Chapter 245: Of Stamps, Excuses, and a King Who Would Rather Picnic
Chapter 245: Of Stamps, Excuses, and a King Who Would Rather Picnic
Elyn’s POV
I gave Zorathys an unimpressed look.
He looked back at me with an innocent expression. As if he had never caused any trouble in his life.
"You really have no idea why they’re here," I said.
It wasn’t a question.
He shrugged. "I really don’t."
I stared at him for a moment.
"Zorathys," I said. "They just begged you for a stamp. On their knees, which mind you... they are still kneeling... in my office."
He turned to Ignivar and Naviel then, as though seeing them for the first time, which — given the way his shadows had sealed my office door the moment he heard their footsteps — he absolutely had not.
"Why didn’t you tell me about the stamp when I was in the office earlier?" he asked them, his tone carrying the mild irritation of someone who had been very inconvenienced by information they had deliberately avoided. "If you needed it then, you should have said so then. You didn’t have to come all the way here."
Ignivar’s jaw was doing something complicated.
Naviel had gone very still.
"And now," Zorathys continued, with the full sincerity of a man who believed every word he was saying, "I’m tired. Perhaps next time I’m in the office, I’ll give you the stamp. Timing is important after all."
He turned back to me.
"Now, since that’s been resolved—" he gestured between us, "—are you willing to come with me? We can have the picnic we discussed."
Lord help me with this fuming demon.
My eye twitched.
I turned to Ignivar and Naviel.
They were staring at Zorathys with their mouths open, disbelief written all over their faces.
Then, slowly, they turned to me.
"Your Highness," Naviel said, exercising tremendous restraint, "the moment we arrived at his office this morning to ask for the stamp—" he paused, choosing his next words carefully, "—His Majesty left."
"Immediately," Ignivar added. "We were shocked to even see him in the office and thought things were going to be easy since it seemed he was willing to work, but that wasn’t the case. He just yawned, rolled his eyes, called us annoying demons, and disappeared."
Zorathys’s shadows reacted before he did.
They recoiled in shock, like they had just heard something scandalous.
One of them even shifted in a way that looked suspiciously like a hand to the chest.
I rolled my eyes because Zorathys’s shadows were being unnecessarily dramatic.
Zorathys turned back to Naviel and Ignivar slowly.
His gaze settled on them, lazy and calm and entirely too composed for someone who had just been called out.
"It seems," he said, drawing the words out lazily, "that you do not appreciate the fact that you still have your tongues."
Naviel froze.
Ignivar went completely still.
"Just because you can speak to the Queen," Zorathys continued mildly, "does not mean you can say anything you want."
He looked up.
The temperature in the office dropped by approximately three degrees.
I sighed.
"Stop threatening them."
Zorathys looked at me.
"It is not a threat," he said. "I am merely stating a fact."
Yeah right, that was a threat.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
He looked back at me with complete composure.
I exhaled through my nose and turned to Ignivar and Naviel, who had both straightened and were pretending like they had not said anything at all.
"What do you need the stamp for?" I asked them.
"Nothing, Your Highness," Ignivar said to me. "It was a slip of the tongue. Naviel and I obviously need to get our heads checked."
Naviel nodded. "And our tongues too... just in case."
I see Zorathys’s threat had affected them.
"I’m going to ask this once more, and if you don’t answer me, then losing your tongues will be the last thing you both would be concerned about."
They swallowed audibly and then turned to each other before turning back to me.
"So the thing is..." Ignivar said, his gaze on Zorathys, who ignored him. "Well, um..."
"Are you going to talk, Ignivar? Or do you perhaps not value your life, especially after you interrupted my fine morning?"
They hadn’t interrupted the morning, Zorathys had, but I wasn’t focused on the lazy husband—who would be my husband-to-be. I was focused on Ignivar and Naviel.
"Another mine has been found," he said suddenly. "Two, actually. One in the Hellfire Territory and one in the Thalassar Territory. We need His Majesty’s stamp to approve work to begin."
I blinked.
"Another mine," I said slowly.
"Yes, Your Highness."
I thought about the petitions I had gone through weeks ago. The ones piled up from five hundred years back. The ones with no greeting, no explanation, just a single line of text and sometimes not even a name. The ones about mines that had never been approved because Zorathys had never stamped them.
I turned to Zorathys, who was trying and failing to stop a yawn from slipping through.
"It’s just a stamp," I said.
He blinked. Then tilted his head slightly.
"A stamp," he repeated, "that is very far away from me."
"The stamp is in your office," I said. "Which is in this palace. Which you are currently standing in."
"And I am tired," he replied. "The distance between me and the stamp is not only a physical one. It is also an emotional one."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"Zorathys."
"Firefly."
"You cannot be serious."
He said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I turned back to Ignivar and Naviel.
"Give me the documents," I said.
They both blinked.
"Your Highness?" Naviel said.
"The documents for the mines," I said. "Give them to me."
They exchanged another look, then Ignivar reached into his coat and produced a folded set of parchments. He held them out to me, and I took them, straightening them against my palm.
I turned back to Zorathys, who was watching me curiously.
"I will make sure," I told him, meeting his ruby eyes with the full force of someone who had dealt with five hundred years of accumulated petition scrolls and was not in the mood, "that you stamp these documents."