[YUZUKI]
The moment the door closed behind Yuzuki and Rinko, the Kurayami queen fell to the floor, her legs shaking, her eyes watery.
"Fucking hell!" Yuzuki breathed like she came out of a war zone.
"You were the one who didn't dress properly," Rinko noted, unbothered.
She had gotten to know Yuzuki over the years and knew that councils didn't make her nervous. Meetings and ruining people's lives while stomping on rulers was simply breakfast for her.
Even if it had been Ayami she had been talking to, on matters of politics and not King Kazuya, Rinko was now sure the queen would have stayed the queen.
But this woman on the floor?
This was no queen.
This was Yuzuki Kuramitsu.
The lovesick idiot who had just watched the love of her life stare at her as she walked away, thinking that she was the queen.
"I did not know she would come looking like the weapon formed against me!" Yuzuki complained.
Then she went on to rant about how good Ayami looked, how her lips had been calling out to Yuzuki every passing second, how Yuzuki wished she could smell Ayami's epoch scent and lock her in and never let go.
She didn't stop even when she heard Ayami's voice outside. Even when Ayami eventually gave up and left anyway. She hadn't stopped talking about Ayami Araki.
And Rinko?
She had just had enough.
"I told her I would bring you to her before she goes back to Yamashita," Rinko said casually, and Yuzuki felt her entire life press pause.
"YOU WHAT?" Yuzuki screeched before she shot up and rushed to the window, heart in her hands as if she had just been told by Rinko that the Yamashita enforcer was coming to see her like that.
"Okay, if you don't want to see her today, I'll just send her a raven and tell her that you can see each other once the summit en—"
"You wouldn't dare."
"I, in fact, would, because no one cares what I say to Ayami. But if you go to her as the queen, that would be a very interesting conversation, Yuzu," Rinko teased, watching as Yuzuki stared at herself, then the window, and back to the palace she was standing in.
She looked so lost it was intriguing, to say the least.
"Where am I to meet her?" Yuzuki asked.
"I thought you didn't want her to see you like that?" Rinko teased, staring curiously.
"I can change clothes and be better. I can look prettier," Yuzuki insisted.
Rinko stared in amusement as her queen, the woman who had just challenged rulers out there, was now fidgeting and unsure of what dress to wear just because Ayami Araki was still in Kurayami.
"You are my servant sister, remember?" Rinko reminded.
"And you're the queen's enforcer. If you can't spend your hard-earned silver and spoil your sister, who do you want to spend it all on?" Yuzuki bit back.
Rinko couldn't help but roll her eyes at the most diabolical woman she had seen since the day began. This woman was hopeless.
"I am not paying for your dress," Rinko insisted.
"Fine, I'll just conjure one, and you know very well how expensive the material I conjure can be. Good luck explaining to everyone that the servant is just a servant," Yuzuki huffed, like that was the biggest bargain she was making for Rinko.
Rinko didn't look pleased at all.
"I do not like you," she groaned.
"You're my big sister, of course you like me, and we have to sell that to Ayami. Gods, you should have seen the way her eyes were brimming with controlled rage. The way she wanted to defend her king.
"Maybe I really should have let her attack me; at least she would have touched me," Yuzuki swooned, clinging to the bars of the window while she swayed back and forth like a little shit who had just fallen in love for the first time.
"You cannot be serious right now, Yuzuki," Rinko groaned as she struggled to find a better piece of material for Yuzuki to do whatever the hell she wanted with her magic.
Because there was just no way Rinko was going to the seamstress's house just to get her apparent nutjob of a sister's clothes to go see Ayami Araki.
"She smelled so good… I could eat her back there. If it was just us, maybe I would have let her do more than tou—" Yuzuki rambled, and Rinko threw a hoard of dresses at her.
"If you don't shut up, I am going to send that raven," she warned.
"You don't understand me," Yuzuki pouted, making Rinko groan in frustration.
Honestly, right now?
Between the queen who threatened war and danger to everyone and this little shit in the royal chambers, Rinko definitely preferred the maniac she had seen in the throne room over this little shit stressing her out.
"She is in my chambers," Rinko said.
Yuzuki had never gotten that still.
For a moment she wanted to say something. Anything. Hell, she had been rambling for so long that she hadn't even realized she could be that quiet.
But Rinko noticed.
"Goodness gracious, finally some quiet," Rinko groaned thankfully.
"Y… Your chambers?" Yuzuki asked, like she was trying to reconstruct the timeline.
From the throne room to her royal chambers. It just made no sense.
Yet she couldn't even deny that there had been a possibility, especially when Yuzuki was busy laughing with kids for the better part of her walk to her chambers.
She could have used the usual route that was shorter, but she had been so giddy and needed to remind herself of what she was fighting for.
Children who had a future.
Children who had to grow up properly.
Maybe she had been overcompensating because the children of Fukada never got the chance to grow up and know what they could be in this future, but Yuzuki still had the will to make sure that what happened in Yamashita's Fukada would never happen in Kurayami.
And those children, seeing them smile and laugh around like they weren't interacting with the most lethal queen in the realm, was all that Yuzuki needed to remember why she was fighting in the first place.
"Are you going to go to her, or should I sneak her through the tunnels back to Yamashita?" Rinko asked when she noticed Yuzuki had been so lost in her thoughts.
"Absolutely not. I will be going to my beloved and spending the day with her," Yuzuki said excitedly again.
However, Rinko didn't miss the flash of pain and sorrow in the woman's eyes before she changed into this bubbly woman.
Maybe there was more to Queen Kuramitsu that Rinko didn't know, and frankly, she couldn't even say she could do her research and find out because Yuzuki was easily the most unpredictable woman that Rinko had served.
"If you both mate in my bed, I will kill Ayami," Rinko warned, and Yuzuki just laughed at her.
"Relax. We'll be in the garden out back. I cast a barrier invisibility spell a year ago there. That way no one will see us, or know that I'm there with Ayami. Other than you, of course," Yuzuki said before she grabbed a change of clothes and went to Rinko's chambers.
She was excited.
To see her Matsui again.
In the royal palace.
Even if it was just in Rinko's chambers.
With time, she would find a way to make things better, even if that would mean she had to go through Ayami to get to Kazuya.
Outside the queen's royal chambers, the kingdom of Kurayami was walking on ice. Their queen had just walked out on the royals, and on a normal day that was already bad news. And they heard what Kazuya had insinuated ad they knew.
Queen Kuramitsu was never one to take shit from anyone, which meant that the warriors had to ready themselves.
Maybe they would be commanded into war.
Or maybe the queen would murder King Kazuya herself, which was not something that was beyond her. They knew Queen Kuramitsu so well, and they knew just how much she despised King Kazuya.
Even Amaya had known better than to knock insistently on Yuzuki's door. Because after what she had seen in the throne room, the queen would be busy planning wars.
And Amaya more than anyone knew better than to disturb Queen Kuramitsu on such days.
She had a few broken bones she had earned from when she had dared once upon a time.
"Goddess, save us all," was her little prayer as she went back to the quiet of her consort chambers, her mood matching that of the entire Kurayami Kingdom.
The queen was planning war… right?
Right??