Which left the retainers in something of a bind. Cadon’s wife was clamoring to take his position. But, once again, Ancient Law dictated that rulers would be determined by bloodline, not marriage, and you know, God knows what would happen if they dared to deviate even a little. So Gwendolyn Doyle, along with her new arranged fiancée, the nobleman Victor Sesseman, became the next Empress of Myrrh.
Whatever issues people had with Gwendolyn, most agreed that her Imperial Guard regiment was one of the most impressive in years. Normally, in the succession process, the guard will pick a child that he believes reflects his best qualities, and that child will be trained specially for the job until his master gets the throne. But, seeing as there wasn’t much time for that, Cadon’s guards picked from some of the most talented young soldiers in the country.
One of those soldiers was a woman named Celeste Kasshen, an aristocrat from one of the oldest noble families in Myrrh. She got pretty famous in her own right: she wasn’t only an extremely competent Second Division Commandant, she was also pretty smoking hot. She was practically considered a living legend.
Hate her yet? You don’t even know the half of it.
My name is Catalin Kasshen. That legend was my cousin.
When I was born, Gwendolyn had been on the throne for ten years, which was about how long the tensions with the neighboring Carmine Empire had been going on. Remember Cadon’s wife? She was a distant relation of Carmine’s Emperor Anwar, sent as a peace gesture. And you can imagine how ticked Anwar was about missing out on that connection. Gwendolyn, being much smarter than she looked, distrusted Carmine’s efforts to suck up to her from the start.
Gwendolyn worked hard to make sure that this tension didn’t affect Myrrh, but she spent most of her time locked in her palace; since her guards were expected to die with her, it made her a prime assassination target. But the people living in Myrrh barely even registered that they were on the brink of war. In House Kasshen, at least, Carmine didn’t even exist.
As the children of the head of the family, my older sister Eliade and I were expected to be quiet, courteous, respectful, and play shamelessly on our cousin’s fame. Well, Eliade was. I was three years old, so I was mostly expected to learn to read and write before everyone else my age. At the time, our father claimed that he was still deciding who would succeed him as head of the family. While Eliade was the firstborn, I had two things going for me: I was a boy, and I already distinctly resembled Celeste.
Celeste came to see us pretty often, at my father’s insistence. She preferred Eliade, who was thirteen and could therefore stroke her ego properly, but she played with me a little, too. That is, until I got the least bit disagreeable, then she’d just hand me back to a maid. Celeste didn’t really know how to deal with children.
Once, she did come just for me.
