(From Blue's Perspective)
"Do you like the new toy, Athena?" I asked.
Athena, who was sitting on the floor and playing with Ruby, grinned at . "I love it! But there are so many toys, Your Majesty..."
"So what? Don't you like them?"
"I do... But I think Your Majesty is giving too many gifts. The duke keeps sending a lot of gifts too..."
"The number of his gifts is still less than mine, right?" I asked.
"Yeah, two," Ruby replied.
"He is just trying to suppress . I did not know he was so childish," I muttered. "But he can't do so. I can't let that happen. I have to win."
"Your Highness is acting childish as well," Ruby chuckled.
"Hmph, I an I have to win as I am the Queen. How can a Queen lose to soone?"
"That's just an excuse to hide your embarrassnt," Ruby laughed.
"That said, is Luc still working?"
"Yeah. He only cos back to recharge and then goes back to work," Ruby said.
"Recharge? How?"
"..."
"Ah, I see... It should be in the middle of the night."
"Please don't ask anything else anymore. After getting married, Your Highness slowly started to be very free about these kinds of things. It must be His Highness's influence," she said as her ears burned.
'Ruby used to be free about things like this too before marriage. But after experiencing it herself, she started to get embarrassed. It was kind of cute.'
"Now, Athena, I want to ask you a few things which are very important. So, answer after thinking about every single question thoroughly since your future depends on them."
Athena understood everything better than I thought. It was very easy to tell her about everything. And she answered pretty well too. Now, all that things left was to take action according to those answers.
"Dem could not co today. He told to take care of the things here," I told Ruby. "We cannot bring soone else here to do this job."
"We need to do it ourselves then?"
"Yeah. I will bring everything necessary," I said. "And tell Luc that I stopped by."
"Yes, I will. Please go safely, Your Highness."
"Calix is waiting for outside. I will be safe."
I could not finish my work early enough to co to the magic tower. So, I ca here this morning. Perita wanted to sleep today and requested to guard at night. Calix did not mind. So, he was the one guarding this morning.
"The yearly swordsmanship contest is coming up. It will be the first ti Your Highness can enjoy it," he said offering his arm.
"That's right. I am excited," I said.
The contest would take place two days after the yearly kingdom-visiting team would leave for Lacuna. Anyone could join the contests, but only ten could fight in the final. Dem and I would watch the final only. I was pretty excited about it.
"It gets pretty dangerous sotis. But that's the excitent about it. The King doesn't participate himself. It would have been great if we could see His Highness fighting. It's really fascinating to watch. But then again, if His Highness participates, the winner will be fixed," he said.
"He dueled with the other day. I suppose you would have liked to see it."
"What? His Highness did?"
"I will take you with if we plan to duel again," I said. "That said, you never had a duel with ? Want to duel when I practice today?"
"I don't mind. I like Your Highness's techniques, so it will be fun," he said.
I wore a dress today rather than pants. I decided to wear pants and dresses equally these days. It would bring a change in won's minds. Though there were won who could ride horses, wore whatever they wanted, and could fight, most noble won were not like that. They were very careful about what they wore and always badmouthed if another woman did as she pleased.
They did not learn to ride horses, nor did they learn self-defense. It was not because they did not like it. Rather, it was because they thought it was the n's job to learn those things. I wanted to change that fact. It was easy for to do because of my position. After all, most people would definitely follow the Queen.
"Calix, you need to go out to buy so things for . I can't send Perita because she lacks common sense," I said as soon as we returned to my office. "I will also need to send a quick word to the duke. I will just call Flint."
"When does Your Highness need to go out?"
"Right now. Perita must be lazing around, so get her and tell her to guard . Then, wear sothing informal. You are not going as a knight, but rather as a commoner boy. I can't let soone be suspicious, especially when the freaks of the temples are lurking around, just to find sothing out about Athena, I an, Amber's whereabouts. They know that Dem and I have sothing to do with this."
"They literally abused her. If you give orders, I can just finish them off."
"Haa, I wish I could. But how many people are we even going to kill for this? The number is not little. For child abuse, we could lock them up in prison if only they were not priests. According to the kingdom laws, the Imperial Palace is not supposed to deal with matters that are related to the temple only.
A saint is part of the temple as well and if think that the saint is a temple's treasure, then it ans they did nothing wrong because they were just dealing with their thing. We could imprison them because of the illegal tablet because it is related to our kingdom, but not this matter. That's why I am gathering the nas of the priests who abused her directly or are related to this matter.
If I can't imprison them with child abuse, I just need to find another way. It will be very easy after I gather their nas. I just need to make false evidence of them doing illegal business. It's as easy as that," I grinned in satisfaction.
"Just make sure they are punished enough," he said.
"Punished enough? They will be executed, trust ," I said.
I gave the list of things I needed to Calix. I also summoned Flint and gave him a letter to take to the duke right away. It was sothing Dem and I discussed last night.
'Funny how it did not co to any of our minds earlier...'
It took a while to convince Flint. He worked hard and listened to , but sotis, it took so effort to make him go outside.
Dem and I had our dinner together that night like every night. We at least tried to have dinner together every night.
"I have sent the letter to the duke. He wants to et up."
"Of course, he does. It is very weird that we all were dumb enough to not think about this," he said.
Actually, last night, when we were talking after finishing our night's routine, it ca to my mind suddenly. If the duke and the duchess suddenly adopted a child and even if we made up a story, the priests would be able to have so reasons to accuse us of kidnapping the saint.
Athena did not want to change her skin color and we did not want that too, so the priests could ask why the duke and the duchess suddenly adopted a child with the sa skin color as the saint, especially when the saint was missing. That was why, I suggested that if the duke and the duchess really wanted to adopt her, then they might as well adopt another child.
We need to tell the child a story that they could say if soone asked them where they t the duke or if that child knew Athena. My plan was to make them orphans who walked around the streets and the duke and the duchess found them and adopted them out of sympathy. That would make the best story. For that, we needed to find another child with the sa skin color as Athena.
It would not be hard since there were many people with dark skin colors.
"The duke will say yes," Dem said. "After reading his mind these days, I ca to the conclusion that he likes kids a lot. Rather than like, he is crazy when it cos to kids. I did not know this before. Soone like him won't back down from adopting more than one child if he has the ability to support them. We just need to let him know so he can prepare the papers.
I am not concerning myself with the paperwork anymore and neither are you."
"It's not like we don't want to. We just don't have any leisure to take the task of preparing more papers. We cannot let others handle these papers as well. It's a secret, after all."
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