Chapter 219: The Extremely Important Mission of Meeting the Queen (With Maximum Running)
Chapter 219: The Extremely Important Mission of Meeting the Queen (With Maximum Running)
The footsteps were light.
Too light to belong to a servant. Too quick and uneven to belong to anyone with a sense of decorum or an awareness that the garden path was not, in fact, a racetrack.
Then the voice came.
"Zayrion!"
Zayrion’s entire face transformed.
One moment he was standing before his parents with the full weight of his grievance written plainly across his features — brows set, glasses slightly askew, velinfruit juice still drying on his fingers, two tails raised in quiet indignation. The next, every trace of it vanished. His eyes lit up behind the lenses of his glasses, his tails swung upward with an entirely different kind of energy, and he spun on his heel so fast that the red beads of his piercing swayed sharply with the motion.
He bolted.
Aziren came hurtling around the corner of the garden hedge at almost exactly the same moment, curls bouncing, amber eyes bright, arms already open — and the two of them collided in the middle of the garden path with enthusiastic disregard for physics.
They stumbled, caught each other, and to none of their parents’ surprise, neither fell.
Aziren dissolved into giggles immediately, the sound bright and unrestrained, his ears flattening and then springing back up with his laughter. His skin, as always, radiated that faint warmth.
Behind him, moving at a pace that suggested she had been following her son through the estate for some time and was thoroughly unsurprised by his current state, came Ysera.
Her reddish-brown hair fell in its familiar soft waves over her shoulders, her eight tails sweeping gracefully behind her.
"Aziren," she said, her voice smooth and patient. "I have told you before to stop running about."
Aziren turned to her immediately, still grinning. But he nodded.
It would be no surprise to Ysera if, in the next second, Aziren started running again.
"Yes, Mummy," he said.
Ysera held his gaze for a moment longer, then inclined her head with the quiet dignity of someone who had made peace with the fact that this particular lesson would require repetition.
By then, Aurelixa and Xaleron had risen from the carpet and moved to meet them, crossing the soft grass with the unhurried ease of two demons who had not been expecting company but were too composed to show it.
Zayrion, for his part, had already grabbed Aziren by the face.
He squeezed Aziren’s cheeks between both hands — gently, but with complete commitment — and tilted his head.
"What are you doing back here?" he asked. "I thought you’d be with your father."
Aziren’s response was somewhat muffled by the fact that his cheeks were still being held.
"I came to see you," he said.
Zayrion released him.
Aziren immediately straightened, reaching up to pat his own cheeks back into place with great dignity.
"I’m going to the palace," Aziren said. His amber eyes were bright, his voice carrying the particular weight of someone delivering significant news. "To see the queen."
Zayrion stilled.
"And," Aziren continued, his grin widening, "I came to invite you."
There was a pause.
A very short pause.
The kind that lasted exactly as long as it took for information to travel from the ears to the part of the brain responsible for joy.
"Really?" Zayrion asked.
The word came out higher than he likely intended. His two tails, which had spent the better part of the last hour raised in various states of grievance and indignation, shot upward with an enthusiasm that was entirely beyond his control.
Aziren nodded eagerly. "My mummy said I can go." He glanced back at Ysera with the confirming look of a child who understood the value of citing his sources. "And the queen asked about me. She wanted to know when I was coming back." He paused, then added, in a tone that made it clear this was the important part, "And I wanted to show her to you."
Zayrion turned.
He turned with his whole body and fixed his eyes on his parents. For a second, Aurelixa was certain that his eyes sparkled.
"Can I go?" he asked.
There was only one answer he was expecting, but he still asked anyway. Even his parents knew that.
"Are you certain?" Aurelixa asked. "That he can go to the palace with Aziren? The queen just had her introductory ball, and she looked extremely tired the night she left."
Ysera nodded.
"We received a letter from the palace," she said. "It came this morning."
Aurelixa’s gaze sharpened by a fraction.
"From the queen?" Xaleron asked, his eyes moving toward Ysera with quiet interest.
"Yes, and also from Azerion," Ysera replied.
Aziren, who had been listening, perked up immediately.
"He’s my friend," he announced.
Everyone looked at him.
"Azerion," he clarified helpfully. "He’s a Syrenthis demon. He lives in the palace with the queen. We’re friends."
He nodded once, confirming this himself.
Zayrion had turned back to his parents.
"Can I go?" he asked again.
Aurelixa sighed and then nodded.
"You may—"
She wasn’t able to even finish her words before her son shifted into his fox form and ran back to the castle in a black blur, with Aziren running after him as he giggled.
Xaleron stood very still for a moment.
Then he exhaled.
"I can only hope," he said, "that he does not wreak havoc when he meets the queen."
"Given Zayrion and how he loves pranking people... yes, we can only hope," Aurelixa said with a sigh.
"And that is entirely your fault," Xaleron said.
"Mine?" Aurelixa asked in shock. "It’s all Ysera’s fault and yours too."
Ysera gasped at that, a hand to her chest. "Me?"
"Don’t even pretend like you don’t like playing pranks on people. It’s a wonder how your son is so cute."
"He’s more fire than he is fox, and Ignivar is cute too," Ysera replied to Aurelixa.
Xaleron made an irritated sound at that as he began walking back to the castle.
"Don’t worry, you are cute too, brother," Ysera called out to him.
Xaleron immediately walked faster at that.