The Crown Prince of the Dominion takes a moment to breathe, slowly kneeling closer to this princess, this destroyer… a conqueror of his home.

  And the world repeats itself to him.

  A choir—of his mind, of the house, of the gods, and maybe even Unudo itself—

  SAVE YOURSELF.

  Zai Tianci sighs to nobody with a slight frustration, letting what could barely be seen as a smile come across his face as he slides his left arm under her legs and his right beneath her spine to support her back.

  She’s lighter than expected, thinner and more bony than any central ensolian he’d encountered. He draws her up off the chair with a deliberate lift, and with careful steps he begins to slowly carry this package of living humanity towards the eastern wing of the mansion.

  Zai Tianci tries to keep his gaze forward, at the pale blue light of Unudo streaming through the windows and into this vast, longing hallway. Every step echoing through this place like cannon fire, every breath taken by this young woman in his arms resounding like crashing ocean waves.

  Sophia murmurs something in the midst of her sleeping stupor. “I dunno… yes want a donut~”

  Sadly, I don’t think I have any to feed you. He thinks back.

  He can feel everything holding his own wife this close to him.

  From how her clothes, damp from sweat, were bleeding moisture into his own robes, how that gentle, earthy scent emanated from her skin, how her unbrushed hair that hung across her head was beginning to cling to her chest…

  Zai Tianci tells himself not to think about her chest, or her thighs, or her waist as he carries her.

  And this close he can feel the warmth of her body against his own, a steady, slow rhythm that, for just a few moments, matches his own heartbeat.

  His own heartbeat.

  A human heartbeat.

  There’s a physical exertion to this activity, this crown prince keeping his arms steady and pace even as not to jostle his wife too much in this transference. Each step calculated, each breath aimed forward as not to present any chance for her to wake from this… slumber.

  She murmurs something in her half-unconsciousness, some terrible Imperial secret to this Crown Prince. It’s the words from the depths of her soul, of her intention for his nation beneath the fist of her people’s vast stores of silver coin, beneath the shadows of those demonic aerostatics, and beneath the crushing weight of their political machine:

  “Let me suck it…”

  One of Zai’s late Guardsmen made the comment that Zai Tianci was a man of “cold composure.” That there was no horrifying event, mind-numbing atrocity, or even minor inconvenience that couldn’t be controlled by his psyche.

  Just earlier this year, in fact, a Southern Extremist—wearing a ten-kilo vest of plastic explosives, packed with ball bearings and scrap metal—had gotten close enough to wound two of his Guardians. But despite all of it, the Crown Prince did keep a stern, cold face as his ears rang and vision blurred, as the mortally wounded crowd began to scream through their eviscerated bodies.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  But those words out of her mouth forces a strange confusion that crosses Zai’s face, dissolved immediately by Sophia Elise’s next line. “Mmmmm, suck out all the jelly from a doooonut~”

  Don’t let her get into my head. The Crown Prince thinks to himself as he reaches her room, the door ajar enough for him to gently push his way in. Focus, focus Zai. Don’t even feel, and never want.

  Because if he does let her in, because if she does find that chink in his armor…

  Sophia Elise the Eighth’s room is tidy, each piece of furniture and article of bedding laid to a mind boggling geometric perfection.

  Her tea desk is spotless: not even a single particle of dust upon the one, and only one, laid set of porcelain. Each bone white piece positioned with such precision it was probably done with a protractor; from how the teacups’ delicate handles faced precisely 45 degrees to the left, and how they were positioned upon a saucer so perfectly aligned that the faintest shadow cast by Unudo’s light mirrors the exact angle of the cup’s rim.

  Her bed is meticulously made, with each layer of decorative covers perfectly folded in a 6.2 by 33.85 centimeter rectangle to reveal the gentle, white silk of a summer comforter. Her clothing is so neat, from how that dresser is obsessively organized by ascending color palette to how her day’s dress is undisturbed at the left most side of the closet, as though it were waiting for an inevitable, yet perfectly timed, use.

  It’s everything that Zai Tianci expected from the Silver Demon, from the Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium. The one weaving the threads of shadow behind the Silver Veil, the conductor of this vast political orchestra; this young woman… this wife, this conqueror of his nation had to be perfect.

  Anything less would mean catastrophe.

  And that perfect, perhaps divine mirage of a perfect Fourth Princess holds for just a nano-second before the smell of unwashed body, the sight of organizational chaos, and the soft edge of clothing upon his foot hits him like a runaway train.

  This room wasn’t a catastrophe.

  No.

  It was an atrocity.

  Clothes strewn across the ground in such diversity and volume that the fine Adranic Pine floors laid completely covered in a carpet of cloth. Ensolian dresses to Tianci robes, dirtied and discarded to be laundered at a later date (which, in the end, did explain this Princess’ laundry schedule to the maids).

  No horizontal item of furniture was spared either; from the tea table, the night stands, and even the top of the drawers were covered in ceramic tea cups and glasses, some even still half-full of dried tea (Zai had always wondered which of the servants was stealing the fine ceramic mugs from the kitchen cabinets, and now he had his answer).

  And perhaps the most terrible thing of all…

  A naked bed stripped of its covers and covered with novels, with that original set of bedding left on the floor of all places. Its sleeping space with nothing more than hardwood flooring covered by a large cotton sheet, from the pillows to the summer comforter all left in a wrinkly folded mess of…

  The only organization Sophia Elise the Eighth had in this room was between the laundered and to be laundered; her sleeping space a locus of cleanliness from clean, unfolded clothes with the rest of the mess almost piled away from this barely sterile space to sleep upon.

  And this place smelled of her…

  Reeked of her.

  The scent of the ground and the world, mixing with what was the faint taste of rose-infused detergent almost welcoming this foreign intruder into a sacred rat’s nest.

  Zai Tianci whispers under his breath, now staring at the slack face of his politically married wife. “Y-you live like this?”

  “ssSleeep~” She orders him.

  So he gently puts her down on her side, placing her head on the slightly stained pillow in what he assumes is the front of this floor bed.

  Assumes, because in this flower-like, nest-adjacent structure of bedding and clothing even he can’t begin to figure where the hells she’s supposed to be oriented.

  And he stands there, watching as that young ensolian woman unconsciously adjusts her sleeping position slightly, and settles in with a soft yelp of appreciation like a lazy, and very spoiled dog.

  Zai Tianci just watches as his sleeping wife breathes, watches as her chest rises and falls, as she inhales and exhales, watches as she just lays in a pile of disastrous comfort in this world of danger, of politics, of nations and of all humanity.

  Zai Tianci watches as his world falls apart.