"Is it a to crime sketch when a party is going on?" He said, trying to evade the question.
Victoria shook her head and spread out her legs so they were no longer hugging her chest, then she began using less than one percent of her elemental magic to warm up her insides since the night air was cool and her gown was drenched with red wine.
"No," she replied. "But it is wierd."
Xander sighed, and turned around back to the castle with a dark look in his eyes, "I don't fit in."
"With the other nobles?" Victoria asked.
"Yes…it's hard to explain, but I just don't feel a part of them, you know. That's why I dread balls like this, but my mother forced me into it."
Victoria nodded, she understood what he meant, she didn't feel like she belonged anywhere in Alcazar, yet…here she was for an indefinite amount of time. The faster she killed the Demon King, the sooner she could return home with Mallory, assuming she wasn't captured. But she'd do everything in her power to make sure that Mallory escaped the Realm safely.
"I know how you feel, all for this is completely new to me as well." She commented, feeling her dress start to dry from her warm up magic.
"You're not really a Lady, are you?" Xander questioned, his purple eyes sparked with interest. "I mean, I've heard things from court. But…"
"Oh I'm far from royalty or any other noble." She began, "you might start treating me differently once I say this… my parents were commoners, farmers to be precise. The only reason I'm here is because I'm the most powerful elemental left in Elveria, whatever was left of them died in the three hundred year war."
"Are they dead?"
Victoria nodded. "They were killed during the war."
"I'm so sorry for your loss. I shouldn't be saying it because I am part of the Kingdom who gave you grief, but I truly am sorry." He seemed so genuine that Victoria forced a smile.
"It's alright." It wasn't. She was still filled with anger. "I don't remember much about them anyways." Another lie, she remembered every moment she shared with them, even if they were vague in her memories. Her mother humming an Elverian folk song by the fire place as she sewed a dress for Victoria, her father coming into the house and scoping a five year old Victoria up into his arms and twirling around with his deep laughs and her high pitched giggles. Her mother scolding her father for making little Victoria dizzy.
"She's our special girl," her mother would say while smiling. "Don't make our special goddess dizzy!"
"I won't treat you differently…" the boy said, continuing his drawing. "I've never cared about social standing. They never seem like the things to truly care about. We're all humans in the end, well most of us…the King is an exception."
This boy reminded her so much of Stefan, they were both so full of innocent thoughts and emotions that they could see beneath the surface.
"The King isn't human? Is he a really a demon then?"
Xander frowned at her in disbelief, "Demon? Whatever have you that idea?"
Victoria snapped her mouth shut. She was not supposed to call the King…Alvar, a Demon King out loud in the presence of a loyal Alcazarian, they would see it as a massive disrespect. She had gotten so immersed in their conversation that she forgot about the fact that calling the King a demon would be disrespectful.
"Oh…I meant–"
"King Alvar isn't a demon, he's the vessel of god!" Xander exclaimed, "a god of the underworld and justice, his name is Kas!"
She almost felt her jaw touch the grass beneath them, "H–he is?"
Never once had the Light Priest, Father Ambrose ever told her or anyone the Demon King was the vessel of a god, shouldn't he have known that. He was the mouthpiece of the Oracle and the gods, he should have known.
"We call him the Demon King because we thought only a demon would have such amounts of dark magic." Victoria muttered, still in shock. She couldn't believe it, perhaps this boy had it wrong…she heard rumours back in Elveria about the previous King brainwashing his people into doing his bidding with dark magic, maybe this King did the same into making his people believe they were of some sort of godly rule of their own and not if the darkness like they really were.
"It is impressive, isn't it." Xander said, his eyes clouded with traces of sadness. "Someone like me could never hope to challenge him to a duel."
"Someone like you?" Victoria asked, then decided to pay more attention to his aura, his magic. He has some amount, nowhere close to King Alvar though…it would flicker occasionally within him like the black fire burning within him would suddenly go out completely.
Aren't the royal family the only people with dark magic? She thought to herself, maybe Xander was a relative of the King himself. Maybe a first cousin.
She wanted to ask him to tell her more about his dark magic, tell her about King Alvar's dark magic and him being the vessel of a god. But instead she found herself asking, "why do you trust me with so much? I'm Elverian, I'm an enemy to your people."
"The war has ended." Xander replied, "you're no longer the enemy."
He couldn't believe that, first that little boy Stefan, then Lady Gwen, now this boy Xander. Where a large number of Alcazarians really at peace with everything?
"Really? You don't think that King Alvar should have just taken us as slaves?"
Xander shook his head and dropped his drawing tools to the ground and dusted his hands, looked like he was done with his sketch. "Of course not, I don't know much about the origins of the war. But what I know was all the Shadow Realm wanted was the Light Realm to see us as equals. We wanted your people to see that just because we are of the shadows doesn't mean that we were beneath them."
Victoria thought of all of her comrades she had befriended on the battlefields' tomb stones, she thought of her parents and the people who had lost their families and their homes, "You had a nice way of showing it."
Then she wondered why she had a slight headache afterwards that disappeared almost immediately.
Xander let out a breath and smiled sadly, "we lost comrades too, Lady Victoria."
Her eyes widened, did…di–did he read her mind?!
"My Lady!"
Mallory's voice didn't even remove her from her state of pure shock, even as Mallory bowed and greeted Xander and tried to get her back into the castle. "My Lady, we must go inside. The cold isn't good for you, remember?"
"I guess I'll see you around, Lady Victoria." Xander stated.
"Y–yes, I'll see you." She stuttered as Mallory pulled her away, leaving Xander smiling to himself as he watched her leave.