Butterfly Reign

12. Each time I share, you just forget that i'm stuck in this forever and a day

Once he splashes his face with cold water and finds some fresh clothes to put on – a lilac-colored shirt, and a jacket of a darker color to match – he joins the woman, and she leads him all the way to the Western wing. There are still more places in the palace that Ranboo hasn’t explored yet; with narrow corridors and empty halls changing each other more rapidly than he can grasp them, he wouldn’t be able to find these huge birch doors even after a week's worth of exploration.

Ranboo reaches to twist the gold-gilded handle but the lady gives him an odd look, and he halts, retracting his hand. Right. Another of the weird palace rules that he can never get used to. An uncomfortable feeling twists his stomach as the lady-in-waiting peeks into the room and announces his presence, “Your guest has arrived, Your Majesty.”

“Let him in.”

Ranboo can never understand the necessity of having this many dining rooms in the palace. None of the walls or the carpets are ever the same yet there’s a clear pattern with the depictions of wings and birds wherever his eyes fall. The stained-glass puzzle of the huge windows breaks sunlight into shades of pink; amidst of it, Niki, with her hands resting on the skirt of her pastel-green dress, looks like a tenderly blooming rose.

The lady-in-waiting sits down in a pointed curtsy. Now that he is reminded of formalities, Ranboo bows. It’s too fast and clumsy and he almost bangs his head on the table that turned out to be closer to the entrance that he anticipated – but to his luck, Niki saves him the embarrassment and just smiles.

“Take a seat,” she gestures at the empty chair to the opposite of her, and then turns to her lady-in-waiting. “Now, we wish to have some privacy.”

Unlike Niki, who doesn’t even look to make sure that the woman complies and pours water into tall glasses, Ranboo watches her leave with his head fully turned. A prideful tilt to her chin, yet utter attention and obedience to Niki’s every word – she disappears with a step and a soft click of the closing doors.

From what Ranboo understood so far, ladies-in-waiting are a tight-knit circle of female servants of a queen. A few times he had seen Niki before the start of the celebrations, she was surrounded by ladies in colorful dresses, chatting with them idly; their chuckles and playful exclamations sounded like silver bells ringing on the wind, bringing an absent smile to Ranboo’s lips.

He likes the institution of ladies-in-waiting way more than what he had seen so far in the court of Antarctic Princes: a grim group of guards that looked like they are wardening Wilbur rather protecting him, and a whole army of Theseus’ servants that were almost as emotionless and prideful as him.

Minutes go by in comfortable silence and click of silverware, sometimes interrupted by an off-hand question by Niki: about how he is enjoying his stay at the palace, has he visited the capital and whether he made any friends yet. There is a miniscule furrow of her brows when he mentions Tubbo, but it’s gone faster than he can raise his eyes, so Ranboo writes it off as a flick of his own imagination.

“What do you think of Prince Wilbur?” she asks suddenly.

Ranboo flinches. It’s not an odd question, not really, but the events of the last night come back to him at once. After Wilbur left, Tubbo acted strangely for a while: put his ear against the door and gestured for him to stay quiet. And after a long minute of painstaking confusion, he whipped around to face Ranboo.

“What’s happening?” Ranboo then asked.

“Ranboo, please reconsider your plans,” Tubbo said, and the steel seriousness in his tone made shivers run down Ranboo’s spine. “It's not just rude to lie to royalty. It's a punishable crime."