At last, the mandatory week of rest ca to an end, and Kel found herself sitting in the emperor's study, listening to Ira's monotone voice as he finished the daily reports.
Why am I here, she wondered as the white-haired man listed off the numbers for the capital's latest shipnts of fruits and vegetables. Her bitterness most likely stemd from the fact that she hadn't found any of the answers she was searching for. But the fact that this eting seed like an entire waste of her ti also contributed heavily to her foul mood.
Amid the droning, she suddenly picked up on a word that caught her attention.
"Wait," she blurted, "can you say that again?"
"What, mandelos?" Thane piped up. He'd been sitting alongside Kel, likewise wondering why he was being subjected to such boring reports.
"Let's see…" Ira remarked, thumbing through the stack of docunts in his hands, "there should be at least one crate of them in the palace kitchen if you'd like to eat so."
"So a mandelo is a kind of produce then?" Kel surmised.
"Yes," Ira replied absently as he continued shuffling through papers. "It's actually a hybrid between two citrus fruits."
"Why do you ask, Princess?" Thane chid in.
"At the masquerade," Kel explained, "one of the n who approached asked about them."
She couldn't recall the man's exact words, but he'd definitely made it seem as if she had mandelos, and he wanted them.
"He must have been too inebriated to know what he was saying," she chuckled. "I thought it might have been so kind of slang or…"
She paused, realizing that both n were staring at her with pale-white faces.
"I-is sothing wrong?" she asked nervously.
"Ahem!" Ira cleared his throat, nodding to Thane.
"Don't look at !" Thane cried, "I had to talk to her about her mandelos last ti!!"
"Pffft!"
All three of them turned to see the Dragon Emperor, seated at his desk, dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief.
"That man must like citrus fruits a lot," he said simply, turning back to his work. "Let's hurry and finish this up."
By the ti Ira and the emperor were ready to move on to the discussion regarding Spencer Regan and the Pantheon Masquerades, Kel had gotten the gist of 'mandelos' out of the reluctant Thane.
"Have you two finished acting like children?" Ira grumbled, swapping his collection of papers out for a new one off his cluttered desk.
"You were the one who made explain such a thing," Thane muttered, pursing his lips. By this ti, his face had grown so red that he resembled so kind of fruit himself.
"Returning to the matter at hand," the emperor announced, regaining everyone's attention, "let's see where we're at with the Pantheon Masquerades."
"Thanks to the princess's fooli-I an bravery," Ira began, "we now have access to the entire register of the people in attendance last week."
"Indeed," the emperor responded, unfurling the docunt Kel had worked so hard to swipe. Without so much as a thanks or word of praise, the emperor had claid the register while Kel was passed out, exhausted from narrowly escaping getting caught.
"Don't we already have a pretty good idea of which nobles are involved already?" Thane ventured, wincing under Kel's glare.
"We do," Ira agreed, "but this gives us solid proof."
"Which we would need to press any formal charges," the emperor finished.
"Not that doing so would benefit us at all," Ira sighed, bringing his hand to his forehead. "We'd only be plucking a few useless leaves off the rotten tree."
"So how do we reach the roots then?" Thane muttered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
"What if…" Kel was surprised to find herself speaking up. "What if you used the register the sa way Spencer Regan uses it?"
Ira glanced at her over the top of his spectacles and raised his eyebrows. "You're not suggesting…"
"Blackmail." The emperor answered. "Not a bad idea."
"I'd argue that we'd only get the sa results as we have in the past from sending our people to infiltrate," Ira pointed out.
"If only our best chance to get close to Spencer Regan hadn't exposed herself so recklessly," Thane remarked playfully, shaking his head as he patted Kel's shoulder.
Kel turned to Thane with a grim smile, forehead twitching.
"Well if it wasn't for such vague instructions," Kel threatened, reaching up and grabbing Thane's hand. He grunted in pain as his fingers were crushed inside her ruthless fist.
"I don't know if 'exposed herself recklessly' is the correct term," the emperor interjected, an impish smirk spreading across his lips. "She did, after all, turn down that man's request for mandelos, right?"
"Y-your Majesty!" Thane screeched, throwing his hands over his once again reddening cheeks.
"You too, Your Majesty?" Ira huffed, smacking his stack of papers against his forehead. "Is anybody going to take this seriousl-"
A loud pounding on the door interrupted him.
"Your Majesty!!" A man cried, bursting into the room. "It's..! Th-the…! What do we even….!"
"Slow down!" Thane called jumping from his seat. He steadied the man's tipping fra and began fanning him with his hand. "Catch your breath a bit."
"No.. ti…" the man huffed, bending forward with his hands on his knees. After panting for a few seconds, he reached out a shaky hand, holding a small rectangle of parchnt.
Thane quickly grabbed the paper. "What's thi- YOUR MAJESTY!"
The red drained from his face all at once as he rushed to the emperor's desk, slamming the paper down.
Kel watched intently, eager to see what the emperor's reaction would be to the small note that had caused two other grown n to entirely lose their composure.
Paying no heed to the air of urgency in the room, the emperor gingerly picked up the note and scanned the contents.
To everyone's surprise, the tiniest hint of a smile danced across his face as he read.
"Well, well," he snorted, "it seems like our little dilemma is solved."
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