Your Majesty. You should start getting ready to go to sleep.”

“I am ready.” Every time before Xander came, Arei got ready for bed. She was already in her nightgown, and her hair was braided to prevent knots in the morning. To make sure no one knew about their secret meetings, she let all the lights be turned off, but she always lit a candle that was bright enough to see but small enough for no one outside the chambers to notice. In a way, it felt more intimate to her, and she liked that more than she thought.

“I meant ready to actually sleep.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do that right now. Let’s talk more!”

“About what?” he asked, skepticism laced in his voice.

He should never worry about her ideas! They were always good and innocent! Like, her idea right now was, “Teach me how to sword fight!”

“No.”

“But why?” Just in case, Arei put on one of the many sad looks she had prepared. It was sad enough that it looked like she was genuinely disappointed but happy enough that it didn’t look like she was about to cry.

“Your parents won’t let me,” Xander answered.

“Teach me in secret. It can be our little thing!”

“Our ‘little thing’ is talking in your chambers when I’m supposed to be outside your door all night to make sure you’re safe.”

“We can have two little things!”

“I don’t have the time to be teaching you things.”

“Make time. I’ll clear up your schedule! I’ll order it to happen.”

“Please don’t do that.” His voice sounded a little more genuine. “I want to do everything I have to do.”

It was her turn to be skeptical now. “What do you have to do?”

Xander counted what he had to do on his fingers. “Being your guard is the obvious one. I also have to sleep since I’m meant to be awake all night. There are meetings between all of your guards in case something like a ball comes up. We need a plan to make sure you’re safe. There are also people I want to see too.”

The last part stuck out to her the most. “Which people?”

He shrugged, looking away. “Just people I know.”

“Who are...?”

“People I know. You don’t know any of them,” he added.

“You don’t tell me anything about your life,” she pointed out.

“You never asked. Besides, I’m here to protect you, so really, everything should be about you.”

Arei wasn’t sure what to think of these mysterious people he knew. She wasn’t stupid and was fully aware that he knew people outside of her life, but it was still weird to think about. She knew him as a fun-to-bother guard who was the best out of all the personal ones she had. They probably knew him as something different because of the time he spent with them. She didn’t like thinking about that.

“I think I’ll go to sleep now,” she declared with less enthusiasm than she liked to admit.

Xander blinked a few times before frowning. “Did I say something wrong? I’m so sorry if I did.”

“I’m disappointed that you’re not giving me my sword back,” she forced herself to say with the enthusiasm she lacked earlier.

He lost one eye before she met him. The one he had left was very expressive, and she liked to think the other one was too when it was still there. It looked brighter when he was panicking over saying the wrong thing, but it relaxed after she successfully played it off as a joke. She liked looking at his eye.

“It’s my sword,” he corrected, “and you’re not having it back after today.”

“All I did was get a little scratch on my bed that’s barely even noticeable! I deserve a sword!”

“If you are, you’re not getting one from me.”

“Why? Am I not good enough for you? Am I too weak as a princess for you?”

Usually, when she said stuff like that, Xander either got really defensive or was too tired of her to argue. Today, he laughed. She was caught more off guard than she would like to say. It wasn’t like she heard him laugh before, though. The other people he knew probably did tons of times.

“If you want to go to sleep,” Xander said when his laughter died down, “I’ll let you. Good night, Your Majesty.”

“Good night, Xander!” Arei smiled. Xander smiled back before he left her alone in her chambers. It felt quieter with him gone. Then again, it always did.

Arei decided to follow what she told Xander. She blew out the candle before getting under the covers. When her back hit the mattress, her mind thought back to the people Xander knew and liked to spend time with. He was right about her never asking about who he knew. She never thought about it before.

It wasn’t like she was too obsessed with herself to notice other people’s lives. Everyone in the kingdom, including and especially her parents, thought she was, and she always let them think that, but she wasn’t. She knew what was happening throughout the kingdom. She knew the struggles the people were facing better than probably everyone else in the royal family. They were always obsessed with what was happening and could happen to them. The minor problems such as inflation, the difficulty to get food to the villages outside the one closest to the castle, the low-paying incomes many made, and so much more were unnoticed by the others. She did. She couldn’t negotiate to make peace with a rival kingdom for the life of her, but she could maybe make laws to help the daily lives of the little people of the kingdom if she became queen due to her sisters now being seen as criminals to their parents.

Their problems were better to focus on than her own. Whenever she wanted to try to distract herself from her sisters’ recent bullying, the commoners’ problems were what she went to. Hearing about things they dealt with didn’t make her feel any better about her own, but it gave her something to think about. She could be a good person and help them, or she could be cruel and make their lives worse. Or, she could be just like the rest of her family and let them continue on with their lives and doing nothing to worsen it but also nothing to help them.

Xander was a commoner. She knew he was raised in the farthest village from the castle, right next to the boarder between their kingdom and the next. He worked his way to get to where he was now. The problems he had were definitely more interesting than her current ones, but he never shared them with her. She understood that she wasn’t the kindest to him, but even if she was, he probably wouldn’t. He was only meant to be her personal guard, not anything else. They were already crossing a line with their secret meetings, and he wouldn’t try to push it any further.

The other people he knew probably knew of his problems, though. He probably shared all the problems he had to them, and they listened or offered solutions. They knew him better than she did.

For a while, Arei read books when she was trying to escape her sisters’ torment. No one liked her, so it was the only way to entertain herself. There were multiple books where she saw a stereotype of a princess having no friends. She hated that she fell into that stereotype. There was no one in her life that she wanted to spend time with, and there was no one who wanted to spend time with her. Everything was out of pure obligation before Xander came in. He was the first person she wanted to be with, and he was the first person to want that with her. She didn’t know how to talk to him, but she knew she liked feeling seen, feeling comfortable, feeling like a person when she was around him. She liked knowing he enjoyed her company and wouldn’t try to leave because he didn’t want to be with her. It was almost amazing how good someone could feel around someone because of that.

Of course, there were other people Xander liked more than her. There had to be. She couldn’t imagine herself being his favourite person to be with, even though he was surely hers.

Thinking was too much work. Arei should definitely go to sleep.

Confession: Even though this was meant to be posted yesterday, I just finished it today. Whoops.

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