The Dragon's Kiss

At last, the mandatory week of rest came to an end, and Kel found herself sitting in the emperor's study, listening to Ira's monotone voice as he finished the daily reports.

Why am I here, she wondered as the white-haired man listed off the numbers for the capital's latest shipments of fruits and vegetables. Her bitterness most likely stemmed from the fact that she hadn't found any of the answers she was searching for. But the fact that this meeting seemed like an entire waste of her time also contributed heavily to her foul mood.

Amid the droning, she suddenly picked up on a word that caught her attention.

"Wait," she blurted, "can you say that again?"

"What, mandelos?" Thane piped up. He'd been sitting alongside Kel, likewise wondering why he was being subjected to such boring reports.

"Let's see…" Ira remarked, thumbing through the stack of documents in his hands, "there should be at least one crate of them in the palace kitchen if you'd like to eat some."

"So a mandelo is a kind of produce then?" Kel surmised.

"Yes," Ira replied absently as he continued shuffling through papers. "It's actually a hybrid between two citrus fruits."

"Why do you ask, Princess?" Thane chimed in.

"At the masquerade," Kel explained, "one of the men who approached me asked about them."

She couldn't recall the man's exact words, but he'd definitely made it seem as if she had mandelos, and he wanted them.

"He must have been too inebriated to know what he was saying," she chuckled. "I thought it might have been some kind of slang or…"

She paused, realizing that both men were staring at her with pale-white faces.

"I-is something wrong?" she asked nervously.

"Ahem!" Ira cleared his throat, nodding to Thane.

"Don't look at me!" Thane cried, "I had to talk to her about her mandelos last time!!"

"Pffft!"

All three of them turned to see the Dragon Emperor, seated at his desk, dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief.

"That man must like citrus fruits a lot," he said simply, turning back to his work. "Let's hurry and finish this up."

By the time Ira and the emperor were ready to move on to the discussion regarding Spencer Regan and the Pantheon Masquerades, Kel had gotten the gist of 'mandelos' out of the reluctant Thane.

"Have you two finished acting like children?" Ira grumbled, swapping his collection of papers out for a new one off his cluttered desk.

"You were the one who made me explain such a thing," Thane muttered, pursing his lips. By this time, his face had grown so red that he resembled some kind of fruit himself.

"Returning to the matter at hand," the emperor announced, regaining everyone's attention, "let's see where we're at with the Pantheon Masquerades."

"Thanks to the princess's fooli-I mean bravery," Ira began, "we now have access to the entire register of the people in attendance last week."

"Indeed," the emperor responded, unfurling the document Kel had worked so hard to swipe. Without so much as a thanks or word of praise, the emperor had claimed the register while Kel was passed out, exhausted from narrowly escaping getting caught.

"Don't we already have a pretty good idea of which nobles are involved already?" Thane ventured, wincing under Kel's glare.

"We do," Ira agreed, "but this gives us solid proof."

"Which we would need to press any formal charges," the emperor finished.

"Not that doing so would benefit us at all," Ira sighed, bringing his hand to his forehead. "We'd only be plucking a few useless leaves off the rotten tree."

"So how do we reach the roots then?" Thane muttered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"What if…" Kel was surprised to find herself speaking up. "What if you used the register the same way Spencer Regan uses it?"

Ira glanced at her over the top of his spectacles and raised his eyebrows. "You're not suggesting…"

"Blackmail." The emperor answered. "Not a bad idea."

"I'd argue that we'd only get the same results as we have in the past from sending our people to infiltrate," Ira pointed out.

"If only our best chance to get close to Spencer Regan hadn't exposed herself so recklessly," Thane remarked playfully, shaking his head as he patted Kel's shoulder.

Kel turned to Thane with a grim smile, forehead twitching.

"Well if it wasn't for such vague instructions," Kel threatened, reaching up and grabbing Thane's hand. He grunted in pain as his fingers were crushed inside her ruthless fist.

"I don't know if 'exposed herself recklessly' is the correct term," the emperor interjected, an impish smirk spreading across his lips. "She did, after all, turn down that man's request for mandelos, right?"

"Y-your Majesty!" Thane screeched, throwing his hands over his once again reddening cheeks.

"You too, Your Majesty?" Ira huffed, smacking his stack of papers against his forehead. "Is anybody going to take this seriousl-"

A loud pounding on the door interrupted him.

"Your Majesty!!" A man cried, bursting into the room. "It's..! Th-the…! What do we even….!"

"Slow down!" Thane called jumping from his seat. He steadied the man's tipping frame and began fanning him with his hand. "Catch your breath a bit."

"No.. time…" the man huffed, bending forward with his hands on his knees. After panting for a few seconds, he reached out a shaky hand, holding a small rectangle of parchment.

Thane quickly grabbed the paper. "What's thi- YOUR MAJESTY!"

The red drained from his face all at once as he rushed to the emperor's desk, slamming the paper down.

Kel watched intently, eager to see what the emperor's reaction would be to the small note that had caused two other grown men to entirely lose their composure.

Paying no heed to the air of urgency in the room, the emperor gingerly picked up the note and scanned the contents.

To everyone's surprise, the tiniest hint of a smile danced across his face as he read.

"Well, well," he snorted, "it seems like our little dilemma is solved."