Mei Ruan April 18th, 20XX

"Pleasure to meet you, your highness. My name is Mei Ruan. I would assume you know why I'm here, but you've yet to speak a single word on the matter. What do you think about all this, your highness?"

I spoke as calmly as possible and tried to put him at ease, but he tensed up at the question, and his eyes roamed around the empty room. Before I could change the question, he suddenly beamed a bright smile at me and responded in a dismissive tone, as if the topic at hand had nothing to do with him.

"Does it really matter what I think about it?"

That bothered me a lot.

It shouldn't have since it sounded like he didn't plan on making things difficult for me, but I didn't like the idea of having such a one-sided union.

"Aren't you worried I'll mistreat you? Or worse?"

I threw out a harsher question to see how he would respond, but his detached attitude stayed the same.

"Will you?"

He suddenly challenged me and finally maintained eye contact with me for longer than three seconds. The feliora, a notoriously irritable and unsociable beast, purred in his arms and seized his attention again.

The prince had done nothing entirely out of the ordinary, but I didn't know how to interact with him.

He was younger than my younger sister but seemed miles more mature. Maybe that was the influence of having grown up in the human world. They had such short life spans that they matured faster.

I tried comparing him to Akseli, but I hadn't known the prince long enough to compare any more than their looks.

Starting from their appearances, they were like night and day. Akseli was a beautiful man. That much was undeniable, but his muted and subtle style fared poorly when compared with how bright and energetic the prince looked.

Akseli was sensitive to others and would carefully study a person before interacting with them. No matter what mood one was in, Akseli would find a way to match it and maneuver your emotions into a state he could handle.

The prince was different. He was observant, but not in the scheming way Akseli was. A case in point was what had happened earlier. I'd planned to use the Royal exemption to save Lillian's life, but he'd disarmed the situation long before I could act. I'd been grateful since I could keep both the exemption and Lillian's life, but I'd expected them to use this incident as a bargaining chip against me.

It was too early to say they wouldn't, but at least it didn't look like the prince was planning to.

Even now, as I'd maintained silence for a long time, he paid no attention to me and focused on playing with his new pet.

To say it nicely, he was confident that things would turn out well. To put it otherwise, he was apathetic.

It wasn't like he lacked the right to be as confident as he was. As the last active member of the royal family, anyone that dared harm him would see a death sentence as mercy.

Unlike Akseli, whose power heavily depended on his favour with others, The prince would always be the most powerful person in the room. Scheming would be pointless for someone of his level.

I suddenly remembered why I was here, and my heart raced.

Was I really here to marry someone like that?

"O-Of course I wouldn't."

"Then isn't everything fine?"

He responded quickly like I hadn't taken so long to answer his question.

I didn't like it.

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Why was he so calm while I had to walk on needles?

Even if he was a Royal, he needed my family and me as much, or even more than we needed them.

I took in another bout of pure magic and pushed out as much as I'd brought in from outside. He flinched as I did so, and a slightly displeased expression crossed his face, but he ignored me and kept his attention on that darn beast.

This was absolutely ridiculous.

What was it that he disliked so much?

The Ruan Clan was an attractive bait for the royal family; otherwise, they wouldn't have let us into the palace that had been closed for the past half-century.

Then was it me?

I wasn't bad-looking. In fact, I'd have to put myself in the camp of being good-looking between being beautiful or ugly. Then was it my strength?

But that couldn't be it either. Even if he hadn't heard about my career, the mere fact that I had maintained the position of General Ruan should have been enough.

The idea of being disliked by the prince made me uncomfortable, and then it made me angry.

Yet another ray of sunlight converged around the prince and surrounded him like a spotlight.

The ceiling was wide open, so it made little sense for all the light to converge into that one spot, but that it did.

At first, I stared at him to figure him out. What exactly did he want? And why was he acting like this?

But at some point, I stopped thinking about all of that, and I just stared at him because I wanted to.

He was so beautiful, painfully beautiful. From his perfect face to the gentle way he cared for the feliora. His clothes were loose, so I could barely make out his figure, but I knew it likely wouldn't lose out to his face.

And his wings.

They moved on their own as if the prince had yet to realize that he could control them when he wasn't flying. They would twitch, expand, and contract at will, and their mesmerizing golden and green patterns contributed to the hypnotic state of mind I found myself in.

I took in yet another round of the clean magic, and before I could reason it out with myself, I found myself drawing closer and closer to the prince.

At first, he ignored me as usual, but the closer I got, the tighter his grip dug into the beast's fur.

"Everything is fine? Then you approve of my proposal?"

The voice that came out of me wasn't one I recognized. It was deeper than my natural tone and heavier. I loaded it with an intent I ordinarily wouldn't dare carry toward the young prince, but I couldn't stop myself.

Or no, not that I couldn't, but I didn't want to.

After all, he was my fiancee. What better pretext could I possibly have?

"G-General?"

"Call me Mei."

There he went, trying to distance himself from me again. I hated it; I hated it so much that it surpassed rationality, but I was currently past that.

A small part of my mind screamed at me to stop as I drew mere feet from the throne, and the prince got up and dove behind his chair. He moved awkwardly, and his wings beat like he wasn't used to using them yet.

How terribly enchanting the sight was.

"Mei, what are you doing?"

He flew backwards and held the feliora to his chest like a piece of makeshift armour. The beast looked uncomfortable and halfheartedly tried to escape his grasp, but it quickly gave up and instead turned its aggression to me.

"What am I doing? I'm just trying to come closer to my fiancee, is that a crime?"

His large, emerald eyes nearly doubled in size at my answer and then shrank until they were almost closed. His nose scrunched up into a confused smile and his lips followed to complete the expression. Every single action he performed was so appealing.

"We haven't even signed anything yet. I can't decide on my own! Esmeralda should be here soon, so why don't we-"

He cut himself off as he felt his back hit the wall, and he desperately looked around for an escape route.

"Am I so scary, your highness?"

The prince blustered as if I wouldn't be able to notice the tremble in his voice or his wings that twitched like he was about to take flight at any moment.

"Who's scared of who?"

He entirely rested his weight on his legs, and his proximity to the wall rendered his wings useless. Was he so uncomfortable with me he could stay in such a taxing position?

I stopped a few centimetres from him and extended the stride of my wings to brush the wall space around where he stood. Now that I was this much closer, I could notice things I hadn't before.

He was slightly taller than I. It was only by a half centimetre and might have been because of the shoes he was wearing. But it gave me enough of a perspective to see his face in a flattering light.

My hands moved before my mind did, and my fingers traced the features on his face.

I hardly touched him, but his eyes widened so much that a single tear escaped the mass of lashes on his bottom eyelid and made a journey on the rest of his face.

The tear sailed past the first hurdle of his cheekbones and dove into the crevice of his nose before racing past his philtrum and settling between his full lips. Its trail glistened attractively on his face, and my fingers followed it.

"General."

His voice came out in a whisper; as if he feared startling me and spurring me into unwanted action.

I removed my finger from his lips and moved my entire palm to caress the side of his face. He slightly closed his eyes and sank into a moment of deliberation.

In a split second, he came to a decision, and he half opened his eyes and dangerously made eye contact with me. I felt a gentle pressure on my palm as he slightly pushed his face into it, and his chin lifted upwards ever so slightly.

He didn't say a word, but his intent was clear.

I'd finally gotten what I wanted and pushed my face forward as well, but that slight sense of reason I'd so ruthlessly ignored until now finally broke through the haze I was in, and I got a proper look at what I was doing. The enchanting halo around the prince sharply faded and reality hit me like a spear to the stomach.

What the hell was I doing?