Illumina eyed the queen warily. As chief royal advisor, it was very much her job to keep an eye on the queen whenever the woman acted out of the ordinary. And as a priestess of the Goddess of Hope, it was technically also her job to guide her charge on the path of spiritual enlightenment. Although in all honesty, she had largely given up on that particular point. Queen Rosmere was a warrior queen from a long line of woefully bellicose rulers, and trying to guide her on spiritual matters felt much like trying to teach a fish how to forge a sword. To make matters worse, the unmatched prowess of the queen, both as a warrior and a strategist, had left the kingdom with no wars to fight. Every other nation on the continent was either an outright vassal or sent annual tributes to the queen to keep her sword arm at bay. Even the goblin king sent tribute, and goblins waged war as readily as they breathed. A brittle, strained peace had fallen over the continent, sustained entirely by fear, and the queen had no outlet for her hereditary urge to do battle. Letting her personally train the kingdom’s army helped, but there was a limit to it. Even when switching out which regiments were ‘trained’ every day, Illumina couldn’t allow the queen to go at them for more than a few hours a day without traumatizing the poor soldiers. Which left her an awful lot of hours to fill up with other matters. And asking the woman to perform actual governance work was strictly out of the question. Illumina had tried to make that happen exactly once, and the poor scribes the queen had worked with that day still broke into a panic at the mere sight of a quill pen. In short, the queen was perhaps the most volatile woman in the entire kingdom, and it was Illumina’s job to make sure she didn’t get into too much trouble. Which was why she was very sensitive to the woman’s moods. And today, the queen was sprawled across her throne in a posture that put Illumina more in mind of a big cat resting on a tree branch that a monarch in their seat of power. There was a bottle of fine wine on the table by the throne, and the queen held a beautiful glass goblet filled with the precious red liquid. But she wasn’t drinking. She merely swirled it about, eyes locked on it as though she could divine the future in the reflected glow of the candlelight upon the glass surface of the goblet. Now, Queen Rosmere had never been that much of a drinker in the first place. She firmly held that drinking too often would weaken her body and make her a less capable warrior. But she did allow herself to vanish into her cups once every tenday, as a way to wile away the hours she wasn’t allowed to spent striking fear into the hearts of her own soldiery. Today was such a day, but the queen had been staring at the wine for hours without taking a single sip. Steeling her resolve, Illumina decided she had no choice but to do one of the things she hated most. She had to engage the queen in dialogue. “Is something the matter, Your Majesty?” The queen turned her head slightly, her blood-red eyes focusing directly on her advisor. In the past, that gaze alone had been enough to make Illumina flinch. But she had held this position for a long time, and these days she could completely conceal just how terrified the barely restrained violence hiding behind those eyes made her. “I’m thinking of giving up strong drink entirely.” That rather caught Illumina off-guard. After all, the queen was very keen on staving off her boredom, and it wasn’t like her to give up one of her means of doing so. “May I inquire why, Your Majesty?” “I find that the older I get, the less joy it brings me, and the more it affects me the following day. At this point, I feel it’s barely worth it.” For a moment, Illumina struggled with herself. On the one hand, she had long since decided that trying to care for the queen’s spiritual well-being was a lost cause. On the other hand, she had been raised in a temple, taught and trained from her earliest days to be a priestess. And some habits are very hard to break. “…I think it is a wonderful idea, Your Majesty. It is never to late to abandon your vices and seek a more virtuous life. The Goddess will surely smile upon your resolve.” The queen barked out a harsh laugh. “Abandon my vices? Whatever for? I’m simply thinking of exchanging this particular vice for one that has a greater reward at a lower cost. Send out some messengers. Spread the word that I have a great number of court positions open for muscular young men. No education necessary.” Something deep within Illumina, something which had long since broken into little pieces, nevertheless managed to crumble a little further still. “Of course, Your Majesty.” She wasn’t sure what particular vice the queen intended to indulge in with the aid of a bunch of muscular young men, but she was sure she didn’t want to know. Unfortunately, she was equally sure that she would inevitably find out.