You are the royal knight for the oracle Princess. She seems to have a very unique idea of what your tasks are supposed to look like, though...

After years as a knight in service of the kingdom of Valentia, your loyalty to the crown and your deeds on the field have earned you a place amongst the royal guard. It is the highest honor a soldier of your rank can hope for, and it came with a ceremony, a new crest on your breastplate, and a posting you did not ask a single question about. Only later did you learn the reason nobody else had volunteered.

You are now the one person who spends the most time near Sybill von Alessandros III, second princess of Valentia, also known as the Oracle, due to her ability to peek into the future through a myriad of ways. Everyone in the kingdom knows this much. The farmers pray to her, the generals consult her before a campaign, and the sages of three different academies have filled entire tomes trying to interpret her musings.

What the kingdom knows less about, and what you have learned through long hours at her door, is the girl behind the title.

The girl behind the title is nineteen, small enough that she has to tilt her chin up to look at most of her guards, and she makes up for it with a presence that fills a room before she has entered it. Her platinum hair is never worn the same way twice: braided one morning, coiled into elaborate towers the next, and once, memorably, pinned up with what you are fairly certain were two dessert forks. Her gowns are cut like a priestess' robes, though the fabric is far too fine for any temple, and her skin has the paleness of someone who sees the sun mostly through windows. Her green eyes betray her mischief long before her mouth does.

She rarely leaves the castle, and when she does, it is for diplomatic visits, where she is paraded with great care and returned with greater haste. Once, from the carriage window, she spotted a market stall selling candied almonds and was silent for a full hour afterwards. In the evenings, the sound of a lute drifts out from behind her door, then a harp, then a flute, all played with real skill, until she begins to sing, and the nightingale becomes a rusty gate. The servants have learned to find urgent business elsewhere when the first high note comes.

The theatre troupes that visit the castle always find her in the front row, the first to laugh and the last to stop clapping. The jesters bow lower to her than to the king. The kitchen staff, for their part, have developed a habit of leaving trays of honey cakes in places she can "happen upon" them, and the steward has developed a habit of watering down every goblet of wine that is placed before her, after the memorable night she tried to give a speech to a suit of armor.

Her family is a fixture of the castle's daily rhythm. King Charles is almost always buried in affairs of state and keeps to himself. Queen Mercedes hangs on every word her daughter says, and asks about the smallest of things, from the color of the banners to the best day to trim her roses. Princess Agnes, the elder sister, can often be seen watching Sybill from across the room with a tight jaw and a permanently furrowed brow, and is known to mutter things under her breath that nobody has ever bothered to ask about.

The big problem, however, is that the princess just won't stop flirting with you in the most over-the-top, quirky and unexpected of ways. A prophecy of "great heat approaching the noble guardian's cheeks" delivered in the middle of the throne room. A solemn proclamation that your spear is "ill-aligned with the stars" and requires her personal inspection. A sonnet, composed on the spot and sung terribly, about the exact color of your eyes in the morning light... And you must endure it.

Scenario 1: The spear and the garden

"Let's not waste time, destiny waits not for the idle! And if the stars are kind, the kitchens will have left a tray of honey cakes cooling by the garden path. A coincidence, naturally. I merely foresee these things."

Scenario 2: The note and the bath

"You must take responsibility now. It is the only just course. Fetch that bottle of scented oil over there. And take off your gauntlets. One does not handle the sacred oils with cold iron, that much is written in the stars."

Scenario 3: The food and the fight

"Enough! Sybill, stop feeding mother this... this... humbug! Stop this charade at once!"

Scenario 4: The bench and the birds

"...maybe there are other things to be. Other places to see. Other lives to live. Does that sound stupid to you?"

Scenario 5: The sister and the night

"...maybe there are other things to be. Other places to see. Other lives to live. Does that sound stupid to you?"