As the lavish royal carriage continued its smooth journey toward the outskirts of the capital, Lucier comfortably leaned back against the intricately carved, heavy wooden door, attempting to strike an incredibly relaxed, devastatingly handsome, and intensely romantic pose.
He rested his chin on his knuckles, gazing deeply and meaningfully into Isla's eyes, entirely convinced that his 'reformed, respectful prince' speech had completely swept her off her delicate feet.
Isla simply stared back at him with a wide, innocent, and completely flawless smile, though internally, her mind was rapidly plotting the most humiliating, painfully hilarious revenge imaginable.
''He really sits there thinking he has masterfully manipulated me into believing he is some sort of noble, tragic hero,''she thought, violently suppressing a wicked, bubbling laugh that threatened to escape her throat.
"Well, since he has always been an arrogant, cow-dung-sniffing idiot in my eyes, I suppose it is finally time to officially reunite him with his one true, incredibly stinky love."
As the carriage approached a bustling, rural farming district just outside the main city walls, Isla noticed a massive, remarkably fresh, and deeply foul-smelling pile of wet mud and cow manure sitting perilously close to the edge of the dirt road.
Her brilliant blue eyes gleamed with absolute, terrifying mischief.
While maintaining her sweet, angelic eye contact with the highly confident prince, she discretely flicked her wrist under the folds of her silk gown, sending a tiny, invisible, and highly concentrated burst of her serpent magic straight toward the heavy iron latch of the carriage door Lucier was currently leaning his entire body weight against.
'You see, Isla, my beautiful princess, I just want us to build a foundation of absolute trust...' Lucier murmured in his deepest, most charming voice, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second to look incredibly dramatic.
At that exact, perfect moment, the carriage hit a small, deliberately placed rock on the road.
The invisible magical burst violently popped the iron latch open.
The heavy wooden door instantly swung wide out into the open air, completely removing Lucier's support.
'Wha— Aaaahhhhhh!' Lucier shrieked, his charming, deep voice instantly cracking into an incredibly high-pitched, entirely undignified squeal of absolute terror.
His arms flailed wildly in the air like a panicked, uncoordinated duck as he tumbled backward out of the moving carriage.
He flipped entirely upside down before landing with a tremendously loud, sickeningly wet "SPLAT!"directly face-first into the absolute center of the massive, horrifyingly squishy pile of fresh cow manure.
Isla instantly gasped, aggressively covering her mouth with both hands, though it was not out of shock, but rather to desperately muffle the loud, uncontrollable, and deeply chaotic burst of laughter that was violently shaking her entire chest.
'Stop the carriage immediately!' she ordered the bewildered driver, forcing her voice to sound high and frantic with absolute, fake panic.
She gracefully stepped down from the carriage, pulling her silk handkerchief over her nose to block the incredibly atrocious stench radiating from the humiliated prince.
Lucier was currently on his hands and knees, sputtering and violently coughing up brown muck, his perfectly styled, expensive hair now plastered to his forehead with a horrifying mixture of wet mud and actual animal waste.
'Oh my absolute heavens, Prince Lucier! Are you incredibly injured?!'
Isla cried out, rushing to the edge of the road while very carefully ensuring she did not step anywhere near the foul puddle.
Lucier slowly looked up at her, his face completely covered in the disgusting brown sludge, his eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated shock and profound humiliation.
A single, thick clump of manure slowly slid off his aristocratic nose and dropped onto his expensive velvet collar with a sad, wet plop.
'I... I simply leaned back... and the door just magically vanished!' he stammered, spitting out a mouthful of foul-tasting dirt, entirely looking like a pathetic, muddy swamp monster rather than the majestic Prince of the Tiger Kingdom.
'Oh, you poor, tragically clumsy thing!' Isla sighed dramatically, her shoulders violently shaking as she fought the desperate urge to fall to her knees and laugh until she cried. 'You know, Lucier, I have always jokingly referred to you in my head as a cow-dung-sniffing idiot, but I honestly never, in my wildest, most unimaginable dreams, thought that you actually loved the foul stuff so incredibly much that you would literally dive headfirst into it!'
The royal guards desperately turned their backs, their shoulders violently shaking as they silently suffocated their own laughter, while Lucier's face turned a brilliant, furiously humiliated shade of red beneath the thick layer of smelly brown muck.