From his left: "Who is she, Your Majesty?"
From his right: "Everyone wants to know, Majesty."
From behind: "I am being hounded by our guests, Your Majesty."
From further behind: "So am I!"
"So you see fit to hound me instead?" Dane had seen this coming from a mile away: his council ambushing him on his way to the throne room. At his height of over six feet, Dane towered over his councilmen, creating a somewhat ludicrous scene this morning of a king leading his group of seven little dwarves through the palace.
Ducklings, rather, from the way they quacked and quacked at him.
Regardless, his pace was leisurely, his mood light, even his voice sounded oddly chirpy, for reasons he'd rather keep to himself.
"Even our Serrasi guests want to know, Your Majesty," one of the other ducklings whinged as it waddled behind Dane.
Good. He was beginning to feel embarrassed about masturbating to a woman he didn't know the face or name of. It was only fair that the Serrasi delegation she arrived with didn't know who she was, either. Now he felt less incompetent.
"As a member of your council, I feel I must share my absolute honest opinion, Your Majesty," Duke Daroch said, using his serious, grandfatherly voice. As if these spoilt councilmen ever had any qualms about sharing their unwanted opinions. "Your Majesty's highly preferential treatment of a Serrasi woman of unknown rank has caused great offence to many of our guests last night."
Daroch paused, and it was one of those rare occasions where the rest of the council did not quibble with each other given the opportunity. Taking that as a sign of sound advice, Dane slowed his pace and listened.
"Our Uviellan guests only just arrived yesterday, having travelled by a strenuous sea voyage in order to avoid the ongoing war between Kronad and Loree," Daroch pointed out. "Instead of dancing with their ladies, Your Majesty made off with another in such a... such an ostentatious display. Some of them have taken that as an insult."
The good thing about being king was that he could respond with: "Am I supposed to care?"
The bad thing about striving to be a decent king was that when seven advisors of polarising views and opinions all agreed unanimously on something, he could not simply ignore them, as much as he wanted to.
Dane sighed as he came up to the entrance of the throne room. "I will deal with it better tonight," he relented, the chirpiness gone.
"So, who is she?" Daroch pressed.
Well, look at that. At the end of the day, they were still nosy, meddlesome old men. "I don't know," he muttered lamely. It was the truth, yet they all frowned at him with disbelief written across their foreheads.
Ignoring them, Dane entered the hall and strode down the red carpet that led to his throne on the dais.
The hall was busy, and still more trickled in after he took his seat. Judgment days were always busy, but this day particularly so, with some of their foreign guests among the audience, too. Though there was only one of them that really mattered to him.
He scanned the crowd slowly, carefully inspecting every woman with a veil.
Sir Alan, standing at the foot of the dais, introduced the first matter of the day: young landlord Jenkins Jr and old farmer 'Buck' from the village of Dewmore down south.
"It was my father's land, Your Majesty," the landlord began. "He died a year ago and I inherited the land. That's when I found out this farmer and his family had trespassed our land and lived on it for ten years without paying a single copper. Ten years!"
YOU ARE READING
Bride to the Cursed: a Snow White retelling
Fantasy[COMPLETED] When a king makes an order, he expects it to be followed. When King Dane divorced his wife, he expected her to get out of his sight and stay out of his sight. Not reappear three months later in his bed, spouting nonsense about being a 'l...
