Chapter Seventeen: Dragons and Tigers

A set of Crystal blue Sapphires watched the hand presented to.them carefully, her expression never changed and Akatsuki couldn't notice any ticks present on the woman. He knew little of the princess, who had decided to not attend to her duty of tutoring, but even without emotion presented on her face he could all but feel the hostility radiating off of her. Her eyes moved up his hand and he could feel the ice within her gaze as they met and the intensity of her gaze made Akatsuki wonder if she sought to read his mind.

"Princess..." An uncharacteristic shyness played its way across Akatsuki's face as flush filled his checks. "You'll make a girl blush starting like that." Akatsuki dawned a mask, but he knew all to well that her brother had debriefed her. It a n answer to an in asked question more so than anything. It took everything within Akatsuki not to laugh at the ever so slight frown that formed on the edges of her lips.

"Shall we start?" Katrina asked her eyes never leaving his own. Akatsuki leaned in as if to tell a secret and spoke loud enough only for her to her as he made eye contact with her brother who had a rougish smile across his face.

"I much prefer you smile..." Akatsuki paused as if thinking. "Or perhaps your brother's smile?" With those words he took the first step of the dance.

Katarina's eyes flinched shock playing across them for the briefest of seconds. She had not been expecting Akatsuki to take the first move, he was not of a higher status, and so there was no world in which her would take the lead, however for some reason, one he couldn't even explain to himself, she had annoyed him and had expressed no interest in being amicable about the situation. And so if she was not an ally she was an enemy. He was not one to bow to an enemy.

Akatsuki figured that by the end of the dance there was a high chance of his head rolling, but he didn't care, he had a point to get across, and until he finished his dance no one would stop him. There was another reason he just might get away with it. He had intercepted letters from neighboring empire, a place he knew little about, addressed to his mother. On further inspection he had found that they were pleadings for her return, not as a citizen, but as a queen. It seemed something or someone named harbinger had wiped out quite all but the Old King, leaving him on deaths bed, meaning in int faintest of ways he was on equal footing, if not just but technicality.

That didn't stop the gossip that had invaded the nobles and even the commoners of the kingdom, and Akatsuki suspected that to be the reason for so many attendants despite his lack of a social life. They came to see the coming of age ceremony of a foreign princess and now they watched as she declared herself equal with their own princess.

Katarina's twirl reset the dance putting her within the lead position refocusing Akatsuki's attention to the events unfolding before him. It seemed Katarina was not one to go down without a fight. The two danced neither one being able to force the lead, but this was no dance of neutrals, it was more akin to a duel to the death. Akatsuki cut in her steps a sword, Katarina parried with a dip that lead into a twirl. White fabric mixed with black as the onlookers tried to keep up.

"For centuries... Our kingdom... dragon and a tiger." Akatsuki caught snippets of the conversation Kato had started with a few older nobles.

The dance slowly came to a close only a few steps sat between the two and an elegant finish, however fate seemed to have different plans, Akatsuki's her caught and the strain of a night of dancing in heels caught up to him. as he cut inwards just as Katarina had done before, his ankle twisted sending pain up his leg locking it up. Akatsuki plummeted towards the ground at breakneck speed, but just as he gave up hope on recovering a hand shot out catching him around the arch of his back leaving him embraced and held in place unable to move as he stared up into ice-filled eyes.

The onlookers sat in awe as the two clad in black and white seemingly finished their dance in perfect form, unaware of the mistake, it looked as if the entire thing had been practiced meticulously. Suddenly it dawned on the nobles who came to tame, there was no tiger no king of the jungle, what stood in front of them was the birth of two dragons, Emperor's of the sky.