The carriage jolted and rumbled past Mason's original borders, the forest on either side thinning by degrees.
After the long haul on the road, the scenery finally began to change. The dense woodland gave way to open plains, and through the haze in the distance rose the tall, sharp spires of the City of Hill.
When the merchant caravan reached the main gates, a row of iron-armored guards met them in stern formation. Since Vasha had taken charge, she had clearly inherited Mason's iron-blooded governing style in full — even the guards' eyes carried that particular edge that said: deviate from protocol and you'll be executed on the spot.
"Halt! Black Rose Trading Company? Papers out!"
The squad captain pressed his hand to his sword hilt and barked the command in a cold voice.
The soldiers on duty today were not originally Mason's men.
But the moment his gaze landed on the dark-iron token Delilah casually held out, his entire body locked up.
It was a Black Rose Supreme Token — identical in design to the City Lord Vasha's own seal, yet with far more elaborate gold-thread engravings along its border.
As Delilah tilted it in the light, a faint pulse of magic power stirred within it, and the black rose at the token's center slowly bloomed in the sunlight, radiating a soul-shaking pressure that seemed to resonate from somewhere beyond the physical.
"This is..."
The squad captain's pupils trembled. He had felt this kind of magical resonance from City Lord Vasha before — but what he was feeling now was far deeper, far more vast.
He jerked his head up — and met Delilah's face. Even wearing that crooked fifteen-degree-to-the-right ponytail, she was radiating enough killing intent to blot out the sun. And behind the carriage curtain, a pair of pale golden eyes glimmered in and out of view.
"Open the gate," Delilah said, her voice flat as stone.
"Yes! Let them through! Open up, now!"
The soldiers didn't even bother checking. They dropped to one knee in perfect unison, the motion so synchronized it looked like they were welcoming a deity.
Sophia sat within the carriage, watching the streets that had been repaired and cleaned since her last visit, watching the faces of the City of Hill's residents — fuller and more flush with health than before. She gave a quiet, approving nod.
That girl Vasha. She really hasn't disappointed me.
"Your Majesty, won't you go in and see Vasha?" Willow asked, glancing toward the City Lord's mansion — the former Orr Royal Palace — not far off.
"No need. If we go in, it'll turn into a work handover and we'll lose half the day. We have a beach to get to."
Sophia reached across the table and picked up a sealed bottle — a magic wild berry juice specially brewed by Daphne.
"Delilah, take this to the gate of the City Lord's mansion and have someone deliver it directly to Vasha. Tell her... Mason's spring has arrived, and she should drink something sweet and sour. Too much brooding overheats the liver."
Delilah hopped off the carriage. Wearing that spectacularly rebellious ponytail tilted fifteen degrees to the right, she walked stone-faced toward the City Lord's mansion gates and pressed the elegant glass bottle into a guard's hands.
"This is a gift from the head of the merchant caravan to City Lord Vasha."
"Tell her — our... the Master says spring is here. Drink more juice. Worry less."
The guard stared at Delilah's striking, energetic silhouette — and the bizarre hairstyle — and then his gaze naturally dropped to the black musket at her hip and the token at her waist.
He knew exactly what those things were. Only the City Lord carried something like that.
He looked back at the figure in front of him. She was unmistakable. Even without armor, she was clearly Mason's Grand General.
Some of the guards posted here had been transferred from Mason Royal City personally.
The hand he used to receive the bottle was shaking:
This ponytail... this is absolutely the most sacred hairstyle trending in Mason Royal City right now!
And this liquid — deep red as blood, shimmering with magical light.
This isn't fruit juice. This is Her Majesty's divine life-essence, bestowed upon City Lord Vasha!
Her Majesty is declaring through this bottle that even if she doesn't set foot in the city, her will — her very presence — dwells here in the City of Hill through this gift!
City Lord, Her Majesty's deep regard for you... it's enough to make the rest of us go mad with envy!
Without any further stop, the caravan rolled straight through the City of Hill's central avenue under the fervent, awe-stricken gazes of the guards — and kept going.
Vasha had just finished watering the small wheat seedlings in the inner field and was wiping sweat from her forehead when the cold glass bottle was placed in her hands.
She stared at it for a long moment. Then she listened as the guard described the direction in which the Grand General had ridden off.
She stood motionless beneath the fading evening sun for a long, long time — and then sank to the ground hugging the bottle, crying like a child who had finally received a gift from a parent she had long been waiting for.
The caravan, meanwhile, had already slipped out through the City of Hill's rear gate, merging smoothly back onto the road that wound south toward the coast.
---
The moment the convoy passed through the narrow rear gate tunnel, the oppressive shadow of the city walls vanished entirely. In its place came a sweeping, wide-open sense of freedom.
The terrain ahead began to slope gently downward. The vegetation shifted — from the cold-hardy needle pines of the Northern border, to resilient low shrublands and broad, windswept moorland.
And on the wind, mingled with the scent of earth, was something faint, almost imperceptible — a distant, briny tang.
"Wow——!"
Irene was half out the window, her pink twin-tails whipping in the breeze. She stared between her map and the rolling terrain outside, then let out an astonished cry.
"Your Majesty, look at this! This geography is incredible! Those two mountains behind the City of Hill — they're like a pair of gates, completely sealing off the route to the southern coast. If we hadn't taken down Orr, trying to reach the sea from Mason's original territory would've meant crossing through who knows how many uninhabited mountain ranges. That would've been nearly impossible!"
Daphne leaned over as well, her golden hair catching the sunlight.
"Right — I always thought Orr felt pretty far from us, but now that we're actually traveling it, I realize they were sitting right on top of the best coastal access route. No wonder that old King always had such an insufferable air about him."
Willow gracefully set aside the documents she'd been reviewing and let her fingertips drift across the windowsill, murmuring softly:
"Geographic advantage is the most natural form of wealth. With this one move, Your Majesty dismantled the last wall separating Mason from the world stage."
Sophia was reclining against the soft cushions, the old map she'd recovered from the Orr Palace spread in her hands. Her gaze moved back and forth between Mason's territory and what had once been Orr's.
Convenient, yes. But also genuinely strange.
In her memory, Mason's official maps had shown the entire southern region as a blurred, featureless wasteland — no coastal nations marked at all.
And yet in the City of Hill's classified archives, there were clear route markings, as well as scattered notes on the small nation's name and trade characteristics.
What did that tell her?
It told her the old King of Orr had been deliberately suppressing news from the south, letting Mason continue to believe it was surrounded on all sides by mountains.
This wasn't merely geographic isolation. In a world without the internet, this was the most vicious kind of information blockade imaginable.
Every country's maps showed only what they wanted you to see.
"Different information means different horizons," Sophia said, her voice quiet and cool inside the carriage.
"Mason was too sheltered before. If we'd kept relying on those old maps, we might never have learned that just beyond a few mountains, there was a sea that could give us salt."
Willow listened, and a gleam like a precious discovery flickered in those violet eyes of hers.
Just as I thought... Her Majesty saw through it all long ago.
Taking down Orr was never merely about gaining territory. It was about widening civilization's field of view.
While everyone else was celebrating gaining one more city, Her Majesty had already understood: breaking the monopoly on information is the true key to an empire's rise.
That hidden map was the shackle the old era had placed around Mason's neck.
'Different information means different horizons' — that single sentence is the highest truth in all the study of rule!
Those neighboring kingdoms thought they could preserve themselves by concealing the truth. They had no idea that under Her Majesty's god-like perspective, every blind spot in the world was being forcibly illuminated.
The smell of sea wind is only the first spoil of war in Her Majesty's conquest of the ocean!
---
Dusk descended like a great swathe of purple silk, slowly draping itself over the quiet river valley. On the distant horizon, the dying sun bled red, dyeing the water's surface into a field of shimmering, scattered gold.
"All units halt! Make camp!"
At Delilah's command, the carriage came to a smooth stop. The caliber of this elite merchant squad showed itself in that single moment.
Eighteen black musketeer soldiers immediately divided tasks without a word spoken. Some dismounted to gather fallen branches. Some led the horses to the stream to drink. Others set to work building the cook-fire.
No shouted orders. Only the faint scrape of armor and the soft snorting of horses, harmonious in the open wilderness.
Sophia lifted the hem of her dress and walked alone toward the riverbank.
She drew a long, deep breath — cool air carrying the scent of grass and earth flooded her lungs, and the stuffiness that had been pressing on her chest dissolved at once.
This. This is what life feels like.
No mountain of documents. No retainers staring at her with that fanatical gleam. Just wind and water...
She really wanted to settle into that little country as some lazy, freeloading shop-keep and never leave.
In the very instant her body and mind finally relaxed — a tiny, unnatural rustling reached her from a shrub about five paces behind her.
The languidness vanished from Sophia's eyes in an instant, replaced by something cold and instinctual.
Without a moment's hesitation, her right hand flashed to her hip — to the black musket Irene had personally modified with a magic core.
Snap!
A gray shadow burst from the undergrowth, moving faster than the naked eye could comfortably track.
Bang——!
A dull but deeply penetrating gunshot split the quiet dusk. A tongue of blue flame, empowered by magic, erupted from the muzzle — precise and merciless.
A second later, the gray shadow jerked in midair and crashed to the ground without even a yelp.
Back at camp, every soldier had entered combat readiness the instant the shot rang out.
Delilah was the fastest.
She didn't even have time to draw her sword — her entire body became a streak of red, toe-tips skimming over the rocky bank and kicking up a trail of dust. That lopsided ponytail of hers thrashed violently in the wind, though it didn't slow her down by even a fraction.
She left the sprinting soldiers behind by a full length, the ground itself seeming to tremble faintly under that terrifying burst of speed.
"Your Majesty!"
Delilah came to a sliding stop at Sophia's side in almost no time at all, her eyes wide with a mix of panic and murderous fury. One hand was already crushing the linen-wrapped sword hilt in a white-knuckled grip, those crimson eyes sweeping the surroundings in a frantic search for the assassin who had dared disturb her sovereign.
"Relax," Sophia said.
She had already holstered the black musket, her fingertip brushing absently across the barrel, which had grown faintly warm from the recoil. Her expression was as calm as if she had just swatted a mosquito — if anything, she looked mildly annoyed at having had her sunset interrupted.
She tilted her chin toward whatever had stopped moving on the ground ahead.
Delilah looked — and the tension coiled in her body snapped loose at once, replaced by an expression hovering somewhere between relief and helpless incredulity.
Lying in the mud was not an assassin or a wild beast.
It was a rabbit. A fat, thoroughly gray rabbit.
The bullet had passed cleanly through its head. The fur was, remarkably, almost entirely intact.
"Since it volunteered itself, we might as well have something different for dinner tonight." Sophia turned her head toward Irene and Daphne, who came panting up, and gave Delilah her orders.
"Skin it clean — Irene mentioned wanting rabbit fur for padding, didn't she? As for the meat, have Willow rub it with honey and spices later and roast it."
"Your Majesty, look at this rabbit's coat — sleek and lustrous, and those back haunches are solid." Delilah crouched down, her long fingers parting the disturbed shrub, a flash of professional acuity in those crimson eyes.
"Wild rabbits this plump are almost always colony-dwellers. If one showed up here, there's definitely a thriving warren within a hundred meters."
Sophia had only come down to clear her head. But the moment she heard "warren," some deep-seated compulsion — the kind born from too many strategy games and the instinct to clear every last map — stirred to life.
"Go look."
She raised an eyebrow, and the faintest trace of interest curved her lips.
"One rabbit won't be nearly enough for this many greedy mouths."
---
The evening wind off the river valley was cool and damp, combing through the half-height reed beds and coaxing a dry, rustling song from them. The dying sun stretched the five young women's shadows long and narrow, tangling them across the rust-orange scatter of riverside stones.
"Your Majesty, please follow my footsteps — and mind those blackberry vines."
Delilah walked at the head of the group. Her ponytail, still crooked fifteen degrees to the right, swayed with each stride — a hairstyle that was, objectively, absurdly cute — but her movements were those of a hunting leopard, sharp and fluid.
She crouched, long fingers parting a tuft of yellowed wild grass, pointing to barely visible indentations in the mud below.
"There. A rabbit run. They use the same path to reach the river every day. Follow it upward — under the roots of that old locust tree ahead, there'll be a back entrance."
Sophia gathered the hem of her rather heavy skirt and stepped into the solid ground Delilah had already tested. The feeling of soft earth underfoot was significantly more reassuring than cold marble.
The group moved silently up the slope to the base of the old locust tree.
Sure enough — nestled between the tree's twisted, crossing roots, several hidden burrow openings breathed out faint wisps of damp air.
"Irene, put away those clanking wrenches."
Sophia lowered her voice, glancing sideways at the small girl whose face had gone brilliantly red with excitement.
"Understood! Your Majesty!"
Irene crouched down, her pink twin-tails nearly brushing the dirt. From the enormous pockets of her work pinafore she produced several folding fine-steel-mesh nets — originally designed for filtering ore slag — and with practiced ease snapped them open, fitting them snugly over two of the side burrow entrances.
"Heh heh, the moment they stick their heads out, it's over for them."
Daphne, meanwhile, had taken up a position of devout reverence near the main entrance, staff in hand. She closed her eyes, a faint glow building at her fingertips, and slowly guided a ball of Holy Light — dim as a firefly, yet carrying an irresistibly sweet and enticing fragrance — into the burrow.
"Holy Light... please tell them there are honey-glazed carrots waiting outside..."
She whispered the words with utter sincerity.
If any Magical Girl from her original world had witnessed this — the repurposing of advanced purification magic to lure rabbits — they would probably burst out laughing in disbelief.
You can't just call on the Holy Light for everything! Even for catching rabbits!
Since Daphne had already deployed the Holy Light, Delilah set aside her original plan of smoking the warren out with fire.
The faint Holy Light flickered deep within the burrow. In less than a moment, a subtle trembling moved through the ground.
"Here they come!"
At Delilah's low shout, three startled wild rabbits burst from the undergrowth at once.
The largest one charged directly toward Sophia.
Sophia didn't step back. A rare, long-absent flash of mischief lit up behind her eyes.
Rather than reaching for the black musket, she executed a move of impeccable elegance — she swept the grey squirrel-fur cape from her shoulders and flung it wide, like a great hunting net, letting it billow down over the path of the oncoming gray blur.
Thud.
A fierce, frantic struggling erupted under the fabric.
Sophia dropped to one knee and, through the thick layer of fur, pressed down precisely on the small thrashing head.
"Got it."
She looked up. A few strands of silver hair had come loose from the force of the motion and fallen across her cheeks. In the dying light, that cold, composed face carried something it almost never did — a bright, girlish radiance.
"Delilah, Irene — how's your side?"
"Your Majesty! Two over here — both plump!" Irene came rolling out of the undergrowth like a small round ball, net clutched in both hands, blue eyes curved into crescent moons with glee, a smear of brown mud on the tip of her nose.
Then she met Sophia's flat, unimpressed gaze and hastily let out a sheepish laugh, mumbling something about just being a tiny bit shameless and begging forgiveness.
Seeing that Sophia had no intention of scolding her, Irene allowed herself a quiet, smug little grin.
Delilah, one rabbit in each hand, caught them cleanly by the scruff of their necks. She looked at Sophia — the faint windswept disorder of her hair, the smile touching the corners of her eyes — and was struck, for just a moment, entirely still. She forgot the squirming in her hands.
Willow walked over carrying a bamboo basket, drawing out a clean handkerchief and gently dabbing the bits of leaf and grass from Sophia's fingertips, her voice full of a quiet, indulgent warmth.
"Your Majesty, tonight's extra rations are already more than enough. You've worked hard today too."
---
The campfire crackled and popped cheerfully. Orange-red flames danced in the growing dark.
When Sophia and her companions walked back into camp carrying several plump, heavy rabbits, both of the experienced middle-aged merchant women resting by the carriage and the soldiers cleaning their spears couldn't help but let out sounds of genuine amazement.
"Heavens, these rabbits... absolutely dripping with fat," one of the merchant women murmured, rubbing her hands together, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Even in the busiest border trading districts, you rarely see wild game this size. Back in the Mason area — forget rabbits, even the insects under the bark and dry grass were nearly hunted to extinction last year."
"This region is so remote and close to the estuary that it's become its own little paradise."
Sophia listened to their exchange, something shifting quietly in her expression.
True enough.
In a world perpetually threatened by hunger, what people called 'cute animals' were, in survival terms, just mobile calories.
Mason's ecological recovery would take a long time yet.
The peace they had now was something she and the people around her had clawed back.
Looking at these fat rabbits, she didn't see something adorable. She saw the raw, unexploited value of a remote place that had not yet been squeezed dry.
Hailey crouched on the ground, small hand carefully poking at the stiff-but-still-fluffy fur of one of the rabbits.
"Hailey, they're cute, aren't they?"
Daphne leaned in, her tone carrying a tentative note of pity. She was worried about leaving some kind of psychological trauma on the child.
"Does it feel cruel to eat them?"
She had expected the six-year-old to cry like the little princess in a picture book. Instead, Hailey lifted her head with complete seriousness, small face glowing in the firelight.
"Cute," Hailey said clearly.
"But before we can protect little rabbits, we have to make sure we're not going hungry ourselves, don't we? When your stomach is empty, even your dreams taste bitter. Only when I'm full can I have the strength to record Your Majesty's greater chapters."
Sophia walked over and gave the top of her small head a light pat.
"Exactly right. That is the truth of this world. Remember this feeling — it will keep you clear-headed."
A beat.
"Though right now, none of that applies. Because we are about to eat rabbit."
---
As night fell, the camp split naturally into two groups. The soldiers rested around a separate fire, while Sophia, Willow, Delilah, Irene, Daphne, and Hailey gathered around a more private fire beside the main carriage.
Willow drew a small, elegant porcelain bottle from a hidden compartment at her waist — a specially prepared blended oil she had made before departure, combining wild mountain honey from the hills behind Mason's Royal City with several closely guarded aromatic spices.
She drew a feather brush across the surface of the rabbit meat in long, gentle strokes, and in moments the flesh was lacquered in a layer as crystalline and warm as amber.
As the flames leaped and shifted, the thin layer of fat just beneath the skin was coaxed fully awake. It rose in tiny, glittering beads of oil, dancing across the golden-crisp surface, then rolling along the plump, well-defined grain of the meat before dropping onto the coals below with a clean, bright sizzle——.
That sound, in the silence of the open wilderness, was more beautiful than any piece of music.
"It smells so good..."
Irene, who had been fiddling with the signal device just a moment ago, had unconsciously crept to the front row by the fire without anyone noticing, nostrils working frantically, blue eyes reflecting two golden orbs of roasting meat, saliva pooling relentlessly at the back of her cheeks.
The fragrance was layered with remarkable complexity.
First: the clean, caramelized sweetness of wild forest honey as it heated and volatilized.
Then: the rich, heavy oil-scent of wild game fat under high heat, threaded through with the sharp, bright notes of galangal and rosemary.
Underneath it all: the faint, clean woodsmoke absorbed into the meat's fibers from the red willow skewers.
This smell, drifting outward on the sea wind — the wild wolves lurking somewhere in the dark five miles away were probably crouching in the brush right now, weeping and questioning their entire existence.
"Your Majesty, the heat is just right."
Willow drew back from the fire with composed grace and used a slender, sharp silver knife to make one clean, practiced cut along the spine of the rabbit.
That was the sound every diner was powerless to resist — a crisp, clean crack.
The skin, roasted to a gossamer-thin layer of caramelized glass, gave a sound like a cry of beautiful surrender. The meat within, guided by Daphne's earlier Holy Light and controlled by Willow's precise mastery of the fire, had somehow retained an extraordinary amount of moisture.
The moment the flesh was pulled apart, white steam billowed out, and crystalline meat juices slid through their fingers like melted snow.
Willow placed the first cut — the most tender portion of the hindleg — on a clean silver plate and presented it to Sophia.
Sophia picked up the piece with her fingertips, slightly warm to the touch, and brought it to her lips.
The first thing her teeth met was that shatteringly crisp skin.
Then came a tenderness almost impossibly soft and springy — no stringiness, no dryness, but a silken smoothness that flowed rather than resisted.
Savory and subtly sweet intertwined. The spices had not smothered the game's own freshness; they amplified it, like a distillation of the wild landscape itself, detonating fully on the tongue.
In that moment, Sophia's heart decided: ruling this impoverished kingdom, matching wits every day with that particular pack of overimaginative lunatics — it finally had meaning beyond potatoes.
This isn't roasted meat. This is civilization's consolation.
Willow, if Mason ever falls on hard times, we could open a roast meat stall in the Imperial Capital and become the wealthiest people in the city.
Hailey had been given a piece of back meat. The little girl, all pretense of a historian's dignity utterly abandoned, ate with her cheeks flushed bright red, a spot of honey glazing the tip of her nose.
Delilah ate with a boldness that was also, somehow, entirely graceful — she left not a drop of gravy on her face, even as she gnawed every last trace of fragrance from the bones.
Daphne chewed with her eyes closed, wearing an expression of absolute bliss, as though she had found true paradise in that single bite of rabbit.
On this cool, early-spring wilderness night — with one fire, a few rabbits, and this particular group of people — the team that was shaping the direction of the world somehow found themselves feeling something utterly dreamlike: belonging.
---
The rabbit meat, rendered golden and crisp under Willow's exceptional craft, sizzled with fragrant fat. Sophia had Willow portion out several of the remaining rabbits for the soldiers as well, along with half a cup of wine each — just enough to taste, not enough to impair.
"Hey hey, everyone's in such a great mood — why don't we play a game!"
Irene wiped the last smear of grease from the corner of her mouth, pink twin-tails perking up, blue eyes full of mischief.
"What game?"
Daphne and Hailey were clearly interested — the moment the words were out of Irene's mouth, both of them were already looking over.
Daphne thought for a moment and offered:
"I used to see classmates play games back in my class — spin the bottle, Truth or Dare, things like that. Though I never actually played any of them myself."
Everyone knew, without it needing to be said, why — Daphne had always been too busy saving the world and fighting monsters to have the chance to enjoy things like a normal girl.
"Those games are kind of run-of-the-mill, anyway. Let's play something else. I call it — the King's Game!"
Irene produced a handful of slender, evenly trimmed sticks from her magical pockets, carving away at them with her small pocket knife as she cheerfully announced the rules.
"There are six sticks total. I'll carve a crown mark on the bottom of one, and number the rest from one to five. After everyone draws, whoever gets the crown becomes the King for this round!"
"The King has absolute authority — they can call any two numbers and order them to do anything they want. And — no refusing!"
Hailey's eyes lit up, pen already poised and ready:
"That sounds so fun!"
Daphne chimed in with enthusiasm:
"As long as I'm not ordered to go a whole day without eating, this Saint accepts the challenge!"
Sophia sat on her cushion, looked at Irene's expectant, bright-eyed expression, and gave a helpless smile, then nodded lightly.
With the sovereign's approval, Delilah and Willow naturally had no objection.
"To prove that this genius is not cheating!"
Irene squeezed all six sticks into her palm and gave them an ostentatious shake.
"Your Majesty draws first, then everyone else, and the last one left over is mine. That way no one knows where the marked one is!"
---
The drawing ceremony unfolded under an atmosphere that was bizarrely, inexplicably tense.
Sophia extended her slender fingers and pulled out a stick with casual ease, expression unruffled.
Delilah looked gravely solemn, as though she were being asked to identify a detonator from a pile of explosives — her fingertips even trembling faintly from the sheer tension.
She had never in her life played a game like this. She'd had precious little lightness growing up at all. The thought of what was about to happen made her genuinely nervous.
Daphne squeezed her eyes shut, muttering "Holy Light protect me," and grabbed one at random.
Willow pinched one between elegant fingertips with practiced grace and drew it away.
Hailey swallowed hard, nerves visible in every line of her face, and took the second-to-last.
The last stick fell to Irene.
Everyone held their breath and slowly flipped their sticks over.
"BWAHAHAHAHA!"
Irene exploded upward, holding the stick with its crudely carved crown high above her head. Pink twin-tails flew wildly in the wind.
"SEE THAT?! This is the luck of a genius!"
"I'm the King! I'm the King!"
Irene had reached absolute peak smugness.
She puffed out that not-particularly-imposing chest of hers, scanned each face with theatrical menace, and let her gaze settle on Delilah and Willow, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial murmur:
"So then, everyone — scared?"
"The person in front of you right now holds supreme authority!"
"Hmm hmm, if anyone here has been withholding my research budget or confiscating my snacks — it's not too late to beg for mercy!"
The others looked at that expression of hers — practically the dictionary definition of 'petty victory' — and all of them were helpless not to laugh.
Sophia watched Irene's bright, glittering blue eyes, and a rare impulse rose in her chest — the impulse to tease.
She tilted her head slightly. The faintest arc appeared in those pale golden pupils — something almost never seen — the kind of warmth that bordered on indulgent fondness.
"Well then, Your Majesty Irene... do you have any royal decrees at this time?"
Sophia's voice was its usual cool clarity, but with a deliberate, faint trace of huskiness layered beneath it — and that phrase, Your Majesty Irene, carried something like a small, weak current that passed straight through Irene's defenses.
"...?!"
The moment Irene heard those words, she froze solid as though a stasis spell had hit her square in the face.
Her clear, transparent face turned crimson at a visible rate — brighter, arguably, than the campfire beside her.
Her heart missed a beat. Every "devastating" order she had been preparing evaporated completely from her mind, and the stick in her hand nearly tumbled into the flames.
"Your... Your Majesty, how can you call me that..."
Irene's voice came out in a barely-audible mumble. Head bowed, fingers twisting anxiously at the hem of her work pinafore, that entire aura of "the ruler of all" she had been projecting shattered into pieces — replaced by the most extreme, helpless embarrassment imaginable.
Your Majesty is the only King here!
____
________________________________________
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