A Week Later

A week went by and the palace was undergoing a huge change.

The Emperor, who had never particularly cared about the technical side of the throne, was now throwing himself into his work and barely leaving his office. The rumor going around was that he practically lived, ate, and sleep in his office these past few days.

During these days, the Grand Empress was also acting strange, immediately rerouting any political manners to her son. It seemed that she had completely given him power and was stepping down. The court officials were panicking because to them the Emperor was nothing aside from his picture-perfect image that was hand-crafted by his mother.

While he could handle the basic tasks perfectly fine, it was the Grand Empress who dealt with the issues that required more than just a look and weren't able to simply be handed off to palace assistants to deal with.

The court officials understood very well that Markos was nothing more than a puppet. The real power lie in the hands of his mother and besides, they had spent years currying favor with her. And now, suddenly, it was all worthless and they had to actually submit to this Emperor of theirs. It was safe to say that the palace was in complete turmoil currently.

Of course, this was all just speculation and rumors floating around the palace.

Evelyn had seen Markos in passing and he looked tired and gloomy, simply floating past her as if he were a ghost. She didn't have the slightest idea if any of these rumors were true nor did she care to confirm them but she was grateful. Truth or not, her days had been peaceful and she never had to see this hateful husband of hers.

For the past week, Evelyn and Jinx had been going to the training grounds after all the knights had taken their leave and training there. Evelyn was determined to train Jinx to protect herself. She felt it was the least she could do since Jinx had practically been forced to become a life-or-death servant at such a young age.

While she enjoyed training and sparring with her maidservant, it was annoying to constantly have to hold back her strength. At times, she just wanted to completely throw herself into training without having to think about adjusting her strength when she made certain moves.

It was for this exact reason that she loved the fact that Apollo came by every night to clean the training grounds and would, in turn, spar with her. Against Apollo, she was able to simply throw herself in.

Apollo had been trained for years and the two of them could even be said to be evenly matched. At first, he would overpower her when she made sloppy moves after not training for a while but she was quickly able to get back into the groove and her moves were no longer as messy as before.

KAK!

KAK!

KAK!

Evelyn's sword clashed against Apollo's multiple times. On the last blow, both of them jumped back to put several spaces between them. Their eyes locked, both seemingly waiting for the other to make a move.

Apollo's face shined with a light layer of sweat. They had been going at this for nearly an hour now and he hadn't been able to get the upper hand at all. Before he could defeat her in less than half an hour and now it seemed she had gotten used to her previous training again.

"Are you ready to give up?" A smirk graced the Empress' lips as she watched the handsome man before her, constantly checking for any opening she could take advantage of. She was also slick with sweat and her muscles burned as if they had been lit on fire.

Apollo panted, "Is this your subtle way of telling me that you're tired? All you have to do is admit your defeat and this will all be over."

"Hmph." Evelyn huffed and tapped the tips of her toes to the ground, springing at him with impressive speed.

KAK!

Their swords met again. Apollo managed to reflect it but it was clear that he wouldn't be able to keep this up for long. Evelyn noticed this and immediately forced him on the defense, aggressively attacking him. Her eyes were constantly flickering every which way in an attempt to find any kind of weakness in his defense that she could exploit.

Eventually, she spotted an opening and struck out. Apollo noticed the trajectory of her sword and turned his body in a feeble attempt to dodge. While he did manage to dodge, the force behind the sword was already too much to dead-stop.

It was too late for Evelyn to change the path of her sword or to adjust the strength behind it and she watched in horror as the sword cut through the handsome knight's flesh.

"Your arm!"

Apollo grunted in pain. His sword clanged to the ground as he brought his hand up to his shoulder wound. He waved her off, "It's fine, I'm fine."

"It's not fine, the blood is seeping through your shirt!"

Evelyn moved to help support him and brought him over to a bench. Her voice was tense and panicky, "Okay, okay, just sit and I'll have Jinx fetch the first aid kit and - Gods, where is that girl!" She was clearly frustrated as she feverishly looked around to find her somewhere on the premises.

"You sent her to run some errands for you, remember? She didn't come to the training grounds at all today."

When she demanded the first aid kit, he directed her towards the kitchen, a little closet off to the side that they used to store items of that nature.

Apollo's brows furrowed as he watched her fret and panic over his wound. This type of pain was nothing to him. There was a single degree of danger that he hadn't faced nor an injury he hadn't obtained so this type of thing wasn't really a big deal to him.

A part of him felt bad.

In truth, he was perfectly capable of avoiding that last strike that went through his shoulder. His real strength did not lie in sword fighting like Evelyn's, it was magic. He could have easily used magic to boost his speed or even the strength of his body and force the sword to bounce off his skin but he wouldn't be able to explain himself then.

He was just supposed to be a knight with a bit of talent how would he possibly be able to explain the fact that he could use magic well enough to use it in combat?

It must be known that magic wasn't something that everyone was born with. In fact, even having items embedded with magic were hard to obtain unless you were of royalty or had very deep roots. The number of magic users or "mages" were so small in number that there was only a single mage tower in the entire world.

Even if one had magic it wasn't always a sure thing that they could actually practice magic which made the mage tower even more exclusive. The Mage Tower stood on the pinnacle of the world and was one of the largest forces in existence but because of a treaty between countries, they kept to a very strict promise of never interfering in matters between nations.

Apollo shook his head. He couldn't possibly expose his identity just because of a little sparring. It was his fault for suggesting that they use actual swords instead of wooden ones anyways.

"You really don't have to do this you know. You can call one of the servants over," said Apollo when Evelyn came back, carrying the first kit.

Evelyn just shook him off, "I'm the reason you got hurt in the first place, it's only right that I help you, isn't it? Now take off your shirt."

"….If you wanted to see me shirtless all you had to do was ask. Stabbing me was a bit excessive."

Over the last week, they had grown closer so his lighthearted teasing no longer flustered her.

"Don't act as if I'm perverted." She rolled her eyes. "I clearly need access to your wound to help patch you up, Apollo."

With that, Apollo took off his shirt with her help and revealed the wound on his shoulder. If one looked close enough, they would notice that the tips of his ears were blushed red.

Somehow, Evelyn remained completely calm as she cleaned his wound in silence. When she was finally finishing up and bandaging him up, she apologized.

"I'm really sorry by the way." She said. "Lately, I've been throwing myself into my training so much that it's become a bit unhealthy. The palace can just be so stuffy and suffocating at times that I need a way to clear my head."

"Maybe that's because you do." Apollo thought for a moment, turning to look at her, "Have you even been outside the palace? Tor's capital?"

She shook her head no.

The handsome knight suddenly smiled and his eyes twinkled mysteriously. "That's it then, you just need a change of scenery."

"I'm sorry?" She didn't quite understand what he meant.

"We're breaking you out of this palace."