ENGAGEMENT.

Wait wait, slow down.

“Engagement?” Princess Sophia stops suddenly at those words, the final donut now in her hands.

“Yes.” The Empress confirms. “The Tiancin Prince, heir to the Dominion.”

Oh crap… you probably missed that little bit of information while you were fantasizing about egg custard tarts (which are their official name by the way, your brain just dug it up now).

Ok come on Sophia, you have the facts, bring it together now. You’re the fourth princess, your namesake was the Empress who ended the Silver and brought in the Ceramic Era damn it! Play this political game and answer the these questions:

* Why would your mother marry you to Tianci royalty?

* Do you want to even get married to whoever that Tiancin Prince she mentioned was?

* And seriously as a sucker for smut featuring sudden engagements, marriages, and falling in love over gradual times after an inciting incident you might think this a boon, but do you really want this? Remember you still have a chance to squirrel off into the night; you’ve heard that the Ehoʻikoʻu Archipelago takes in all sorts of runaway nobles these days.

Sophia’s brain processes each question.

Uh.

As long as he’s kinda hot(?)

As long as he’s hot, and nice I guess it's ok…

There’s a long sigh as her internal monologue requests one last thing:

Now whatever you do, don’t ask your mother why she’s marrying you off to him because she probably just told you. And also, by the name of the goddess don’t ask if he’s attractive, it makes you look like a simple woman.

Princess Sophia asks her mother the burning question after an awkward moment of contemplation. “Why him mother? Why are you marrying me to hi…”

Like a panicked servant running to inform a liege of his lack of pants, the thought process returns with the answer from Sophia's disrepaired mind palace. Like a paperboy with news of an ocean liner’s sinkage, of breaking news and critical, life altering information: STOP TALKING THE ANSWER IS ARCANITE! Your hand for the largest source of Arcanite on the Continent! Yes! That’s it! THINK SOPHIA THNK!

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

All for that black, lightweight, completely indestructible ore mined from the corpses of the ancient ones. Whose properties that no scientist, no intellectual across the three seas could ever imagine replicating. Even after four thousand years of known history, humanity could only now barely learn how to shape and apply its magical properties.

Energy storage, indestructible armor, arcane levitation; batteries that could power civilizations, armored tanks rolling across virgin fields, and aerostatic craft filling the skies.

“It’s to secure their Arcanite reserves.” The Fourth Princess plays the political game. “You need an alliance for their Arcanite. You want the holy city of Landfall’s reserves… and all you need is the hand of their sole prince and the… sacrifice… of just one daughter.”

The Empress of the Ensolian Imperium is surprised at Princess Sophia’s political extrapolation, that single emotion becoming rarer and rarer in her well tuned political apparatus. “If that is how you want to see it, then yes.”

The Empress’ own thought process cuts a set of words to her, not out of politics or power, but of personal peril as a concerned mother. And if she doesn’t get a decent man now she never will.

Silence, Princess Sophia considering the implications as she looks at the final donut in her hands.

This was her fate, in the end. And in a way she was preparing for it for her entire life. Most of the time those nobles who weren’t playing the games of power ended as mere pawns for their families, used to secure alliances and agreements. To be born noble, Sophia realized a year before her coming of age, is to practically be a slave. Maybe that’s why Naomi, Natan, and Beatrice were working the political game so hard; so that they in the end could somehow escape these awful silver chains. To perhaps live in a small flat in some distant peaceful nation, meet a lover within a small coffee house; marry and live without so much a thought to the greater needs of nations, powers, and economies.

Maybe in her own way Sophia Elise the Eighth also wanted that.

But her wants were irrelevant now, her laziness and utterly inhuman ability to inhale food now coming to head as a final consequence of inaction.

She hoped that he would be nice to her.

“As you will, Empress.”

Just one last thing needed to be clear before anything else.

Don’t ask that question. Sophia’s thought process begs like a beaten traitor facing a hanging noose. Please, please don’t ask the question. I beg of you, please by the name of the Goddess, the ancient ones, and any gods before them. Please do not go to the empress of the Ensolian Imperium, a nation now lauded by the new term “superpower,” and to her face ask this question. Don’t do it! DO NOT DO IT!

Sophia puts down the final donut, a finale as she tries not to act scared. “Mom… is he at least kinda hot?”