Her Royal Highness

Chapter 42

It took Ben a few days to actually get the courage to get up and go into his office. In that time, he heard dozens of rumors and stories and read tons of articles, all criticizing Mal's decision to pass her new laws and calling out the palace for not acting properly. It would have put Ben on-edge, except for they were all old. Auradon interweb had seemingly raged about the occurrence for two days and then decided all was well. The most recent article he could find with a mention of Mal's laws was just a simple one talking about how Charmington had managed to work out a deal with Corona in the wake of Queen Rapunzel's heroism in the palace.

Over a week after he'd first come home, he finally worked up the courage to head upstairs, unlock his door, and take a look around. In his 'immediate' drawer was a stack of papers. Some of them had been partially completed in Mal's spiderlike scrawl, and others had come in during the past week. It was fascinating how little there was. He pulled out his filing cabinet to glance at everything recent. His dad hadn't spoken to him about anything pertaining to the kingdom yet, but perhaps he had done a few things? Yet, when he looked, there was nothing. Nothing had been completed since October thirty-first - the day Mal had headed North. There simply wasn't much coming in anymore.

What had she written?

Ben turned on his computer. It actually took a little while to warm up since it hadn't been used in about a month. He saw the marks Mal had left behind - moving the mouse up to sit on top of the desk instead of leaving it in the rolling compartment and scooting the screen back because she wasn't using the touchscreen feature and it was too close. Everything looked neat. Not necessarily the way he'd left it, but neat. None of the books he regularly consulted had been used because she preferred digitized records and all of the pertinent folders he usually arranged on his desk had been put aside so she would have more workspace.

He clicked through to the recent files and found Mal's changes under 'Queen Documents'. There wasn't exactly a lot under the folder - her residence permit, her coronation blessings, their marriage certificate and a couple other identifying documents before he found them all in a little list. He pulled them all up, one by one, and examined them. They were all short, concise, and well-thought-out despite the frame of mind she'd been in when she'd written them. They were all very good, but Ben's heart sank a little as he realized what this meant.

Kingdoms would have to team up to conduct quarterly examinations of the palace, inter-kingdom policies were to be determined without the aid of the high palace, and the High Kingdom would no longer be running inter-kingdom trade. Mal had inadvertently begun to fulfill a prophecy. Auradon unification.

It made him feel so rotten - why hadn't he thought of this? He could have saved himself so much work over the last few months and Mal wouldn't have suffered so much while he was gone. And Mal had fulfilled nearly every single thing that had been told to her during her coronation blessings - what had he done? He was supposed to be minimizing suffering and leading the kingdom into an era of peace. There was supposed to be growth and no suffering. His home was supposed to be a place of refuge. Yet here he was, suffering and useless and too shaken to even function throughout an entire day without locking himself away in his room for some peace and quiet. Corrupted and ruined and defiled by this dark magic.

Ben yanked out a packet of papers that had been sent to Mal from the north. She knew his filing system remarkably well, so he found what he was searching for almost immediately. The Auradon Death Count, as of last week, was two-thousand-and-four-hundred. two-thousand-and-four-hundred people were dead because of him, with almost double that number missing or wounded. He'd started the bloodiest event in Auradon History so far. This many people hadn't died in such a short amount of time since the villains were raging across the land in the War of Good and Evil that had built the Isle and spawned the Unspeakable Punishments.