Black. It is the best colour in the world. Okay, before you hate me, it´s not a colour. But everyone looks good in black, from men who wore suits to a woman in fine, elegant dresses. And I was finally allowed to wear black. The last few days felt incredibly refreshing without these horrible dresses I had to wear. The three mourning dresses Mary prepared for me were not without any issues either. The veil in front of my face certainly got on my nerves by quite a bit and it was a tad too wide around the shoulders.

These three last days were some of the more relaxed days I ever experienced. Mary and I played board games during the day, she slept during the night while I read a book. My food was also taken care of as Mary somehow managed to smuggle blood into the mansion. She really had a great future as a smuggler in front of her, if she only wanted to.

The effects were quite obvious. For once, the newspapers obviously noted the death of my inexistent father, but as he wasn’t a noble, the side note didn’t catch the eyes of too many. The atmosphere in the mansion was also a lot more reserved than previously. The maids didn’t pester me all day, which was incredibly refreshing. I was just gleefully imagining the death of my inexistent grandma as the door to our room opened.

“Your highness, milady, these are the letters you requested.” One maid said and put the letters on a nearby table. She excused herself quickly afterwards and gently closed the door behind her. A few seconds afterwards, I opened a red letter and studied the contents intensely. Afterwards, I threw the whole thing into the fireplace and turned towards Mary happily.

“Mum, I want a funeral for dad.” I said.

“Eh?” Mary asked slightly perplexed.

“I want to take farewell from him publicly.” I stated. This would be my first chance to appear in the place of the wider public and a chance to meet an elf.

“… fine.” She probably saw it as a publicity stunt which it honestly was.

“Tomorrow at eleven? I think a simple symbol for his death should be enough.” I said, already imagining a few stacked stones or a simple cross.

“Is there anything you need to tell me?” She asked and squinted her eyes.

“No, not really?” I didn’t even know where to start. Thus, I stayed silent.

“Okay. Hey, you don’t have anything to do with this?” She asked and pointed at a rather interesting article about the disappearance of a certain baron. I shrugged, smiled innocently and threw myself on the bed right next to her. She sighed loudly, realizing that I might be the reason for his supposed death. At least, she didn’t push further into my endeavours during the night. We both didn’t want her to.

Shortly afterwards, we planned the funeral, send out a few invitations and bought a small patch of land on the cemetery outside the city. Usually, this process would take much longer, but the power of a ducal house made things possible that otherwise weren’t. It only took a few letters to prepare everything as we intended to keep it rather private on the surface. The public just needed to know I was grieving, nothing more, nothing less. After an hour of work, we were already playing another game in which I absolutely crushed her.

“You are cheating.” She claimed out of desperation.

“It´s not cheating if you aren’t caught.” I stuck my tongue out and presented here the palm of my hand. Reluctantly, she handed me the ten gold coins she owed me for visiting my tavern at the Park Lane.

“Who comes up with these kinds of games anyway?” She was a bit bummed out from constantly losing against me, which was fair, I guess. But I couldn’t let her win, no matter what. I didn’t like losing after all.

“Someone who wants to explain the unfairness of capitalism to their kids?” I said.

“What´s capitalism?” She questioned.

“Okay … so, currently, you own all the land of your duchy, even though you give some of it to barons and stuff and technically the king owns it but anyway, that’s feudalism. And then imagine you could sell your land to a peasant for example. He would be free to do whatever he wanted with it, grow the crops he wanted and so on. He would own the land and you couldn’t take it away from him anymore. That’s basically capitalism regarding land ownership.” I explained.

“That’s quite the concept … what do you prefer?” She asked, still deep in thought about what I said.

“Anarchy.” I said and threw the two dice in the air. I grinned happily as my dog landed on my street and I didn’t have to pay anything.

“Why am I not surprised?” She asked, exhaling loudly as she was closer than ever to lose.

“How should I know? It´s your turn.” I said and watched with glee how Mary cast the dice once more.

“How do you do that? How are you having so much luck while I am so bad?” She asked, slightly frustrated about losing once more.

“Do you know Markov chains?” I replied and smirked happily.

“No?” Once again, it proved important that I had learned maths with Aska, at least for beating Mary at Monopoly.

“Too bad.” I said and packed the game away as she had no chance at winning anymore and simply gave up. “So, mum, how are things going on your side?”

“And you are asking that now because?” I looked away, realizing that I didn’t ask the three days prior we spent holed up in this room.

“Uhm … I plan to do a bit of public work for you in the future. You know, I still haven’t given up on financing a few orphanages and I have a brilliant idea of how to do that. I just need to laundry a bit of money, but I already do have a great idea: A restaurant chain.”

“…” She looked at me as if I was about to take some drugs.

“Don’t look at me like that! For real though, it is entirely legal, we can laundry money like crazy by simply paying the foodstuff we need with this money and we can call ourselves the collector of great dishes from all over the world! I mean, the food will still taste shit for me, but at least the chefs can teach me a few new dishes.”

“And the money you want to laundry? From what illegal activity does it come from?” I thought about my answer, balanced lying against telling her the truth and decided to stay in a grey area.

“Sex work.” I answered drily.

“For fucks sake!” She exclaimed loudly.

“Exactly!” I said, happy that she got it.

“That´s not what I meant!?” She said, frowning slightly.

“Are you in or not?” I asked.

“The orphanages will run under my name?” She asked.

“Yes.” I said.

“You promise you won´t incite any orphan to do something illegal?”

“Yes. Yes.” I answered once more.

“You won´t use these orphanages for any bad thing?” She was still a bit suspicious about my plan, but slowly started to actually support it.

“Aye.” I saluted, still on the bed.

“Could it be you actually want to help a few children? To find redemption what you have done?”

I was so short of answering ‘yes’. She accurately guessed one of my intentions behind funding a few orphanages, a rather dangerous one at that.

“No.” I said, a rather painful lie as she held her hopes high. But I couldn’t give Aska any proof I didn’t shut my emotions away completely as Luna´s life was probably still in his hands or she was just reborn somewhere and quite susceptible for an unholy dagger into her chest.

Mary closed her eyes, thought about my proposal and finally nodded.

“Alright, I open up a restaurant chain with your money.” I nodded happily, as I finally found a way to invest the money Tom was going to steal properly. She never asked if this money we would use to set up everything came from criminal activities after all.