Chapter 196: Escape
Draudillon tilted her head.
She had assumed Lucian was worried about not having the energy to manage it — after all, the Aindra domain was a long way from the Dragon Kingdom, and splitting attention between two places that far apart was genuinely taxing.
"Lord Lucian need not worry about that." Her voice was earnest, those large eyes full of expectation as she looked at him — the look of someone who had already worked everything out. "I will dispatch the most capable tax officials and administrators to handle the day-to-day management. Even if Lord Lucian is not personally present in the Dragon Kingdom, the fief will be in excellent hands."
Lucian looked at that expression — that eager, just-let-me-explain manner — and felt the corner of his mouth move without his permission.
"In that case, what exactly would I be there as lord for?"
Draudillon's pale pink lips parted.
No sound came out.
The eager, I've-thought-of-everything look deflated, slowly, like a balloon with a small hole in it. Her gaze drifted sideways. Her shoulders drew in with it.
Lucian watched her fumble for a response and felt most of his irritation at being maneuvered quietly dissolve.
This loli queen genuinely wanted to use a fief to anchor him to the Dragon Kingdom's border — keep the beastman nation cautious, give them something to think twice about. The calculation was clear enough. But watching her tie herself in knots trying to come up with a justification, that childlike face working against her at every turn, she looked less like a ruling monarch and more like a small girl caught eating sweets she wasn't supposed to have, now scrambling to construct a plausible excuse.
Lucian exhaled quietly to himself.
The room was empty now. Only the candle-light shifting across the walls, and the faint sound of insects from somewhere outside the window.
On an impulse he couldn't entirely account for, Lucian reached out and gave Draudillon a light flick on the forehead. Barely any force behind it — not enough to leave a mark.
Draudillon froze.
She held that half-hunched position for several long seconds. Then, very slowly, she raised her head.
Her large eyes were full of something that could only be described as disbelief.
An uneasy premonition moved through Lucian.
This was completely different from how Lakyus reacted to the same thing. Lakyus would clap both hands over her forehead and perform profound suffering. But the look Draudillon was giving him right now was the look someone gives a person who has just done something deeply, inexplicably unhinged.
The weight of that look made him shift uncomfortably. He changed the subject immediately.
"Your Majesty, there is one more thing I should say."
Draudillon narrowed her eyes at him for a few seconds, then finally, with what appeared to be considerable magnanimity, withdrew the look.
"...Speak."
"Having an Aindra domain fief in the Dragon Kingdom is not, in fact, a good thing."
That landed. Draudillon's attention came back to him fully, her gaze questioning.
"Why?"
Lucian smiled and didn't answer.
He reached for the wine cup in front of him and swirled it gently a few times, then took a slow sip. Unlike Draudillon's specially prepared honeyed water, this was proper red wine.
He set the cup back down, then turned toward the Queen with the expression of someone who has determined that certain matters are simply beyond the present audience, and gave a small, measured shake of his head.
Draudillon stared at that expression and felt something hot kindle in her chest.
"Lord Lucian!"
"Your Majesty need not press me on this. I have my reasons."
"You — you—!"
The flush that had started at the tips of Draudillon's ears spread rapidly across her cheeks. She drew a long breath, then gave a firm, decisive nod — the nod of someone committing to something significant.
And then her shape began to change.
Lucian watched, transfixed, as the small figure in front of him seemed to be pulled lengthwise by an invisible hand. The lines of her frame extended and shifted beneath the pale violet gown — shoulders broadening, waist drawing in, the fabric adjusting itself seamlessly to each new contour.
In the space of a few breaths, the slight figure that had been perched in the raised chair was gone. In its place sat someone else entirely: a tall, composed woman, long black hair falling across her shoulders, the same refined features now fully matured — the softness gone, replaced by a balanced, graceful bearing. The fullness of a grown woman where there had been none before. And when she sat in that wide chair now, her feet rested flat and steady on the floor.
Lucian's jaw came open slightly. Watching the transformation happen in front of him hit with roughly the same force it had for Ainz the first time he'd encountered something entirely outside his parameters. He recovered quickly — but only because the scholar's instinct to observe immediately took over.
His eyes moved to the dress.
Draudillon's frame had extended from something child-sized to something fully adult, and the pale violet gown had simply... followed. The hem had lengthened, the waist had narrowed, the fabric across the chest was noticeably more fitted than it had been — and yet there was not a single tear, not a pulled seam anywhere.
Lucian's gaze worked carefully over the folds and stitching.
What material does this thing use? How is it not coming apart?
He thought of a comic from before his transmigration. A certain enormous green hero whose trousers survived anything he put them through. The operating principle here was probably not entirely different.
"Lord Lucian." Draudillon's voice reached him — noticeably fuller than before, the particular register of her queenly cadence still there, but something expectant threaded into the end of it. "Now that I've returned to my true appearance — don't you have anything to say?"
Lucian came back to himself. His gaze met hers.
"...Your Majesty's dress. What is it made of?"
Draudillon's expression stalled for a beat.
"I beg your pardon?"
"No — only curiosity." Lucian waved a hand, making a genuine effort to look like a reasonable person. "A fabric that adjusts automatically to changes in the wearer's proportions — I've never encountered anything like it. If something like this could be produced at scale and applied to military—"
"Lord Lucian!" Draudillon's voice went up several registers, two vivid patches of red appearing on her cheeks. "I am asking you something important!"
Lucian looked at that flushed, thoroughly exasperated expression and resigned himself internally. The subject change had not worked.
"Your Majesty." He let his voice settle. "All I can say is this — having an Aindra fief in the Dragon Kingdom would cause far more problems for the Dragon Kingdom than it would solve. My refusal is, in its own way, for the Dragon Kingdom's benefit."
Draudillon's gaze rested on his face for a long, unguarded moment.
Candlelight fell across the line of Lucian's profile. It caught in his pale green eyes and made them unusually clear — and what was in them, the straightforwardness of it, made something catch in Draudillon's chest without warning.
She felt, very briefly, as though her heartbeat had skipped half a step.
"...I understand." The air went out of her posture, quietly. "If Lord Lucian says so, then the matter of the fief — we'll set it aside for now."
A pause. Then, in a voice that had gone softer but carried a weight that left no room for doubt:
"However — if Lord Lucian should ever change his mind, the Dragon Kingdom will always be open to you. The fief, and everything else...I will be waiting."
The flush on her cheeks had deepened. Her voice was quieter than before. But the earnestness underneath it was not performative — this was a promise, and she meant it as one.
Lucian looked away from the Queen's gaze and gave a small nod.
"Your Majesty's generosity — I won't forget it."
He bowed, then turned and walked toward the door.
He could not accept the fief. He could not answer what Draudillon was offering. The most rational choice available to him was to leave.
Draudillon sat alone in the tall chair, still in her adult form, her gaze resting on the door that had just closed.
After a long stretch of quiet, she let out a slow breath and raised a hand to press lightly against her own cheek — still faintly warm.
"...Honestly." She murmured it under her breath, to no one in particular. Whether she was talking about the idiot who had used that moment to ask about fabric composition, or about the version of herself she'd just briefly become — she couldn't quite have said.