Underwater

Chapter 35: The Evenstads

"Lady Reina, should we take a break?" Osharus asked.

Reina looked up at Osharus, blinking. "Already? We just had lunch..."

"...You had lunch three hours ago, Lady Reina. You spent ten minutes eating lunch and you didn't even take a break – you spent it reading a report," Osharus felt the need to point out.

Working with Reina was quite a contrast to his time with Delwyn. Delwyn, who hated paperwork with a vengeance, got distracted easily and needed frequent breaks. Of course, he had recently started taking his work more seriously and was no longer quite as bad as he used to be. But it was nothing like Reina, who worked without break, completely absorbed in her work at all times. If Osharus knew what robots were, he would have likened her to one.

It made his job easier in a way, and yet harder – because he had no experience in persuading someone to stop working.

"There's barely anything left, anyhow. You've decimated the piles of work we had accumulated." He smiled wryly.

When Reina and Delwyn got back, there was about as much paperwork piled up in the office as there had been before the New Year, almost a year prior. Reina had spent all her time going through them, despite the protests of the anti-imperialists that insisted she had no authority to do so. At first, she forged Delwyn's signature on the documents and pretended that they were done before he had left for the surface.

But when Toirdel had declared her acting emperor, she switched over to her own signature on documents. The ministers didn't care. There were still a couple who didn't like her... but they had since gotten used to her presence at meetings.

Reina wanted to make more suggestions for improvements in their system, of course, but she didn't think the timing was right. What with the war and her unexpected takeover of Delwyn's administrative duties, she didn't think the ministers would be very receptive to her ideas. She focused on keeping things running while the war went on. She didn't voice out any suggestions unless she believed she could convince the ministers to agree to them.

The anti-imperialists, of course, didn't make this easy.

"...Okay," Reina said with a nod. "I'll head to the nursery. I'll be back soon."

Osharus nodded.

Reina left the room with a soft sigh. She had asked Leth to stop following her around or waiting outside the study for her. There was really no point. Instead, she had her handmaids attend to her in the morning and evenings, leaving them to do as they wished at any other time.

She didn't have any guards following her like before, but she knew that Delwyn had left one of his shadows on her. He had mentioned it to her, of course. There weren't really any secrets between them anymore.

Except one... Reina thought to herself, sighing. She wanted to tell him... but not yet. She wasn't sure how to.

"Your ladyship," Adella said, smiling up at her. Cadeyrn was in the maid's arms, but he noticed his mother soon enough, his arms flailing as he reached towards her. Adella handed the baby over as Reina unbuttoned her top. The maid then pulled the chair over, which Reina thanked her for as she sat down.

She had a few months of breastfeeding to go before her milk would dry up. In the meantime, she intended to feed every bit of it to her son.

He hadn't grown much. She didn't expect him to – merfolk aged differently to humans. Their lifespans were so much longer...

Her birthday had passed not too long ago. She was twenty-two years old. She was still young, but when she compared the days she had left to Delwyn's...