Drake rubbed at her forehead absently as she made her weary way up to her rooms. Sometimes, when she felt this exhausted the benefit of having the isolated, private tower rooms was out weighted by the sheer number of steps it took to reach them. As she passed one of the many windows in the winding staircase she noted the sun's position. It would be about another three candlemarks till sunset so she had a little time to get some work done before her meeting with her cousin.

The young mage pushed open the door to her rooms having reached the top of the staris. The first toom, her sitting room, was a large spacious room that took up almost the entire first floor. At the moment it was in rather hopeless disarry. The easy chairs before the huge fireplace had weeks worth of assignments and reading heaped upon them from her law classes. Her writing desk that sat before the east facing window was no longer even visible. This obvious trend continued around the rest of the room: the window seats were being used as shelves, along with her sideboard as well. Drake couldn't even remember if there were any drinks on the sideboard. Her tea table was stacked with ink pots, used quills and parchment.

Drake sighed and knew the mess was getting out of hand. Her lady maid, Merle, attempted on a daily basis to curb the growing catastrophe that was her rooms, but after being snapped at so many times for moving things from their chaotic, but remembered, positions, Merle gave up completely. The mage looked around the room, knowing that there was so much here to do. So many things, represented by the wreck of papers and books, that were her responsibility, as one of the heir apparent to learn, memorize, and devote herself too.

She turned away however, long practice allowing her to suppress the little fissure of guilt and shame she felt at skirting her duty. She crossed the room to a heavy wood door that had been reinforced with criss-crossed iron bands nailed into its surface. The heavy wards she'd erected to protect the door and the room behind it parted seamlessly for their maker, letting her open the door without pause. Once inside the small room, Drake sighed in relief.

This was home.

The tiny room was her magick laboratory, and every inch of it, from the sky lights in the high, vaulted ceiling, down to the slightly uneven flag stones under her feet was hers. It was barely big enough for the furniture she had managed to fit inside, but it was functional, from the wide, rough hewn table in the middle of the room, to the writing desk stuffed with different colored inks and special quills used in her wards, to the sideboard where she kept all her other tools and aids. Since the tiny room took up a sliver of space in the tower, the major wall was an outer one, and it curved around. So Drake had had shelves mounted on that wall, along with a ladder that could be pushed on its wheels allowing easy access.

Drake kicked her shoes off under the table, took the pins out of her hair and unwound her braid. She rubbed her fingers over her scalp, smiling when that helped her headache considerably. Her long, wavy dark honey blond hair hung past her shoulders, but Drake just tied a knot in its length and left it resting against the back of her neck. Reaching over the half sized standing mirror that had been propped up against the table, she picked up her most recent spell journal and flipped it open looking for her most recent advances that she'd penned last night. Something about physical distortions...

Her thoughts were interrupted before they could even really begin however, by a muted crackling noise, a thump, and a curse. Mere heartbeats later, the trap door in the floor next to the table was forced open, and a tall, well built young man climbed into the room. He brushed soot from his midnight blue mage robes, fixed his grey-blue eyes on Drake and glared for all he was worth.

"You used the Machi Box Ward on this door," he hissed, his tone accusing. Drake smiled placidly in the face of his ire.

"What's life without its little challenges?" she teased, enjoying her first unforced smile in days.

"Infinitely more pleasing, not to mention better for my health," was the man's retort. He bent back over the trap door, and flashed a 'come here' gesture with his fingers at the passage below the trap door. A flash of tiny silver lightening glinted between his fingers, and an obviously heavy, cumbersome, full length gilded standing mirror floated up from the passage below. The mage flicked his fingers to an empty stretch of wall and the mirror obediently floated to the wall, dropping to the floor softly and coming to lean against the stones. With an annoyed huff, he kicked the trap door shut and then dropped into one of the chairs at the table.

"This ugly atrocity," he began, " was in my rooms when I moved into them, I had the servants put it into a closet. Figured we could use it. Hopefully it will go the way of all its predecessors that we've used and it'll shatter."

Drake ran a critical eye over the heavy gold engravings along the frame of the mirror which depicted extremely disturbing warnings against pride and vanity. At least that's what Drake hoped those engravings were. "Ugh, it's hideous. I say we just shove it out one of my windows."

That earned a bark of laughter from the mage, "That would be most enjoyable, but don't think this means I forgive you for the Machi Box. That damn ward almost took my hand off."

"It keeps you on your toes," Drake said simply.

"You keep changing the wards on me like that and I'll start thinking I've over stayed my welcome," he replied.

Drake rolled her eyes, "Don't be an idiot, Ziven," she said, "It's just good practice."

Ziven the Foreigner, King's Mage to High King Veles, could not help but grin at his best friend and her logical excuse.

"Admit it, Drake, you just like seeing me suffer," he teased.

"Indubitably," was her instant response, making them both chuckle.

Drake ran her eyes over her friend, looking for any lasting damage. The Machi Box Ward was a pretty dangerous ward to try and break. It did have the potential to at the very least maim. But Ziven did not look any worse for the wear. There was a light smudge of soot on his cheek, but with his dark brown, almost olive skin tone, it was hard to see. Some of his deep brown hair had fallen free of the short tail he kept it in, meaning he'd probably been forced to dodge when he accidentally triggered the Machi Box. But other than that, he was completely intact. Drake traced with her eyes the scar that began just above his left eyebrow, went down through it, skipping over his eye, continuing down his cheek before ending an inch or so above the corner of his mouth. It was an old scar, one from his past, and one he hated speaking of. It struck Drake at odd moments how she'd ceased years ago to even see it anymore. It had long ago just become a part of her friend, no more or less important than the color of his eyes or shape of his hands.

"You finished the spacial equations? When on earth did you find the time to do these?" his incredulous voice broke into her musings and Drake blinked sleepily at him. He, while she'd been looking him over, had been leafing through 'his' side of the table and all of his notes. He'd come across the inches thick stack of parchment while looking for his own spell journal and was amazed to find that at the bottom of the page, beneath his notes was the distilled equations they would have to use in their final presentation.

"Last night," Drake answered, as she too began rummaging through the cluttered mess looking for a needed reference text so that she could double check her variables on those physical distortions, "and this morning too actually, Court Assembly was hardly what I'd call scintillating."

She was so preoccupied with finding that reference, that Drake didn't notice Ziven's obvious silence for several moments. Finally, she looked up at him to find his eyes on her, a concerned look on his face.

"What?" she asked defensively, "honestly Ziven, it shouldn't be that hard to believe. You and I spent months on those perimeters. I just distilled it down into a usable equation."

"Which," he said slowly, "despite your utter genius at these things would take you longer than the better part of a day."

Drake frowned, but before she could retort, he spoke again.

"Drake, when was the last time you slept?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes at him, "I'm fine, Ziven. I couldn't sleep last night, so I just did something useful with the time is all."

"That's not an answer, Drake," he said softly, his tone had none of its previous humor.

"Ziven," Drake said firmly, "I'm fine. I just want to get this finished," she waved her hand at the mirror propped against the table, "We're so close," she stressed.

"And our success, not matter how incredible, would mean little if you're bed ridden from exhaustion. Again." he returned.

"I'm perfect, maybe a little tired at the moment but otherwise healthy," she insisted. But Ziven fixed his serious eyes on her and she felt the sensation of being utterly transparent. She tried to hold his gaze, but as the concern in his face only grew, she had to look away. Lying to him was never an option that lasted for very long.

"I...I have been busy, I'll admit. There's much I have to do everyday, and I find that there's not enough time in a day sometimes. I mean with those lessons and meetings that my mother has arranged for me; and our work here, I suppose I can get stretched a little thin sometimes. It will pass."

When she looked back to him, his eyes had a momentarily faraway look to them, as though he was struggling to find the right words.

"Drake..." he began slowly, "I know you are hesitant to announce to the world that you do not want the crown. And I understand why. With the way the court is acting these days...so...hostile, no one can be allowed to believe that Veles chose Lyon simply because he was the only choice left. That kind of thought would lead to some force trying to use it to dethrone him later. However...you've already chosen your path, you cannot go back. And I wonder why you are so reluctant to share this with your mother. If you did, the lessons that take up so much of your time would end."

Drake closed her eyes, and didn't respond for a long moment. Ziven however, waited patiently. Finally, she opened her violet eyes and traced the edge of the mirror that rested against the table next to her. They had pried it from it's frame and backing earlier that week. And its back was covered from corner to corner in small, tight cramped designs and runes. In another few days they would use it and the mirror that Ziven brought to attempt the practical application of their project again. Hopefully, despite what was earlier said about the gaudy one against the wall, the experiment would work this time. Or at the very least, they would make further head way.

This was her passion. Her vocation. All of the things tucked into this room. Her magic. It would be her one true calling forever. This was the one fact she had yet to share with her mother. Mostly because once Drake did, there was no doubt that Lady Jenna would never forgive her.

"She is my mother, Ziven," Drake began softly, "I may not like her, and sometimes, I may even question my love for her. However, she's my mother no matter my feelings; and my sister and I are all the family she has left. I just...it's hard to imagine disappointing her like this. To tell her that all the time and effort that she's put into this, into me, will be for nothing; all because I will never be Queen."

Ziven wetted his lips, and spoke the next words for his friend, "And so you stay up all night working on our dreams, and spend all day working on hers. You put off the inevitable for as long as possible."

Drake refused to look at him, instead she focused intently on the mirror, where her dreams, hers and his, were drawn out in such esqusite detail, "Yes."

There was another long pause.

"You have two and a half candle marks 'til sundown, why don't you go have some sleep. I'll wake you before I leave."

Drake shook her head and pulled the reference text she'd been looking for from under a large blueprint draft of the design on the mirror's back.

"I need to double check these variables for the physical distortion. If we don't get these right the mirrors will just keep shattering. If we can just get around the connection incapability we would be finished. It would work." she said fiercely.

"Drake," his tone was uncompromising as he rose from his seat, circled the table and stood towering over her. Drake looked up at him, unimpressed. "You're exhausted," he continued, "you haven't had a full night's rest in I don't know how many days. And you need all of your wits about you if you're going to meet your cousin tonight. You may have to protect yourself."

At that, Drake couldn't help the amused snort that escaped.

"Protect myself? From Lyon? What's he going to do, Ziven? Throw me off the ramparts?"

"I'll admit it's improbable, but niether of us have spoken much to him in five years; he may have changed."

"Not that much," Drake replied.

Ziven sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "Fine, Drake. How about this, will you please, for my sake, go and have a nap? Could you please take better care of yourself, and stop making me worry about you so?"

"You could try getting over your mother-hen complex," she retorted.

"And you could try getting over your martyr complex," he fired back without hesitation.

The two friends glared at each other. But after a few moments, Drake felt her headache was starting to return, making her temples pulse painfully with her heartbeat. And she knew that she had two choices before her, she could hold her ground, spend the rest of her time arguing with Ziven, and go to her meeting with Lyon with a splitting migraine; or she capitulate this one time, and let him take care of her for once.

He did make a potent headache cure.

Drake sighed and leaned back in her chair, "I'm going to need some of your headache remedy if I'm to sleep at all."

Ziven's face split into a grin, relieved.

"Done, you go upstairs and change, I'll run down to my rooms and get you some," he said, immediately making for the trap door, before she could change her mind. Drake rose from her chair, and made sure that her spell journal was on top of the cluttered mess so that she could find it easily. Ziven opened the trapdoor and started to descend, when he paused and looked over at her.

"Don't you dare change the wards again, Drake."

Drake couldn't help but smile mischievously, "But there's this dismemberment ward I came across a few weeks back," she almost whined, "I could really use a test subject."

"And who would put up with you if I died?" he asked, one eyebrow cocked in question.

"My dear friend," Drake practically crooned, "the ward doesn't actually kill you. It just removes the...unnecessary bits and pieces."

Ziven used the stairs, rather than the secret passage on his way back to Drake's rooms.