The Werewolf King's Bride

(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 me. "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 me too many gifts. The duke keeps sending me 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 me. 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 mean I have to win as I am the Queen. How can a Queen lose to someone?"

"That's just an excuse to hide your embarrassment,"  Ruby laughed.

"That said, is Luc still working?"

"Yeah. He only comes 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 me 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 come today. He told me to take care of the things here," I told Ruby. "We cannot bring someone 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 me outside. I will be safe."

I could not finish my work early enough to come to the magic tower. So, I came here this morning. Perita wanted to sleep today and requested to guard me at night. Calix did not mind. So, he was the one guarding me this morning.

"The yearly swordsmanship contest is coming up. It will be the first time Your Highness can enjoy it," he said offering me 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 sometimes. But that's the excitement 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 me the other day. I suppose you would have liked to see it."

"What? His Highness did?"

"I will take you with me if we plan to duel again," I said. "That said, you never had a duel with me? 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 women's minds. Though there were women who could ride horses, wore whatever they wanted, and could fight, most noble women 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 men's job to learn those things. I wanted to change that fact. It was easy for me to do because of my position. After all, most people would definitely follow the Queen.

"Calix, you need to go out to buy some things for me. 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 me to go out?"

"Right now. Perita must be lazing around, so get her and tell her to guard me. Then, wear something informal. You are not going as a knight, but rather as a commoner boy. I can't let someone be suspicious, especially when the freaks of the temples are lurking around, just to find something out about Athena, I mean, Amber's whereabouts. They know that Dem and I have something to do with this."

"They literally abused her. If you give me 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 means 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 names 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 names. 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 me," 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 something Dem and I discussed last night.

'Funny how it did not come to any of our minds earlier...'

It took a while to convince Flint. He worked hard and listened to me, but sometimes, it took me some effort to make him go outside.
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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 meet 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 came 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 some 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 same 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 someone asked them where they met 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 same 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 came to the conclusion that he likes kids a lot. Rather than like, he is crazy when it comes to kids. I did not know this before. Someone 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."