As Ambrosia stared up at the night sky, it reminded her of the same dark sky, the day her mother had declared a counter-war against the werewolves, even killing the ones that were their ally, after the Great Decade War had only just ended.
It had been a year since the contract was concluded between the two lands, Mortals and the Saunders.
As promised, King Delaware had sent one forth of his army to their land each year to train alongside their own.
To keep her mind off from thinking, which had no ends, to keep herself away from the company of her own mother, who did not hesitate to sell her to keep the crown on her head, she took the responsibility to train the new soldiers.
But to her disappointment, humans could never match the swiftness and strength of those who were not mortals.
A handful of their, shrewd and extremely trained vampires could finish them all in one go...not to even think about the possibility of being able to fight against the werewolves, who had over years had been rumored to have been tripled their number and doubled their strength.
"I do not have any faith in winning this war with them..."
Dotus said, coming close to the princess. He was one of the best vampire warriors, who had also fought the war with her father.
He had also accompanied her to all the hunts of extraterrestrials, far from the borders of the Saunders, the monsters escaping from the gates of the Moribund land.
"I agree with Dotus. They are mortals. They cannot fight a war with immortals.
There is a reason why the humans were not allowed to fight in the Decade Long war!"
Hiramba joined. She was another shield maiden. Younger than Ambrosia herself but her skills had made her part of the army that the Princess lead to her expeditions.
Ambrosia remained silent, listening to them. She was not much of a talkative person from before but ever since then, she had stopped speaking altogether unless necessary.
The change in her did not go unnoticed by her companion warriors. The mortals were all tired and panting from the day's training and the vampires, on the other hand, did not look halfway tired.
"The Queen is approaching!"
And all of them straightened their posture hearing the messenger from the distance.
Shortly, Celeste made her way into the training field. She was joined by Lavanya and the royal guards behind her.
She was well aware that her daughter wanted nothing to do with this arrangement that she had made with the land of Mortals but at the same time, she was also glad that so far, Ambrosia had not done anything out of the order.
Except for skipping the etiquette classes of how to become a perfect Mortal princess and later, a Mortal Queen...she was doing alright.
And Celeste cared less about it. She only aspired for the contract to be acted upon as successfully as it was forged.
Being aware of the anger of her daughter, she could only be glad that she had not done anything impulsive so far.
"I see the training going so well..."
The Queen came close to her daughter and her companions, Dotus and Hiramba.
"They could hardly match the strength even for once with our own army, Queen."
Hiramba did not stop herself from stating the facts to the Queen. Being of young blood, unlike Dotus who remained silent.
It made the Queen look at the young vampiress with her scrutinizing gaze.
"They are here to represent the number, not our strength."
The Queen muttered out. She knew too that an army of mortals was of less use to her, same as training the men of her land.
"You are one fool to think if the number could win you this war or the thought that this contract was going to bear you any fruit."
Ambrosia gritted her teeth together and stormed passed her mother, reeking with extreme anger and fury. She did not care about the crowd if her way portrayed disrespected to the Queen.
As the days passed by more quickly, she grew more impatient about finding a possible solution for both herself and her mother...the land, their kingdom.
It was not to be denied that she did not feel any responsibility towards this land, she did too.
Fact that her father lost his life fighting to protect the peace of this land, she would want to do the same too without a doubt.
And it could be why she had been doing nothing to counter this contract. She was not doing anything against it.
At night, she would continue watching the darkness above, counting away the days of her freedom.
Often times, her mind had out to her with only one solution and that was to go visit the Witch of the Moon night herself in the mirror forest and find out a cure to this problem.
But how could she know if it would work out? Nobody had ever entered the mirror forest...not even the vampires.
It was only the werewolf leader, Jamal, who did it and the consequences of it did not turn out to be so good.
He had visited the forest to bring in the curse of nightfall from the Witch of the Moonlight and many to this day concluded that it was his visit inside that forbidden forest that had made him lose his rational sense of mind.
And it was something even Ambrosia feared herself. The Witches were known to be good at playing mind tricks with both the mortals and the immortals with their magic.
What if she would return as some war-hungry monster too? Disrupting the peace that her father fought to the dead?
It was her worst fear...turning to be the monster herself than thinking of finding a solution to fight the ones who were.
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