Two pairs of eyes held each other.
"M-Mister Emil...?" The girl's voice came out unsteady, one hand fidgeting at the sleeve of the other.
"S-Seir...?"
A silence took them both, the way it had taken the beasts around her.
Steady. Unfazed, even standing before what should have been their enemy.
"Wh-why aren't they doing anything to you...?"
Seir's eyes darted, side to side, before she answered in a voice barely there at all.
"I... ███ ███ them..."
"...Huh?"
"I can command them." She raised her voice that time. Something like fear still crept underneath it.
Emil's eyes went wide. His hand went slack enough that the rifle nearly slipped out of it once before he caught it.
"You didn't... you didn't do all of this. Did you?"
Emil forced a smile onto his face.
"Right, Seir? You're a good girl, aren't you? You just took the ones that came to hurt you and made them protect you instead."
"...Right?"
He opened his eyes — they'd squeezed shut under a smile stretched too wide to see through — and looked at her properly.
What he saw was Seir with her eyes fixed on the ground, both fists closed tight around the hem of her own coat, and the small wet sniffing sound of someone holding back tears.
"I had to... i-if I didn't, my friend... my friend would—"
"Let's run away together, Seir! I can help you—" Emil's arm shot through the air, meaning to catch her and pull her to him.
Seir's head came up. Her amber eyes lit — and the beasts around her struck, hard enough to put Emil flat on the ground.
"This way we both live... I'm sorry, Mister Emil..."
Seir struggled him up onto her back — she was far too small for it and did it anyway — and started toward what used to be the eastern gate.
Central District. The Palace.
"—and so I fell back all the way to the defenseive line, and that's where I ran into Deputy Hale of the MP."
Evelyn brought a nail up to her teeth and gnawed at it lightly.
"It was tense, sure. What was worse was that the Section-Coms and the RMO Commanders and pretty much every command officer still posted to Eastern had already been picked off. Only the MP were left."
"Deputy Hale's good, though. Genuinely. I'll say it — he had a defensive line up and a decoy plan drawing them off the civilians fast."
Claude spoke up. "Give me the short version. What are you doing at the Palace."
"Bringing the Deputy's request for reinforcements to Lady Flaure, obviously. Except she just vanished into a mirror right in front of me..."
Claude exhaled through his nose. "If you hadn't stuck your nose in just now, Lady Flaure wouldn't have gone anywhere."
"And why is that?" Evelyn lifted her eyes to meet his. "Aren't you at last council conference?"
"I was out hunting betrayer in southern."
"—Oh."
"Put it this way. Lady Flaure's been preparing for this for a while now, if I'm understanding it right."
"...Which means, if she's suddenly moving now, she probably knew about all this before I ever opened my mouth. Doesn't it."
"And another thing. Even if she didn't, she has eyes and ears in every mirror in this palace. She'd have heard every word the two of us just said. So whatever she does, wherever she goes, whatever she orders — don't get in her way."
"A goddess who's been with us three hundred years. Carried this nation through the Omens — the only nation. And she's kind, and lovely, and brilliant, and beautiful, and perfect. She can do anything."
Evelyn's face had gone red, and there was, unmistakably, drool at the corner of her mouth.
*In her head:*
https://i.postimg.cc/J4JR8tnk/eve-flaures.png
"Glad that we broke up."
"I still hate you, shut up."
"Ahem—well, you're not close with Lady Flaure the way I am, so of course you wouldn't know about the mirror—"
"—Oops."
Evelyn scratched at the back of her head.
"Actually, she did say that one was just between her and me."
Claude let out another breath.
"Anyway. Second and Third have already betrayed. That leaves you and me. One holds Central District, one shadows Lady Flaure, one guards that facility in the north."
"—Waut, that's three." Claude frowned at his own arithmetic.
"For Central we could pull manpower up from a disposable district. The south, say," Evelyn offered.
"As for the north — I've got no idea what's so precious about it, personally, but I hear your unit and mine have to coordinate for it. So that should cover it, shouldn't it?"
"What we should really do right now is get to Western. The entire nation's food supply is—"
A Black Vanguard in black sprinted in fast enough to snap the hems of both their coats.
"Western District has fallen, Sir Claude! But on my way here I saw Lady Flaure out there — she's holding off some thing that fights like a god!"
Evelyn's and Claude's eyes went wide.
"But Lady Flaure was just—" they said, at the same time.
"Lady Flaure was just what, sir?" the officer said.
"Ah — never mind!" Claude cut it off.
"Evelyn. Go find Lady Flaure. Understood? I'm not confident about her safety. Everything else, I'll find a way to handle. I'm trusting you."
"...Yeah, whatever you say. If you can really manage all that, then fine — I'll trust you too. Mister Number One Special Operative, Captain of the Black Vanguard."
Claude turned to the officer.
"You. You're number twenty-one, aren't you?"
"Y-yes sir! Ansel Swen, sir!"
"Go shut every news house in the city. Every last one — except The North, and our own fake left-wing press."
"Y-yes sir!"
"I'm going north."
Claude sprinted out.
"And what about Western!" Evelyn shouted after him.
"Western — just have The North make up a story about it!"