"No."
The princess stomped her foot on the ground, the sharp sound making both Orion and Reiner wince. Annie and Bertoldt merely stayed still, watching the princess again square off against her uncle.
"You're making us lose time to catch them," Belua snarled, fury so obvious that her words were almost lost amidst the catches and twists of her growl. "Stop playing Lord and let me go."
"Orion and the rest of your court can go," Lord L/N said, pointedly looking at anywhere but Belua – not due to fear, but due to the fact that Belua would now be seeing red. "Apart from Annie. She can stay and make sure that you are exactly where you are supposed to be. You are not sneaking out again – a mere hour after coming back!"
Orion didn't bother giving Annie a sympathetic look – the female titan would rather accompany her princess over hunting anyway.
"They're all fools – they need me."
Orion didn't blame Reiner for the stubborn hiss in response; he merely rolled his eyes, knowing that it wasn't true. He'd managed well enough when the girl hadn't been here. It was that thought that spurred him into twisting on his heel and walking steadily from the room, not bothering to give a farewell. He knew from the footsteps behind him that Reiner and Bertoldt were following him, and all three of them stayed silent until they reached the entrance hall.
Reiner threw him a cloak, the signature black cloaks that were famed amongst titans. He fastened it under his chin, drawing the hood over his curls so that the edge hung just level with his eyes, obscuring his face from any other looking at him.
Orion could have laughed at the sight of the princess's fuming face as she watched him leave the castle with his hunting crew, but he knew well enough that doing so would be a death sentence. The hunting team had already assembled – a few of them were already seething, already pacing. Anxiety and eagerness rippled off of them in waves; it didn't take long for that energy to be felt by him in equal measure.
Orion grinned – a bloodthirsty thing that was echoed by all those who watched him bare his teeth. "Let's go hunt ourselves some humans, shall we?"
*
The forest was utterly dead.
There was no sunlight creeping through the empty, depraved branches of the trees; winter had long-since hidden the sun behind a thick, choking blanket of clouds that had leeched all warmth and colour that may have once lit up the world. The grass was wild and unkempt; there were no flowers growing at this time of the year, no flecks of colour anywhere amidst the world of grey, white and brown.
But that didn't matter to the two girls that were creeping through the undergrowth, their footsteps carefully monitored so that they didn't disturb the ghostly silence of the ghoulish forest. One girl held a bow ready, the worn wood clenched firmly between her pale fingers, with an arrow already strung. The barbed iron gleamed wickedly even in the absence of light, winking at the girl as though it were begging to be shot.
The girl either didn't seem to notice as her fingers tightened on the arrow – or just didn't care. Her blond hair was drawn back into a messy bun at the top of her neck, a few tendrils escaping to frame her narrow face. Pale skin was drawn tight around her face, the cheekbones sharp and cutting as shadows were cast along her face. But if her skin was pale, it was nothing compared to the pure ice of her eyes. Cold and blue eyes shone with something unstable as the girl darted her gaze back and forth, searching the forest for any sign of life. The girl made no noise except her light breaths as she continued her prowl.
The other girl was quieter still. She was crouched slightly in front of the blond girl, her hands reaching behind to grip handles of twin daggers that were tucked into her tight trousers, the jewels that were embedded in the handles glittering as they moved. This girl knew how to use the blades; she whipped them in front of her with lightning speed, hardly making a noise as the silver slashed through the air. Her E/C eyes were bright with the promise of death.
Reiner sent a silent grimace to Orion as they both watched the girls creep past their hiding place in the undergrowth. Orion was biting on his lip – whether to stop himself laughing at his princess's poor attempt at remaining unseen or to contain his wrath, Reiner didn't know. Didn't want to know if it was something else, either.
It was a rare thing to watch another without them having a clue that one was doing so. An even rarer thing for it to be Y/N L/N, a thing that had unrivalled instincts that she'd honed to the breaking point.
Reiner watched the two females closely, marking them carefully. He noted that where Annie shone with insanity as though it were her one saving grace, the princess practically glowed with it. Even the forest seemed to hold its breath as she set a sigh loose and dove to the ground, her movements calculated and smooth; in the space of a single second, she was behind a bare oak tree that was previously five meters away from her original hiding place.
Annie swore softly as she realized that her companion was no longer behind her. "Have you seen them?"
Reiner felt Orion tense. In the emptiness of the surrounding woods, the words felt as loud as a shout. But the beast with the twin daggers just snarled in displeasure and bared her teeth at the other girl. "If I'd seen them, do you really think that I'd still be here, Annie?"
Her voice dripped with sarcasm, and Reiner watched Annie swallow before she smiled. "No, I suppose not, Princess."
The Princess looked nothing like her title suggested - she was dirty, and there was no golden crown on her head, and she was currently running her tongue along the tips of her teeth as though she could taste something particularly satisfying. She was wearing leather boots and her clothes were all black - no traces of gowns and jewels besides the ones in her daggers.
And a black cloak was tied around her neck, the broach showing a wicked symbol engraved within a silver ring. It didn't exactly match a black tattoo that marred the skin on her collarbone, but the two symbols were near enough in their threatening message that it didn't seem to matter.
And Reiner knew that, whilst Y/N looked nothing like a princess, royalty echoed in her essence.
The royalty in question stretched her muscles as though they were sore and stood up, the cloak flowing in the bitter wind that whipped its way through the trees. "You know that we shouldn't be doing this," Annie carefully stated, as though she knew that she was treading on very thin ice. It seemed that this particular argument had been waged before, as the Princess' stature tensed in an unspoken warning. "Your uncle stated that the hunt was for the males alone."
The Princess snarled. "I don't care. If I want to join the hunt, then I shall. No one will stop me; not if they want to keep their heads."
"What's your plan?" Annie insisted, as they started lightly treading through the frosty wasteland. Orion nudged Reiner's side slightly, and both males started slowly, ever so slowly, following them.
"I want to find the little hunting party, who think they're too good for me, and teach them a lesson where my uncle and mother aren't in a position to stop me."
Reiner repressed the shiver that crawled up his spine at the uncaring, lovely voice. All knew that their princess would bestow death on those that displeased her, because their princess was a true titan in every sense of the world.
Not that it had been easy to get to this point.
It had taken so long for Reiner to mask the jealousy that he practically radiated every time Annie Leonhardt appeared in Y/N L/N's shadow. Annie had gotten her back – not him, not Bertoldt. Annie. It hadn't been just someone to retrieve the girl - it had been her who had gifted her people with Y/N L/N, the titan Princess. It hadn't mattered that he or Bertoldt had been right there with Annie, marking and protecting their princess as they saw fit.
No.
Annie had claimed all of that fame and had reaped the rewards.
Over the year, Annie had grown as a beast, stripping away that human skin that they'd all been forced to wear in order to gain the Princess's trust. She'd been the daughter of a titan with medicinal skills, a young girl without any particular skills except her sheer stubbornness to learn. All she'd had was a sword and a name, and so she had made it count. Her name belonged to the First Family, the bloodline of titans that were tasked with the protection of the Royal Family. She was born to protect the royalty, the princess that had been born merely months after her.
But now she was the Princess's right hand, her personal protector. The honour had been earned, the Queen had said, due to her finding the Princess in the wide world of humans. Wherever Y/N was, Annie was always at her side gripping her bow or an axe.
And oh, Reiner hated it.
His name hadn't belonged to the First Family – and so he hadn't been recognised in the slightest. He and Bertoldt had been cast into the shadows, like they'd always done, and watched as their efforts were claimed by something with more power – until Orion had recognised that they were not things to be overlooked.
Following the train of his thoughts, Reiner glanced at Orion – only to find the male slipping away, his intent obviously directing back towards where they'd left the hunting team to figure out tracks whilst they waited for the princess to appear – as both had known she would. One of the lesser titans had finally found solid tracks – tracks that had been following the titans for a year, forcing them to move from place to place, not resting at a single establishment for too long. But each time they set up somewhere new, the tracks had followed them. Reiner had seen them himself – slightly messed up and teased. He knew that the tracks had been placed there deliberately, to make the titans on edge, to make them uneasy. The humans that dogged them knew how to irritate his kind.
So, Reiner didn't breathe a single word of complaint as he and Orion stole back away to re-join their hunting party. They both knew that between Annie and Y/N, they'd be joined soon enough.
And so, they left the two girls sneaking quietly through the forest, tracking the few footprints left by a few of the newer hunting members on a cold and bitter winter's day.
*
The knocking on her door was steadily driving her into insanity.
"WHAT IS IT?!" The girl suddenly screamed, deciding that pretending she was asleep was useless at this point. Her bed creaked as she flew into a sitting position and grabbed the rapier from where it was propped against her bedside table. Her untamed red hair danced about her pale face and she impatiently brushed it out her way, taking the two leather strips from her wrist and wrapping her hair hastily into two pigtails at each side of her face.
Her door opened as she stood up, her blue shorts and vest offering modest covering as the blankets fell away from her body. She crossed her arms as she beheld the people waiting outside her door, a leather bracelet and charm swinging from her wrist.
"You'd better have a good reason for getting me up."
A girl with wide hazel eyes looked at her with an exasperated sigh, her brown hair neatly pulled back into a ponytail. A light dusting of freckles reigned over her face as she attempted to smile at her crabby, rapier-wielding friend in a peace offering. "It's midnight," the brown-haired girl said, shrugging her shoulders. "You have to come, Isabel."
Isabel shrugged on a jacket and a long cloak, sheathing her rapier but buckled it to her waist. Her green eyes glittered with malice as she dared any of the people behind the door to say anything about her outfit choice. She cast one look behind her, to see the letter on her desk.
'Dear Isabel Magnolia,
This is your reminder that the weekly practice on Friday at midnight will still be in order. To refresh your memory, here is what you have to do:
1) Find the subject
2) Figure out what killed the subject
3) Figure out who killed the subject or suffer the consequences.
Sincerely,
Survey Corps, Assassination Academy'
Isabel bit her lip as she stepped out from her room and joined the people on the outside, hearing other people rush down the corridor in order to get out and find the body first. "I told you that I didn't want to play the game today, Sasha."
"We ignored that," Sasha grinned, and the two girls at her side smiled gingerly. They almost seemed like complete opposites; one was tall and dark-haired, and looked like smiling was never on the agenda. The other was small and dainty, with wide blue eyes and blond hair that shone as bright as her smile.
"I don't want to go," Isabel said, and slammed the door.
She lasted five seconds before she threw it open again and stormed out, the three girls following her with silent smiles. They knew how she felt about this game; they knew that she had long since taken over the role of Pride, a role that had been ripped from them. Isabel wore it well, her new title. There was something more grounded about Isabel than there had been with Y/N, the original owner of the title of Pride. There was less of the instability that Y/N had just carried with her, as naturally as she breathed.
Isabel was steadfast, a rock that never caved or cracked. Y/N had been brilliancy, a flame that was forever dancing and flickering.
And god, did Isabel miss her.
There was not a day in the months that had passed that Isabel Magnolia did not think about her best friend. About how Y/N had stepped onto the titan terrain, planning on never coming back. About how she had never gotten to wear the blue ties that her other friends now all wore. She'd allowed her friend to sacrifice herself simply because the others in power had voted to - Y/N would have never let that happen to her. Y/N would have gotten her out, damning the consequences. It was funny, Isabel thought, to think about how panicked she had been in the face of a fight. Y/N had never been like that.
"We know what playing this game means to you; we knew that you'd want to skip it, like you always do," the blond girl, Christa, murmured as they made their way out of the Dorms. "But Sasha thought it would be better this way."
"Because this way, you don't get to wallow," Sasha finished, winking roguishly at Isabel. Isabel rolled her eyes and allowed Sasha to sling an arm around her shoulders, the large double doors being tugged open by Ymir, the dark to Christa's light. Isabel breathed in the cool, midnight air and felt her body starting to relax back into a normal routine, a repeatable game.
A game of murder.
*
Erwin Smith slammed a hand down onto his desk, sending numerous pieces of paper flying. The brown-haired woman, seated on the opposite side of the desk, yelped in shock and leaped to her feet. Erwin didn't care about that, however, as he considered the excitement coursing through his veins.
"Do I even ask what the heck you're doing, or are you just going to keep it to yourself?"
The burly built man raised his blue eyes to meet the hazel ones of his captain's, and he grinned a wolf's grin at her. Hanji merely sighed in exasperation before returning to her seat and slumping into it, watching him carefully as he considered his next move.
"Fetch him," he said, his voice trembling with endless possibilities. Hanji said nothing, however, as she rose to her feet again and went quietly out of his office. Erwin again scanned the letter on the desk before him, the tiny writing creating such a thunderous sense of excitement within him.
It had only been a few months since he had allowed the titans to regroup instead of following and exterminating them. He had been wrong to take pity on his soldiers, or on the students. He'd thought that they'd been traumatized enough, after the attack on the city and then the battle on the field so far from anyone's home. He'd given them a few months to regroup, to train the skills that they'd now realized were vital.
And in those few months, he'd lost the titans. They'd slipped from his fingers into thin air, it would seem. So now he was desperately trying to find them, sending out scouts and soldiers alike to try and bait them into attacking. But it was worthless; they were nowhere to be found. He'd lost the chance that Y/N had given to him on a silver platter - had wasted it on pity and stupid nothings.
But this letter changed that.
The door slammed open and Levi Ackerman stormed in, his face pulled into a frown and his eyes glimmering with panic. Erwin did not wince as he too slammed his hands down on Erwin's desk, the short male staring at him with wide eyes and a snarl.
It did not take Levi long to glance down at the letter and realize what it meant to Erwin. Erwin watched in fascination as the grey eyes seemingly faded and knew that Levi was watching a different scene than the one that was in front of him.
Levi slowly came back to this world, his lips trembling and his hands shaking from where they were planted on his desk.
"Where is she?"