A Prince's Agony

The queen had stood by the window for a while by now, pondering over the letter in her hands with crinkled eyebrows and staring out at the balcony as though it had personally offended her. The afternoon sun was beating down on the marble in a blinding fashion, so Endres didn’t like to watch his sister for an excessive amount of time and instead dedicated his attention again to the foreword the medical scholars had asked him to write. They remained like this for a few minutes of silence until Malika turned around with a sigh and observed the prince’s writing.

“It is no use,” she said, obviously still unsatisfied with the content of the letter, “I hope you don’t mind a short vacation to Chunnan to clear up this mess.”

“Chunnan?!”

It wasn’t like Endres explicitly disliked that town but there was only so much religious zealots he could bear. Malika scoffed.

“You know that the royal family couldn’t participate in the Ianh Te for almost a decade by now. They are becoming impatient without the blessing.”

“Cousin Seto is younger than I and much more suitable.”

Endres hadn’t really seen the boy since after the latter’s naming ceremony but he knew that Master Riwang always seemed very fond of the youth. If he remembered correctly he was about sixteen by now and probably would be excited to travel to the Eastern provinces.

“It is not like you are too old either. Take Cousin Seto as your company if you will, he is an intelligent boy so it will compensate for Ardseong not coming with you. I need him to take care of something else.”

Now it was Endres’ time to frown. He at least had hoped to drag Caspar with him into the nuisance that was Ianh Te but apparently his sister denied him that specific pleasure. The more embarrassing thing, he just realised, was that Malika immediately knew Endres would choose him over anyone else. If it was this obvious to his sister already, he should seriously make his favouritism less obvious.

“I will propose Your Majesty’s suggestion to his family,” Endres said, pulling out a new piece of paper to start the letter, the queen nodding in satisfaction.