What does make a great prince? Compassion? Intelligence? Leadership? Well, prince Louis neither lacked, nor excelled in these regards. His hatred for me and Hannah largely stemmed from our apparent heritage, but otherwise, he seemed incredibly mediocre.

Well, he was certainly spoiled, so spoiled in fact that he couldn’t bear how Mr. Schlaumeier gave us both the same test. I didn´t know if it was intentional to pit us two against each other, but it certainly fuelled the prince´s desire to excel. Seriously though, the questions were so simple I didn´t even know how I intentionally could make errors.

And so I cheated, evaluated the prince´s answers and decided to make roughly the same mistakes. Luckily, the tutor didn´t realize my cheating and rather graded the tests mechanically. I scored a bit lower than the prince, despite being able to get a perfect score easily.

The prince, naturally thrilled by being better than me, already stood up as our lesson was supposed to end at that time. I intended to follow suit, but the tutor shot me a glance that made it obvious he wanted to talk to me.

And so, I sat down again, waiting for the door behind me to shut close.

“Your reputation in noble circles is horrible.” He informed me, even though this wasn´t exactly news to me.

“Is that so? I am very pleased to know that I still have a few years until I need to interact with them.” Most noble started to interact with other nobles after their debut, which was at their thirteenth birthday which was also the time they were considered adults. Thus, not even the princes face was wildly known outside the castle. All in all, this was quite the perfect system for me because it meant I would never need to go an meet other nobles if Mary failed to find a good reason why I didn´t age.

“Except you already are doing that indirectly. The three other dukes publicly condemned the actions of your mother yesterday. Everything you do falls back onto the head of your family, which is Mary White as you know.” I didn´t know that. Maybe Mary chose to deal with this herself, but even then, I needed to know such things. I already made the mistake of not expecting such heavy opposition from other nobles this fast.

“… what actions?” I asked swiftly.

“The pretext is that she executed a noble, despite his surrender and betrayal of his former allies. This behaviour is unheard of, but the other three dukes probably care more about your actions. You took an elf in, which is seen as a betrayal to the crown and humankind.” I clicked my tongue in annoyance as I realized that I may have overburdened myself slightly over the last few days. Dealing with this issue if Mary couldn´t do it herself would be a hassle.

“The king never informed me he was displeased by my decision.” I commented. It was a fact that directly contradicted his earlier words, even though I didn´t catch him lying.

“Because it is viewed as beneath him to deal with something like this.” He said as if it was obvious.

“Hmm … I see. Thank you for your consideration.” I said and stood up. I didn´t know why he brought that topic up in the first place, but this time, it strangely wasn´t out of self-interest.

“Lucy?” He said, which made me turn my head around.

“Yes?” I asked and presented him my sweetest smile as he showed me my test.

“You are smarter than that.” So he did catch me cheating.

“Possibly.” I grinned happily and walked towards the door. This time, he didn´t interrupt me and let me leave without issues. Outside, quite the unusual duo awaited me. The prince, crossing his arms in front of his chest, clearly angry about the situation, and Hannah who probably wanted to take a nap sooner than later.

“Are you ready?” The prince said as soon as I gently closed the door behind me.

“Yes. I am so exited for a knitting contest!” I clapped my hands, happy to finally do a good challenge with him where I did have a chance of winning.

“It´s not your turn though?” He said with a grin on his face.

“Excuse me? Last time, you chose.” I answered, clearly remembering shooting a few arrows on a stationary target.

“Right. But we agreed to switch every day, meaning I get to choose now because you weren’t here yesterday. So it is two to zero for me.” Bitterly, I looked towards Hannah who only yawned in return. “And because the weekend starts tomorrow, I want to choose a rather lengthy one … how about whoever crafts the better item wins?”

“Alrighty …” Even before I finished speaking, the prince already walked away, apparently not very keen to interact with us more than necessary. The prince was … truly a prick. But I couldn’t blame it. He grew up in an environment that could only produce heirs full of themselves. As such, I simply shrugged and turned to Hannah who exhaled loudly. She was truly a bit too groggy for going shopping with me and showing everyone how good ‘humans’ and elves could live together. Thus, I only patted her shoulder and asked the next butler to bring us back to our carriage.

“Say, if you were in charge, what would you want to change about this country?” I asked Hannah once we had the relative privacy of our carriage. I was truly a bit interested to hear about her vision of the future, even though it wouldn’t matter too much for me. But knowing what my subordinates wanted was also necessary for me.

“I would end racism. If humans and elves could come together, we would achieve so much more. What about you?” She said something truly interesting there. She claimed to be against all prejudices and wanted to improve the relations between the two main races on this planet, but completely left out how she failed to stick to her own words. She got distant as soon as she realized what I was and although it proved to be correct, it was still a prejudice.

“I want to burn this shithole to the ground.” I answered drily and looked out of the window, just as we were passing the royal wall.

“You … Mary told me something different.” Well, that much was obvious, mostly because I would never do such a thing.

“How should I put it ... wanting to do something and actually doing it are two different things. If I erase everything from the face of Solaris, there would be nothing left to have fun with, no?” I smiled brightly towards her, trying to give her a completely innocent expression, completely contrary to my words.

“…” She just stared at me in utter disbelief. In all honesty, I only wanted to test how far she would go in keeping her promise to do whatever I wanted, but her reaction sadly didn´t provide me with anything to work with. Most importantly, because she sadly saw behind me lie, for whatever reason. There were only two reasons, or maybe three reasons, for me keep this planet afloat: Mary, Luna and to a lesser extend Sofie, the girl who was blessed by the goddess of life.

As soon as the carriage came to a halt, I jumped out of it, pulling a slightly stupefied Hannah behind me. I immediately headed towards her room, picked up the two daggers and strolled outside again with her in tow.

“Soo …” I said, eyeing Hannah intensely. I threw her the wooden dagger she finished during the morning. It wasn’t anything special and resembled a stick more than anything else, but it was enough for her as it had the same length and width as her magical dagger. “… shall we start?”

“I thought we were training at night?” Which was my intention as well, at least for the most part.

“No, I need you for something different then.” I answered and sat down on the grass. “Stab an imaginary person in front of you.”

Just like last time, she used the dagger like a sword and held it up high. Shortly afterwards, she let it race downwards in an arc, clearly showing she had no idea on how to use a dagger.

“Wrong.” I said drily and started fiddling with a few smaller flowers that grew on the patch of grass.

“Can you tell me what I am doing wrong?” And there I was, hoping she would figure it out on her own eventually.

“You usually don’t slash with a dagger. Turn the handle around.”

Finally, she held the dagger so that it pointed downwards and proceeded to stab her imaginary opponent. Her stance was still horrible, but I could work with that.

“Wrong. If you stab forwards, your right foot should be in front. Only if you attack from the left are you ever allowed to place your left foot in front of the other.” I commented in regard to her footwork.

After half an hour, she managed to perform a simple stab downwards somewhat alright. Satisfied, I stood up and cleaned my hands from all the dirt with the help of my dress. Well, I could ask her to clean it afterwards. After all, she was still my maid and I intended to keep her as such for the most part.

“Stab me.” I said, completely bored out of my mind.

“Excuse me?”

“Stab. Me. You are mistaken if you think I am entirely useless during the day.” I growled quietly so that nobody could hear us.

Once again, she lifted her dagger up high, ready to strike down at me whenever I gave her a sign. A sign that would never come as I just stared upwards into her eyes, waiting for her to do anything. After ten odd seconds, she finally let the wooden dagger race downwards. Sluggishly, I grabbed her approaching arm with both of my hands and stepped forwards, prompting her to lose her balance and stumble backwards, despite my meagre strength. In one go, I stepped closer to her right side while she still struggled and placed my left foot behind her right, still pushing against her with everything I got.

She fell backwards for a bit, only to be held up by my hand as I grabbed her uniform for several seconds. I successfully defeated her, that much was for sure, but as I didn´t want to demotivate her too much, I seriously wanted to help her for once. The result was, sadly, that I couldn’t balance her weight at all and fell forwards with her, too stupefied by the development to react fast enough.

Unlike her though, I didn´t fall onto my back, but rather onto my two hands and cushioned the impact rather elegantly. Coughing and trying to forget what happened, I already stood up while she only groaned, holding the back of her head.

Luckily, we trained on a deserted patch of grass, making it very unlikely for her to hurt herself if she fell down.

“Second lesson: There is no invincible technique.” I said and went over my dress with my hands in an attempt to clean it from all the dirt.

“I see. So even the mighty Lucy falls down sometime.” She said strangely happy. I was a bit angry because of her comment, but quickly realized that it was completely unnecessary. After all, she was still sitting in the dirt.