Mist clung to the plants of my palace courtyard, hanging low and fracturing what little sunlight peeked through the overcast clouds. Tiny specks of yellow, green, red, and blue danced across my skin, clothes, and surroundings. Frost had turned the pathway stones and grass a dusted white. The thin layers of ice melted under my bare feet as I wandered the courtyard, leaving a trail of beastfolk prints behind. Beast folk tracks were bipedal and humanoid, but my clawed toenails scraped the ground while my padded toes and soles left heart-shaped dots in my otherwise light footprints.

I paused and turned to study the trail in the frost, and noticed someone watching me from a palace window.

"It's cold in the mornings, Fairan. You should close the shutters at night," I advised, wandering my way to the window. I lowered my hands to my sides, allowing my half-open night robe to brush against the ground and scrape up the tracks. I wore linen pants, so I wasn't terribly cold or unseemingly nude without fastening my robes. Fairan's eyes lowered to my exposed chest before darting away, cheeks and ear tips all aglow with a strawberry red blush. Seeing the color gave me a craving for jam, and my stomach growled in protest for not being tended to. "Have you eaten yet?"

"No... I haven't. And by the sounds of it, neither have you."

"Then would you like to have breakfast together?"

"That depends. Are you going to change into more modest clothing?"

I grinned and leaned my arms on the redwood window sill, my tail swishing low beneath my outer robe.

"We're to be married, your highness, and you expect modesty of me? I'll have you know that growing up, I'd run around all sorts of places with nary more than a ragged blanket to cover my back. Alas, you'll find me most immodest."

"A blanket?" Fairan repeated in an incredulous tone, his face all scrunched up in confusion. I found it most adorable.

"I'm afraid that I wandered almost completely naked as a cub. Such is the life of an orphan beastfolk."

"Do you not have institutions to care for orphans?"

"Not institutions per say." I leaned my head down on my arms, studying his fingertips. They were manicured and clipped down to rounded squares, which was a strange sight to see in my culture of sharpened claws. "Most tribes have a tradition of looking after orphaned children together, but that doesn't always happen. While it is flawed, I liked the human idea of orphanages, so I've been working to establish one of late."

"That's an admirable goal, Your Majesty." His voice was quiet and demure. I frowned, finding his submissive voice distasteful. There was a time and a place to be a quivering partner, and we weren't in bed together at the moment.

"I take actions for the betterment of my nation, not because it is moral, admirable, or just."

"That doesn't mean that it isn't a kind or respectable thing to do, Your Majesty."

"Simply call me Chesire," I ordered as I straightened my back and sighed. "I prefer hearing the name I thought up for myself than an empty title others gave me."

"If that is what you wish, Your Maj—" I pressed a pointer finger to his lips and silently stared at him. "—Lady Chesire."

"Pff. Lady." I repeated, incredulous, and removed my finger from his soft lips. "Would a proper noble lady of the Nyxian Kingdom walk around her palace with her breasts on display?"

"You—ahem..." Fairan cleared his throat and avoided gazing upon my visage. "There's just a little... your robes cover your nipples, at least."

"Not when the wind blows," I teased, my eyebrows waggling. The eldest prince stuttered and hurriedly retreated into his rooms, shutting the window pane and knocking my arms off. I laughed merrily the whole way to my room, and prepared for the day just as the sun finished rising over the horizon.

Once I was dressed in the vermillion royal robes, I made my way to Fairan's room for breakfast. Normally I would chase off the poison tester one way or another, usually with the metaphorical stick of self-poisoning threats. But with the incursion of a Nyxian prince and under Wei's own threats, it was admittedly wiser to sacrifice the warmth of the meal for the foreseeable future. Loath was I to soil fresh food by letting it cool, however.

I opened the door to Fairan's room without knocking and was mildly disappointed to find him already dressed. The servants shuffled back, bowed and hands held together. They'd put him in asture robes made of royal blue and forest green silks, a water motif embroidered from the hems upward in a white thread.

"It's good that I've received so many gifts meant for concubines," I mused as I approached Fairan, who silently turned to face me. His expression was completely neutral, a far cry from the flustered mess earlier that morning. "Just think, I'd have to give you servants clothes to wear, or borrow from Osil's stock of guard uniforms if not for the self-serving generosity of my court members."

"The slit in the back is embarrassing," Fairan admitted as his hands wandered to cover the hole in the robes to allow for tails. "Why wouldn't I borrow clothes from someone closer to my rank?"

"Can you imagine trying to explain to men vying for their sons to be in your position, how you've taken a human consort first just because he asked nicely? Then to request that they relinquish their wardrobe to that same human? The scandal, the insult, the paperwork I'd have to fill out. I'd rather put off handling all the complaints I'll receive for as long as possible."

"Will you be forced—no, will you have to take on more consorts after this, Your Majesty?"

"Chesire," I reminded him. "I'm sure they'll try to force me to. But at the moment I have the feeling that you'll be enough of a handful to deal with."

"What's that supposed to mean?" A scowl wrinkled up that pretty face of his, and I found myself chuckling. He looked like a gorilla when he was so displeased, his eyebrows furrowed deep over his eyes, lower lip jutted out in a slight pout.

"It's just a hunch, don't get so worked up over it," I cooed and took hold of his wrist. "Let's eat breakfast. It should be prepared in the lounge area by now. I need to fatten you up before we get married. I'm worried that I'll break you if I take such a skinny human to bed."

"You're a full head or two shorter than me, how would I be the one broken?" I sighed and shook my head as I gently tugged him along to the adjacent sitting room. Humans and their hubris.

"You should sit in on my swordplay training with one of my generals," I redirected the conversation.

My attention was quickly grabbed by the scent of pork strips sauteed with sweet brown sauce and egg noodles, with bamboo shoots and chopped leeks sprinkled in. There it sat in neat little piles on white and blue porcelain plates. Hills of white rice had been scooped into matching bowls, lightly salted and giving a fresh, earthen scent to the billowing steam rising off of the grains. White miso soup was placed on the other corner of the placemat, soft squares of cloud-like tofu and seaweed floating in the broth. The spike of a sweet and tangy jug of local moonshine called Tigress's Caress mixed in with the steam of food, creating a most wonderful bouquet.

Off to the side at his own small square table was my arch nemesis, the poison taster.

"Hm?" I paused and took a closer look at the person sitting at the table where good food went to cool off and die. Wasn't the tester a girl, and not a man? I tried my best to recall, but her face and appearance were a blur to me. I cycled through so many, and none of them had even died from poison. The position was a two month long interment for criminals, so by design they weren't meant to stay long, but most tried to run away before their time was served. Perhaps Wei was right and I should stop terrorizing the servants assigned to the position. I wasn't truly more of a terror to those girls than the threat of death or impairment, was I?

"Where did that other one go running off to?" I asked the man sitting across the room.

He had black hair that was tied back low to his nape in a small bushy chipmunk's tail. His skin had the dark ruddiness of a commoner that spent all day under the frigid sun of northern Kavash and suffered the sting of the freezing wind. His eyes were sunken in corn husks, light green and lifeless. He had the musk and crest running down the sides of his neck that marked him as one of the lizard clan, and a fat, dark green scaled tail curled at his legs with yellowed spines running along the back.

"She resigned, Your Majesty," the manservant responded with a deep bow over his table. I hummed and cocked my head to one side. My nose twitched as I took a sniff of the air. He might've thoroughly washed it off, but I could still smell the metallic tang of the blood on his hands, and the freshly sharpened dagger hidden on his person.

"Is that so?" I replied with a smile. I sat down on the raised platform where the table of food was laid out for my consort and I. "A shame, I quite liked her... she was a sweet girl."

I held a hand out to stop the server from portioning small samples of the dishes. A ceramic vial, fired with a matte green glaze, sat within reach at the corner of the table farthest from where Fairan was silently seated at my side. I plucked it up and pulled out the cork stopper. The server waited for me to serve a portion of rice and pour a few drops from the vial over the grains before mixing it up. I could smell the sweat start to ooze from her pores. Wei really should drill the servants more for such an occasion.

The man with sunken in eyes watched me. Despite his neutral expression, his heartbeat quickened, and he began to perspire as well. I handed the server the little sample of rice, and observed with my chin in my palm as she brought it to the poison taster. The plate clattered when the maid's trembling hand placed it on the table.

The lizardfolk's eyes sparked for the first time, and he bristled. I maintained an easy-going smile and gestured to my food.

"Hurry up. I'm hungry."

"Apologies... Your Majesty." The tester picked up the dish and his chopsticks, yet still he hesitated. His eyes darted up to me, locking gazes for a brief moment, then down at the rice on his plate. The maid steadied herself and brought him samples of the other dishes. She avoided eye contact with everyone in the room, but she could no doubt sense the lizardfolk's gaze boring holes into her, searching the weak link's nervous expression. Glancing to Fairan, I found him sitting still and also staring at the tester with blank blue eyes.

The lizard set down the rice and tasted the other dishes first. Noodles and pork, miso soup, and the bottle of Tigress's Caress were all sampled from and declared safe. Yet still the rice remained untouched. I couldn't eat without all the food having been sampled from, but for once I remained patient. It was his first day on the job, afterall.

"What's your name?" My question broke the heavy silence in the room like a cleaver. 

"Huyi, Your Majesty," the poison tester answered with another bow of his head.

"Where are you from? The last girl was a petty thief from a southern feline village." I broke the rules a little and poured both Fairan and myself a cup of alcohol.

"I come from Serpent's Crest," Huyi answered, still refusing to eat the rice.

Serpent's Crest was one of the few cities in the Kavashian Empire, built on either side of the Serpent's Tail river that ran from a lake, through the Adellias Kingdom, and out to sea. As such, it was located near the border between the two nations, and was one of the only places where humans and beastfolk mingled with some semblance of harmony.

"What did you do to get sent all the way here, to the position you're in now?" I sipped on my cup of Tigress's Caress and eyed the chopsticks that were placed on Huyi's plate. Beside me, Fairan sampled from his own cup, my ears picking up on how his heartbeat quickened. The outer end of my eyebrow raised, but I kept my focus on the poison tester.

"I killed a man, Your Majesty." A secretive grin curled Huyi's lips up, deriving satisfaction in some irony he believed me not privy to.

"Perhaps someday you'll pay for it with your life. Now finish your job." My voice was as cold and hard as the steel blade I unclasped from under my table. My so-called poison tester glanced up at me, once again daring to meet my gaze directly. My heart raced in excitement, my lips pulling up into a wide grin. Finally, a bit of playtime.

In an instant, he pulled a dagger from his sleeve, launched himself over his table, and towards me. In one swift arc I drew my sword out from under its hiding place. I hopped up to my feet, squatted down with my knees bent, and speared through my assailant's neck. His blood splattered on my face and he gave a gurgling gasp. I pushed him back and let his squelching flesh slide off my blade. I wiped sanguine fluid off on my sleeve as his body fell onto the floor before I sat back down. Fairan stared down at the would-be-assassin with horror, his skin pale and sweating, his heart pounding like a warning drum.

"Let's hope the rice isn't poisoned, then," I muttered. The fun was gone, and my smile was replaced with a frown.