Chapter 29 - Venus

The palace’s dining room was a grand hall with a long rectangular table in the centre, laid out with fine silk tablecloths and perfectly polished silver cutlery. It was designed for banquets filled with laughter, dance and music. It was a place where maids rushed around with plates upon plates stacked high with piping hot piles of food, butlers bobbed about, beverages spilling with each step as they generously refill each guest’s cup to the point of overflowing and guests speaking and shmoozing to climb the ranks of society. The room’s very architecture and layout demanded opulence and occasion by design, but scarcely did it ever fulfil its intended purpose.

Most nights it was as it was now, barren. The unpopulated floor was an all-consuming negative space, an expansive ocean surrounding the lonely island that was the central table. The Dragoneart siblings sat around it, each one in turn isolated further, haphazardly placed in any one of the far-too-many seats available to them, all at a distance from one another.

Dinner was always a quiet affair for them. Luna and Stella spent enough time together that conversation tended to run dry by the evening, and Sol was typically content to eat his fill and make a speedy exit, onto the next source of excitement. It was often an entirely noiseless event aside from the scraping of cutlery and the sounds of chewing. Not even the servants or cooks spoke a word, silently delivering each night’s meal without even an acknowledgement of the prince and princesses.

Luna looked up from her food. It was delicious, of course, but it was delicious every day. Food could only taste so good from a silver spoon. She noticed Stella taking small, restrained bites from her plate. “Is everything a show to her?” She sighed internally. Even when it was just the three of them, she ate like she had rehearsed it, so well-trained in etiquette that the simple joy of eating seemed more like a performance.

Luna looked down at her food and frowned. “Who’s she trying to impress anyway?” she muttered.

When she looked up again, Stella was staring down at her, having heard her little comment. She jolted upward, panicked for two reasons. The first, of course, was the scolding she was receiving. The second, was the fact that she was suddenly directly across from Stella. While they had previously been separated by a long stretch of table, she was now directly facing her sister. Sol was next to her too. They were all now neatly packed at one end of the table, sat next to the head where their father usually sat.

These were their usual positions for family dinners and banquets. That could mean only one thing. Luna looked past Stella’s glare, instead at the seat next to her, the seat dedicated to the King’s right hand, the seat reserved exclusively for their mother.

There she was. Queen Venus, in all her glory.

“Hmm, quite a slow reaction, Stella.” She mused in a sing-song tone.

Stella’s glare immediately dissipated, a more neutral expression flashing onto her face in a millisecond. “That’s not very fair, mother. Teleportation is instant.” She said diplomatically.

“Hmm, the teleportation is, yes. But I began channeling my mana far earlier. If you’d have felt it, you could have evaded it.” Venus educated.

“I felt it, but I recognised it was your magic. There was no reason to dodge.” Stella countered.

Venus shrugged. “Very well, but do be wary next time. Discretion is important for a Queen, but unnecessary risks should always be avoided.”

“I thought you said you were gonna stop doing that!” Sol pouted.

“I wouldn’t have to move you if you were all sitting in your proper seats.” Venus chided teasingly, picking up her own knife and fork and eating a meal that had appeared instantly alongside her.

If Stella was a diamond, pristine and perfect, her mother was a somehow even further refined gem. A jewel sharply cut and polished to a blindingly beautiful degree. It was hard to believe she was even human. Hair so brightly blonde it was practically a glowing white, elven ears so tall and sharp they sat like a second crown adorning her head, and her eyes…

Her eyes were incredible. Ever-shifting pools of colour, like differently coloured oils sitting on water, merging and separating over and over, an entire spectrum explored in just her irises. There was something magical in them, quite literally. Though in this state, they were only dormant.

Luna still reeled from her mother’s sudden teleportation, her sensitivity to magic was naturally high, but she hardly felt the spell activate at all. Such was Queen Venus’ magical expertise. Although her husband was famed for having the greatest potency and raw magical ability, she was known for having the greatest skill.

This skill was something she wished to impart upon her magically inclined daughters. “Luna, Stella, you’ll be joining me for another magic lesson this evening.” She informed them.

“Of course, mother.” Stella nodded.

“Aw, come on! Why am I being left out?” Sol groaned. “I can do magic too!”

“You have your combat training with Marza this evening, Sol.” Venus reached over and ruffled his hair. “That’s far more useful to someone big and strong like you.”

Sol’s expression wriggled, somewhere between a smile and a frown. “Okay, fine!” He eventually caved. “I’ll go train with Marza and Jupi!”

“Oh, is that girl training with you now?” Venus asked, voice straining slightly when it was usually so effortless. “Isn’t she a bit… young?”

“She’s eight now! That’s the same age I was when I started!” Sol chirped, all smiles once more.

“Yes but she’s not like you, Sol…” Venus stated, rainbow eyes wavering in a blue-green hue. “Do look after her, okay?” She sighed.

“What are you doing here anyways, mom?” Luna chimed, bobbing up and down in her seat. “I thought you were fighting bad guys in the south!”

“‘Bad guys’ is frightfully reductive, dear.” the Queen hummed. “We were conducting diplomacy near Homme. In fact, no one was harmed at all.”

“Then the bad guys got away with it?” Luna frowned.

“No, not at all. As a queen, I used my discretion, and came to a conclusion that benefitted everyone. It’s a skill you’ll learn someday too.” She explained.

“Sounds lame.” Luna thought to herself. “It’d be easier just to beat them up.”

“Would it?” Venus raised an eyebrow, irises settled on an orange as she read her daughter’s mind. “Combat is an inelegant thing, Luna. It’s a hammer. A tool with little grace or nuance. Sometimes such force is necessary, but oftentimes more care is needed.”

Luna sighed. Not even her thoughts were safe from her mother. “Yes mother.” She nodded. It pained her slightly to agree, not because she thought Venus was wrong, but because she herself couldn’t be. Venus’ teaching style was very preventative, rather than allow mistakes and correcting them, she wouldn’t let them happen at all. It was antithetical to Luna’s ideals.

Nonetheless, it was how the Queen educated. It extended to their magic lessons too, which Luna and Stella attended after dinner. The two would sit while Venus paced around them, observing their form from every angle with her rainbow eyes. This evening’s lesson was on Munditia. A powerful spell that would typically be beyond girls of their age, but was no more of a challenge than any other due to their exceptional bloodlines.

“More power, Stella.” Venus hummed. “Munditia is about sheer potency, you don’t need to be so restrained.”

Stella grit her teeth and offered more energy to the spell, struggling to draw mana out through her hand. “This would be far easier with staves…” She grunted.

“That’s exactly why we practice without them. We can’t have you learning to rely on such a tool when one isn’t always available.” She chimed, running a hand through Stella’s hair.

Stella frowned, but redoubled her efforts. Her Munditia was middling size, just larger than her own head. It was bright and perfectly round, far prettier than it was powerful. Despite her mother’s words, it seemed she couldn’t exert any more power beyond what she was already offering.

“Take a break, dear.” Venus sighed. “We can’t have you burning out.”

“No, I can still-” Stella began, only for Venus to raise a hand and snuff out the orb of mana herself, closing a palm around it and popping the incredibly potent ball of pure energy like it was a mere balloon. Stella sighed and hung her head, before finally glancing over to see Luna’s spell.

It wasn’t too different, it was about the same size and colour, but there was a clear difference in two things. First, her orb sparked and moved. Where Stella’s sat still and controlled, Luna’s buzzed and jolted, energy hardly able to be contained. In order to maintain its relative size, it had to burn off energy constantly by zapping it away; it was the only possible method of preventing exponential growth. The other difference was the amount of effort. Where Stella was working hard to maintain the amount of mana needed and keep her spell intact, Luna wasn’t even looking at her hands, instead staring out the window, watching Sol train with his sword. She wasn’t trying. Even worse, she was outright bored by the spell. This rare, highly potent magical ability meant nothing to her, it came so naturally.

Stella expected her mother to scold Luna for this, but instead, she praised her. “Excellent work, Luna!” She smiled, admiring the sparking sphere. “You’re not even trying, are you?”

“Uh, not really…” Luna shrugged, a slight smile of her own creeping onto her face. Even if she didn’t care about her magic that much, she wasn’t immune to praise.

“This is your gift, Luna. You inherited your father’s magical ability! Such exceptional mana reserves are something only you and him are blessed with.” She leaned down, taking Luna’s hand and raising the orb to her face, showing her up close how wonderful her Munditia was. “Not even Stella and I can do what you do.” She raised another hand, showing her Munditia next to her daughter’s. Hers was larger, but didn’t spark or dance like Luna’s, there was less energy being pumped into it on a moment to moment basis. “This is your true strength, Luna. You mustn’t let it go to waste. So stop watching your brother and start working a bit harder, okay? I want you to surpass me someday.”

Venus’ smile in that moment was burned into Luna’s mind. She often revisited it even as an adult. So warm and kind and loving, but so loaded with expectation. It seemed a fragile thing. Something that she could shatter at any moment.

That pride her mother took in her, it was so precious and so delicate, she could never allow herself to break it. She would do whatever she could to preserve it. She would take pride in her ability, just as her mother had, she would work harder than ever before in her studies, and she would never, ever forget where her true strength lay.

However, she would not find this dedication yet. Not until a certain incident a few months later, where she saw what lay underneath that fragile smile.

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