Only meeting the princes could distract her from the haunting face. Eulia’s prediction has turned out correct, and her father informed her that she would be meeting the Kingdom’s sovereign heirs with only three days' notice. It would be a momentous meeting and he expected to present her with the highest prestige. The next three days were filled with meticulous grooming. She was to trim her hair, bathe with fine oils possessed only by men as powerful as her father and saved only for occasions such as this, polish her armor, practice her knightly posture and how she would address the royals, and of course endlessly rehearse her bow. She only barely managed to refuse his insistence that she shave her mane. She knew it would only grow back as ugly stubble. He would have done it himself if she were younger and smaller, but he no longer had that kind of power over her. 

It was an unpleasant few days of preparation, but come their visit to the fortress she felt like the hero of a story book, the gold accents of her armor gleaming in radiant sunlight. She and her father lead the procession up into the highest hall of the royal court, followed by the other three high councilors and their half-knight children: Eulia, Chiton, and Gregor. Besides them, a few other higher ranking officers accompanied, and in the royal hall a handful of nobles stood along the walls to observe. But the small crowd underwhelmed Eve’s expectations.She knew there were far less able people in the Kingdom than there once had been, but such a paltry gathering still seemed ill-fitting for a Kingdom of such size and grandeur.
            Although the audience was scarce, the princes offered plenty of excitement. She’d only ever seen the eldest prince once before, when she was a young child and he was only an infant in the queen’s arms. It was the first and only time she had seen a baby. The sight had stuck with her. Now, the eldest was no longer a baby. Prince Rowan, miraculously born only a few years after her, now perched on the cusp of maturity. He stood in front of his father, King Valus, a man whose size rivaled even Eve’s own. The prince had not inherited his stature and resembled much more closely his mother’s slight figure and delicate features. The way his father loomed over him, enormous hands gripping his thin shoulders, emphasized the contrast. Prince Rowan wore fine robes of the royal red, a brighter shade than that of Eve’s hair, dotted with tasteful emerald embellishments, symbolic of his semi-divine heritage. Maybe it was only that Eve knew so few others near her own age, but his beauty struck her. He possessed the storybook beauty of a princess, the fragile delicacy of a flower.

Beside Rowan the other princes stood with their mother, Queen Esther. The queen alone sat in a small throne, slumped against the backrest. She appeared older than the king, though Eve knew she was not and she pitied the woman whose sickly complexion and sagging shoulders cried for rest, yet whose heavily pregnant belly foreboded little chance of it.

Prince Oleander clung to her arm, distinguished by his silky black locks, the exact same as hers. Huddled was the third born, Aster, and the youngest, Cedar, barely old enough to stand at a ceremony such as this. Their preciousness was emphasized chiefly by their youth, an extremely rare sight in the kingdom.

Rowan wore the properly serene face of a royal, but the others were perhaps too young to have learned such ceremonial self-mastery. They looked up, and it was a good ways up, at Eve with barely contained terror. Oleander’s fingers tightened around his mother’s hand and for one of the only times in her life Eve felt a little embarrassed by her intimidating appearance.

She and Eulia stood before their fathers, mirroring the royal family in the middle of the hall. Though all four half-knights would be sworn to protect any and all children of the king, it was she and Eulia’s honor to swear allegiance to the Princes directly in this ceremony. Eulia matched with Prince Oleander and Eve, the natural leader of their cohort, matched with Prince Rowan. 

When the time came for her part, she stepped forward and bowed to the royal family. Then before Rowan she knelt. Her iron-clad knee knocked against the polished stone floor with a satisfying crack. Her father had told her that a royal administrator would announce the oath, but the family stood alone. It was the king himself who spoke. 

“You, the four half-blooded born of the wilds, have been raised and trained by the kingdom of man. Today we observe the desperate measure of your birth come to fruition. You will swear your loyalty to the royal family and attain the position of high knights of the kingdom. Your duty, from this day forth to the time of your expiration, shall be the protection of the children of Valus, sole heirs of the kingdom, humanity’s final hope. There is no more crucial task than their prosperity. You will submit your life to it.” 

The king did not speak as well as a servant trained for the task, he could not conceal the effort of memory behind the words, but his baritone voice conveyed well the enormous gravity of the oath. Eve, who wore iron armor, was well-used to weight. This event served only as a formality, she had taken this oath as early as her father had given her a weapon. The only novelty here was the presence of the secluded princes. All her life she had known them only as figments, the cynosure of her and her comrades' lives. Now they stood before her, the future of the kingdom made flesh and blood, four young boys and a hopeful daughter in the womb of the queen. She knew her bowed eyes should not stray from her boot, but she could not resist the slight raise of her gaze to the eldest prince’s legs before her. Scrawny calves ended in bare feet, a custom of the highest born children, for they did not tread anywhere unclean. 

“Should you stray from this path you shall lose the knighthood, all your honor and the honor of your fathers, and your life. Stay this path and you shall be rewarded as heroes in the coming era of rebirth. Now stand.” 

They stood. 

Eve and the king shared mutual surveyance over the heads of most others in attendance. Eve had seen the king many times before, but usually from afar and mostly in her youth living in the fortress. Now the ceremony granted her an opportunity to view the legend up close. A man of spent youth, like her father and most men in the kingdom, yet he retained a striking ferocity in his focused gaze. The legendary hero of the foray in the primordial valley, the very man who cut the Goddess’s womb from her slumbering body. Like grand feasts and his sons, the king seemed more the thing of fantasy than reality. Yet, his head did not rise above Eve’s own and his clenched fists did not rival hers in size. The notion occurred to her that just as she could now easily best her father, she might also be capable of defeating even the ultimate hero of humanity’s first era. Aware of the danger of such thoughts, she banished the notion as soon as snuck into her mind. 

It was Prince Rowan who spoke next. Funny that she had not expected him to participate beyond his presence. From the slight shift of expression in the king’s face, perhaps he had not expected it either. No one stopped the boy, however. “Kneel, please.” He said. 

Eve knelt again. Eulia, Chiton, and Gregor also knelt, but the prince stepped to Eve alone. In this position, she on her knee and him standing, they were level with each other. He stepped close enough to introduce an air of privacy between them, even in the vast hall and the small crowd.

“Your hand and eyes,” he requested with princely authority, and then in a hasty edition that betrayed his nerves, “please.” 

She placed her gauntlet on his outstretched hand, which disappeared under her palm. Besides his scruffy, mahogany hair, he bore little resemblance to his father. His features reflected his maternal heritage in a boyish iteration. The verdant dark of his large eyes belonged to neither parent, however, and perhaps to no other mortal at all. 

“As firstborn prince I personally ask you to affirm for your undying loyalty as my vassal. One day I will rely on your protection and I request the security of knowing you will not waver.” Eve could not speak so eloquently, her raising having neglected all areas of learning beside martial training. She only dimly understood the meaning of half his words. Yet when she met his eyes, she received his message loud and clear. Eve was not perceptive of social intricacies, that was always Eulia’s territory. It must have been the importance of the moment or a rare instance of some magic that allowed her to understand his intended meaning. Be my vassal alone, was his message, swear loyalty not to mankind, not to the kingdom, the royal family, or the king, swear it to me alone. Though he presented himself to the hall with all the serene grace of a true royal, he offered Eve alone a peak beneath the surface. Surely she imagined it, for such subtle motions could not be felt through the thickness of her gauntlets, but in the moment it seemed certain the arm she held trembled. Trembled like the tender stalk of a sprout newly burst from the soil, exposed to the gales of a world so much bigger than itself. Save me, he seemed to say.

“I swear this oath to the kingdom,” Eve said, exactly as instructed. 

The memory of Prince Rowan’s face in that ceremony would haunt her for years, just as the mysterious face in the window did. At times the two would mingle in her dreams, wide mouth and verdant eyes, traces of motherhood from both. Eve was not curious. She did not go searching for mysteries, but in the twilight years of her girlhood they presented themselves. Despite her best efforts, they insisted to be dwelt on.