"...Could I have a serious discussion with you, Sunny?" Armon asked her the next day, after Daemon had left for a morning appointment. They had an hour before she was due in Court, so Sunny gestured for Armon to join her at her desk.
"Sure. I was actually going to ask to have a discussion with you, too," she returned.
"Really? What about?" the affable man asked, settling himself in the other chair and crossing his legs neatly.
"I need a gown suitable for attending the Marriage Mart Ball." She might have had to be careful what to call it during the Council meeting, but Sunny knew Armon preferred the more honest title for the affair.
He sucked in a breath, grimacing. "—Well, that's going to be a little bit difficult. You see, Sunny, the Consort's not
allowed
to attend. None of the concubines are, simply by ancient tradition, but the Consort is specifically forbidden to attend by law. That's because the Consort is the beloved of the Sovereign, and the objective of the Formal Familial Ball is to introduce His Majesty to eligible bride-candidates. It's considered an impediment to an arranged marriage if the king is too busy thinking of his beloved to pay any attention to anyone else. Besides, all of the attendants are either royal or noble, by tradition. You're a Free Citizen, which isn't quite the same thing in the eyes of Astorran tradition."
"...What if the Consort is herself royal or noble? Wouldn't she have the right to attend under that guise?" Sunny asked.
"Well...technically, she couldn't be barred from attending, if she attended as a noble or a royal. But it's never really come up, because it's considered bad form to make someone of royal or noble birth a mere concubine." Armon paused, then gave her a wry look, clasping his hands around his knee. "But that does bring me to my own question. Sunny, sweetie...your beautiful but highly unusual freckles seem to be echoed by certain marks I've just noticed on His Majesty's own skin....reversed but complimentary markings that form 'white freckles' on his gorgeous, tanned hide.
"Now, you should know this, too, as an Imperium historian, because it's somewhat known among the better-educated circules," Armon started to babble, "if not often widely discussed, that, erm...I can't believe I'm suggesting this," he muttered self-deprecatingly, shaking his head slowly. "I mean, how could it possibly have happened? I—"
Sunny put him out of his misery. "Let me guess: you were wondering if our paired marks might have anything to do with the way the Empress and Emperor usually have some sort of complimentary, paired marking on their own bodies after they've been selected by the Matrix...right?"
"...Right," he sighed, visibly both relieved and uncomfortable at having the notion aired. "I mean it's a silly suggestion, isn't it? The last Emperor and Empress lived over forty years ago! No one's seen hide nor hair of the fabled Matrix since then. It's a very silly idea..." He looked away, sighing. "I'm an old fool. It was a stupid observation."
"Actually, I'd say it was a rather astute one."
Armon blinked and did a double-take, looking at her sharply. "An...astute...one?"
"Yep. And you'd
only
be a fool if you discussed this with anyone else, at this point in time," Sunny confirmed with a slight grimace of her own. He blinked, and she drove the point home, no-holds-barred. "Yes, Armon, your suppositions are correct. I am the White Dragon, the Empress-Elect. Daemon is the Black Dragon, Emperor-Elect. Of course, he hasn't exactly
realized
this, yet...and we're still working out a compromise in how we should consider and treat each other," Sunny added calmly as the Chief Eunuch gaped at her, grateful her private quarters were guaranteed surveillance-free, usually through daily sweeps of hand-picked counter-espionage teams. She'd come to trust Armon and his staff, over the few weeks. She'd certainly come to like the andro-oriented man, and thought of him now as a friend. "I also
won't
tell him unless and until we're equals in each other's eyes. If Daemon figures it out on his own...well, we're almost there, anyway, so it won't matter as much as it would have a few weeks ago, when I myself first figured out what was happening."
"How...how is this possible?" Armon demanded, eyeing her askance. "How did you...?"
Her sense of discretion kept a lid on the details of that secret, but she did give him the general timeline.
"I acquired the, uh, seed of the Matrix within me shortly before I was kidnapped by the pirates who stole me and sold me on the slave-markets. But I didn't know it, at first. The Matrix then selected Daemon for my partner shortly after we were left alone together—pretty much from the moment we first touched—and it has been growing within us ever since. At its current rate, it will probably be ready for completion by the Marriage Mart at the latest...which would be an excellent moment for me to step forward and assert my place as his intended wife."
"Why don't you just tell him right now?" he asked her, curiosity lacing his tone, mixed wth confusion and puzzlement.
She'd given that some thought. "For one, he needs to come to realize it for himself. I've tried to access the powers of the Matrix, and I can only do minor things at the moment; we are not yet complete. I
think
we are already fully protected, physically...but I cannot be completely sure. If Daemon knew, he might want to immediately assert my rightful position at his side, Armon, and that would put us in the spotlight," she told him. "Which could in turn—quite conceivably—put us in danger from those wanting to either attempt to capture and torture or kill us for the secrets of the Matrix, or to 'prove' our indestructibility as proof that we do, indeed have the seed of the Matrix within us. And if we
aren't
yet indestructible...well, I like being alive, intact, and unharmed a lot more than the idea of finding out otherwise.
"There are other factors, too," Sunny continued with a sigh. "I have certain suspicions about the Ruyikans, and the troubles plaguing Daemon's predecessors, but I haven't been able to prove anything. I think Queen Astrida knows what really happened, and so I have to wait until she's here, on Astorra, before I can try probing her mind for the truth. But since I don't have full command of the Matrix just yet, I can't get anything more than impressions from the minds of the people around me, including from her ambassador. All of the accounts I've researched on the powers of the Matrix point to the telepathic properties being a lot stronger and more precise than mere 'impressions'," she added. "If Daemon and I have enemies lurking in the wings, now is definitely not the time to draw them out into the open. We're just not ready for it."
"I see... So, you're really the Empress-Elect? Can you, erm...prove it?" Armon asked her carefully, his expression somewhere between askance, apologetic, and dubious. "No offense or anything, Sunny, but you just can't go around claiming something like that without backing it up!"
Nodding, waving off his apology, Sunny held out her hand towards one of the blank datarods on her desk. She willed it to rise. It did, wobbling a little. Narrowing her eyes, she focused her will...and the crystaline rod altered. One end thinned and elongated. The other end thickened and turned into a transparent blob. A second blob formed closer to the midway point. A bit more concentration, and the midway blob formed itself into a tear-drop, slightly serrated leaf-shape. The blob at the end rippled and formed ridges as the former datacrystal rotated under the touch of her mind. Eventually, the ripples turned into recognizable petal-shapes. A last bit of concentration, and small, hooked projections extended out from the stem, thorns to compliment the half-bloomed rose she had created.
Releasing it from her grip, she let the tough crystal drop to her desktop, where it bounced off the leather-padded blotter and clattered on the polished-wood surface. Telekinesis was a trick of some of the psychic races, and a rare few individuals from those races reportedly could grow and even alter natural crystal formations...but there were no reports of anyone who could alter the artificial material of a datacrystal, since it was a special polymer, not an actual mineral. Picking up the rose, Sunny offered it to him. Armon accepted it wordlessly, testing the thorns, running his fingertips along the edge of the leaf and over the half-budded petals.
The base of the stem still had the terminal-end of a datarod. Picking up one of the datapads on her desk, Armon inserted the base of the crystaline rose into the port slot, and activated the pad. Data blinked onto the screen, detailing a series of notes on the powers of the Empresses of over half a millenia ago. The rod was still completely functional...which should have been impossible, once it had been warped out of its proper configuration.
Finally, he lifted his eyes to hers; reverence shown in their hazel depths. "Your Majesty..."
"—Please, just call me Sunny," she dismissed. "Even after we ascend, Armon, call me Sunny unless it's absolutely necessary to be formal. You're my friend, and I don't believe in distancing myself from my friends."
That made him smile, almost shyly. Twirling the rose between his fingertips, Armon dipped his head in a formal, if abbreviated, bow. "...Alright, Sunny. I'm glad I got to know you, first. Wow...the Pax Imperium has a new Emperor and Empress again...wow!" His hazel eyes widened sharply, focusing on her clothes, a simple summerweight tunic and shorts. "Oh, good heavens! This simply will not do!
"You look like a wreck, and we'll have to find and make a whole new wardrobe suitable for an Empress, and there's so much to do and less than two weeks in which to do it!" Jumping up from his chair, he hurried towards the door, then turned back to her with an accusatory look. "—Why couldn't you have told me this
earlier?
Do you know how long it'll take to arrange everything, and to do it discreetly enough that no one will know until your big debut at the Ball? Oh...oh my goodness...!"
