Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Cecilia pouted, the expression visible despite the veil that fell just on her nose, framing her red lips like a curtain partially drawn. "Your Highness, you didn’t look out for me when I was missing."

The corridor stretched before them. High ceilings, heavy tapestries, guards positioned at intervals that suggested surveillance while permitting private conversation.

Damon walked with his usual stride, escorting her.

"Did I need to?" He scowled at her. "You turned out fine. Too fine in fact that you got yourself three fine men."

"Angela didn’t freak out, so I didn’t. I figured you are fine since she didn’t throw a tantrum. You know she’s supposed to be the one with the complete information about everything."

Ah. The delegated concern and distributed responsibility, the emotional labor outsourced to the sibling who actually performed feelings while he managed their consequences.

"But I actually almost died."

"That bastard Arzh—? No. Tell me that later or I’ll start murdering someone."

They too, still had a situation here. Even though Cecilia saw his eyes chilled by several degrees.

They arrived at Jove’s chamber.

The door was heavy, carved with the Iondora crest modified for a prince’s residence. Damon pushed it open without announcement as he usually did and ushered her inside.

There was already Reginald and Gertrude.

The half-siblings sat on either side of Jove’s bed, clearly full of anxiety. Leaning forward, hands clasped, eyes tracking their younger brother’s breathing as if it might stop without warning.

They looked up at Damon’s entrance, their expressions shifted rapidly. First was immediate relief at his presence, then something complicated underneath. Next was confusion at Lady Sees’ accompaniment, wary like children who had learned that their elder brother’s arrivals often preceded catastrophe.

But inside... was also one more unexpected person.

Ivy.

She sat by the window, her eyes tracking their entrance and missing nothing.

She immediately noticed Damon and the woman’s more-than-familiar posture. The angle of his shoulder toward her, the protective space he maintained without seeming to maintain it. Wasn’t this... somewhat the same posture he’d serve for her?

Ivy smiled.

"Oh my," she said, her Cassian lilt making everything sound as if it were being translated from a language with more precise vocabulary for emotional subterfuge. "Our prince does move quickly."

"Not now, Ivy," Damon flatly said. He had reached his limit for simultaneous catastrophe management today.

Cecilia immediately turned to Damon, tease-glaring him from behind her veil, the visible lower half of her face performing expressions that the concealed upper half presumably matched, the geometry of her posture suggesting amusement at his expense.

"Not you too, my Lady," Damon glared back at ’Lady Sees’.

Ivy stood up and curtsied, the movement elegant, still maintaining her accusation at the crown prince for his romantic expedition. "It is my pleasure, no matter how unfortunate, to meet you here, Saintess, I assume?"

Cecilia blinked, and so did Damon.

Saintess?

Ah.

She was... assuming.

Because Ivy must’ve heard that Damon had summoned the Saintess too?

Damon narrowed his eyes. "Why would I do something so unnecessary as bringing the Saintess to meet my sibling who almost die—"

"Ahem, Saintess Ruby Vaiva, my Prince." An aide’s voice from behind him, coming from the open doorway, cut him off.

Damon and Cecilia turned, and everyone’s eyes landed at the white dressed Saintess.

What bad timing was thi—

It transformed Damon’s sentence into something else entirely.

Ruby, also just arrived, entered the premise with her eyes faltered. She had been summoned to witness the aftermath of her own prophecy, yet now...

This... could be interpreted as... instant humiliation?

Damon felt it land. Attempting to blatantly inform Ivy that Lady Sees was not the Saintess, and merely a medical professional of no particular spiritual significance produced an interesting outcome. But at the same time ironic, since this little shit beside him was also the former Saintess.

With the actual Saintess arriving, confirming by her presence that Lady Sees was indeed not her, it became somewhat a bigger humiliation to Ruby.

"Then who is this holy lady...?" Ivy pointed at Lady Sees, her finger extending at her.

...

...

...

Holy.

Ha.

This was almost funny.

"You are not summoned here, Saintess Vaiva. Were you not provided a reception room? That was rude of us," Damon turned to the aide, his eyes cold as if ready for another decapitation, the performance of displeasure emerging reflexively.

The aide, and in extension, Ruby, flinched.

"N-no, please don’t say that. I-I was worried about His Highness Prince Jove and insisted on visiting... Please forgive me for coming off as nosy..." Ruby timidly said.

"We meet again, Saintess," ’Lady Sees’ greeted, cutting off whatever remark Damon would’ve spat.

"Lady Sees, it’s a pleasure to meet you again," Ruby curtsied, glad with the interruption.

"Lady Sees?!" Ivy gasped. "So it was you Qinryc had been boasting about?! My oh my!"

The connection was established. Qinryc Lukas, Cassian Prime Minister, distributor of miracle elixirs, had been speaking of Lady Sees in terms that Ivy had apparently found excessive.

And now the object of that boasting stood before her, veiled and ambiguous and somehow associated with the crown prince in ways that required further investigation.

"Your Highness Princess Ivy Cassia, I presume?" ’Lady Sees’ said gently.

"You are correct, unlike my guess. Please forgive me for the mix-up," Ivy said, then turned, her glaring eyes finding Damon. "You should’ve provided context."

"You should stop assuming," Damon glared back, the exchange intimate.

This in turn made ’Lady Sees’ giggle. There didn’t seem to be any hesitation there, only familiarity. Lady Sees, no matter how it seemed, was enjoying herself.

This...

This dynamic...

Ruby felt awkward. The sensation of being superfluous, of having arrived at a scene that was already complete without her, that had been proceeding along vectors she could not perceive and now was required to accommodate her presence like a furniture rearrangement.

She was the Saintess, she had spoken prophecy, she had seen this man’s father die before he died, and yet she was peripheral to whatever was occurring between these three. The prince, the princess, the mysterious veiled woman.

And so did the aide, and Damon’s half-siblings.

Ruby bit the inside of her cheeks, keeping her gentle smile.

Damon Iondora... just wait until he was exposed as the one who sent the assassin and murdered his father.