The door clicked shut as I closed it behind Seranedra after seeing her out, agreeing to meet again soon to discuss things further. I turned, walked back to the couch, and sat down heavy onto the cushion.

I looked down at my body, which had entirely betrayed me.

“Is this going to be a problem?” I asked myself.

Then I tilted to the side and collapsed into the couch, curling up on myself.

I had died in my thirties in my first life, which had given me plenty of time to experience these emotions before. While I had never made it work in my first life, I was no stranger to this sensation.

Force it down, I thought to myself. Take a breath and get it together. You have too much to do.

It was not like other women had not had an effect on me as well, in this life. I had practically had to run full speed away from Leiren in the north when I was coming of age in this body. It had taken a force of will to avoid complications in Freehold with Rena, as well. Of course, in both those cases, I was dealing as much with the disconnect between my mental age, my physical body, and what this world considered adulthood.

That was not the case with Lamora, at least. Lamora! I was supposed to see her again when I headed back east, which no longer seemed like it would ever happen.

I should write her a letter.

Making my way off the couch, I settled at my desk and shuffled things around, looking for a blank parchment. Lamora and I had developed a connection in Checkpoint the year before, which could maybe have blossomed into a full relationship, given time. I knew I liked her already, and I knew she liked me.

Yeah, but it’s not quite the same as love at first sight.

My hands froze at the thought, and I groaned, dropping my head onto the desk. “You aren’t allowed to think that,” I muttered aloud. “That’s absurd. Don’t be an idiot.”

I have to think about this logically. Admittedly, Seranedra was a very beautiful woman. She was a bit older than me, biologically, probably in her late twenties. For all the ways I disagreed with Rugnor, and those were numerous, it seemed pretty obvious that we had similar tastes. Beauty was subjective, therefore it would be wrong to say that Seranedra was the most beautiful woman in the Kingdom. So much of what people found beautiful was social and cultural, and it changed with the times. There were objective markers, like facial symmetry, and the priestess certainly had those, but her specific features were simply meeting a set of my own internalized ideals. Those were further complicated by aspects that stretched across two lives.

She had lustrous blonde hair, like spun gold. Lots of people in the Kingdom are blond, though. She’s hardly the first blond I’ve met. It was rarer in my old world, hence the frequency of dye jobs. It’s a cultural attraction from my last life.

Her emerald green eyes still stood out in my mind, the way they made me feel like a beckoning home. Also not rare here, even if it was on Earth. Sharma has green eyes. It’s just a comforting familiarity. Oedipal, even.

Her timidity had waned as we spoke, but her gentle soft-spokenness stayed with me and her timid voice was still loud in my ears. Classic male protection instincts. I have a savior complex. I was already aware of that.

She had a full-figured body which was unquestionably attractive to me. As if that’s a surprise. Earth’s history was full of that, just look at Monroe. People are lean in this world because of food scarcity and lack of sugar, and it’s just rare to see someone so… well-proportioned.

Her kindness and desire to help improve the Kingdom had pleased and surprised me. She had a warmth within her, a big heart, and I felt it through her healing. …Hard to come up with a simple, shallow dismissal for that. But who wouldn’t like a kind, caring, sweet woman?

It all added up to my response, which was, once examined, not unreasonable, if poorly timed. After all, I had just offered Seranedra the opportunity to get out of the palace, freed from an engagement from the former king, and she had instead decided to stay and work with me at reforming the Church. It was not even clear to me how she felt about that. Perhaps she had wanted to marry him and resented me. In any case, I could understand why I would have responded so viscerally, and why my mind had leapt to ridiculous conclusions.

Love at first sight, I thought with a snort. That doesn’t happen. Love is built up towards, over time, not something you immediately fall into.

…Right?

* * *

I ate a few more skillfruits and put a few more SP into my taming skill before I sent off the small, newly tamed flying beast I had seen in the capital towards Freehold. I planned on scrying its location every day until it either reached its destination or fell off my familiars list.

Knowing my limits was important, and I had progressed quite far in my taming, so this was an overdue experiment. Unfortunately, I did not have any secure locations to drop my bond with my other tamed beasts, like I would have back on the farm, so I could not test the distance limits entirely without some contamination in the experiment.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The ability to send a long-distance letter by flying carrier beast would be a big deal. If I could re-establish communications with the Guild headquarters, I could get certain wheels spinning and make various plans move faster. Telepathic communication would have likely worked, if I was not keeping it so close to the vest, but this experiment would glean some important information that would be useful to the Kingdom with regards to other tamers as well.

My desire to quickly send a letter to a specific woman in Checkpoint and see where we stood after a year and my changed circumstances was irrelevant.

It would also be a potential help knowing if I could send messages by beast north. I wanted to be able to arrange the transfer of the freed Velgein slaves once that project was underway. I knew that whatever kind of organization the freedom fighters had evolved into now held the mountain pass, so it was possible to just send them on their way, but it would definitely be better to give them advance warning of what was happening in the south. They were close enough that I could send a messenger, but that risked the messenger’s life. Ideally, I could reach out to Golchev first, and get the lay of the land from him.

After far too much pacing and untangling jumbled thoughts, I remembered I had said I would meet Nodel and the other advisors. I left my office and started walking through the palace halls, headed towards the meeting room, and Atlessoa appeared at my side walking in step with me.

She was wearing her natural face, rather than an illusion, after we had a discussion about integrating with the palace. I wanted her to become recognizable as an aide of mine so that she did not always need to be wasting MP on an illusion, even if she likely had reduced the magic costs of her Shadowblade form quite a lot with practice and skill improvements. The Shadowblade made for an impressive bodyguard and was good for sending a message, but Atlessoa was an important part of my team as well and I wanted her to be able to operate as herself, too. It was also important that the palace represented all the people in the Kingdom, including the Al’Tiolese. Obviously, she was not just a diversity hire, given that she would have been the winner of the tournament if not for me, but there was value in her being seen and normalized in the palace.

“How are things in the city?”

“There hasn’t been too much discontent. Some small scale rabble rousing, and a few drunken declarations from people about challenging you for the crown, but nothing that seems like it would be followed up on, and no known planned movement against you. Yet.”

“Yeah, once these reforms go out, you can likely expect more. How’s Regan doing?”

“If he held a grudge against you from the tournament, it seems like it’s gone now, or he’s hiding it way, way better than we expected. He’s really fond of that tarand you gave him, but his swordsmanship while riding is still stiff and awkward.”

“That’s not surprising. Unfortunately, there isn’t really much I can teach him about that, but he’ll figure it out. Hopefully. Have you found any more recruits?”

“Two new potentials. I’ve got some information on them here so you can approve them, and if so, I’ll arrange a meeting so you can vet them.”

I took some parchment from my spymaster and tucked it under my arm to look at after the meeting. Atlessoa’s spy network was still only a small group of people, but growing. I had asked to meet every member so I could do a bit of a deeper dive with 3-point magic and make sure they had the right priorities to serve as spies for the crown.

We arrived at the meeting room and found Nodel standing outside the door, looking irritated. Her expression grew even more icy when she saw Atlessoa with me.

“Atlessoa,” Nodel said with an unmasked frown.

“Nodel,” Atlessoa responded, equally hard and cold.

I almost shivered, as if the air had actually chilled from the two women’s greetings.

When I had introduced the two, I hoped they would form a fast friendship. They were some of the most important people in my life, both from my childhood and present, growing even more important as we were flung forward on this path together. Instead, the two women seemed to hate each other. I was hesitant to dig deeper into it and learn why, worried it was something deep-rooted—Atlessoa’s dislike of wealthy nobles, maybe, or a possible distaste Nodel may have held for southerners—that I just did not have time to help them unpack during this difficult, transitionary time.

We’ll definitely sort it out as soon as these reforms have been put into place and things have calmed down, I thought.

“You can go get back to training your team, Soa” I said, who nodded and stalked off.

I turned back to Nodel, who directed her glare at me. “You’re awfully familiar with Soa,” she spat, mimicking the old nickname I had used.

“I… guess? Same as I am with you. I’ve known her almost as long.”

“What?” Nodel asked in a startled response. “How?”

“I met her in Roko when I first started my apprenticeship. You two are my oldest friends, so can you try to get along? Please?”

Nodel frowned, but nodded.

I wanted to ask about Nodel’s tentative engagement to Rugnor, but I was already fatigued by all the palace drama and decided to refocus on more important business. “Come on, let’s get back to these reforms.”

* * *

The army reform was the easiest to roll out, as it was just a formalized code of conduct for soldiers, specifically in wartime, and otherwise changed very little. As the Kingdom was not in a wartime, it largely meant that nothing actually had to change. Nonetheless, there were some soldiers who had joined up with intentions of causing undue pain and terror to the northerners in another offensive, and those types largely left the army.

Some of them were unsavory types, full stop, but many were just young men, recent adults who had lost their fathers in the last war. It was hard to blame them for feeling hate, but hate was not going to build a better Kingdom.

Offering a severance package of sorts was novel, but the Kingdom did have plenty of gold to work with, just not enough food and other resources to maintain a standing army in peacetime. Some soldiers, as predicted, simply took the opportunity and left to pursue other passions, but less than I expected as the army offered a fairly good long-term prospect for employment. With the promise of an extended peacetime, the work would be less dangerous, so younger soldiers were keen to stay and gain work experience, be trained, and earn a living. Assuming I did not want to terminate soldier contracts and send a bunch of aimless people home to figure out what to do with their lives on their own, I needed to find a good way to make use of them.

I had wanted to get the more social reforms, like the fact that slavery was still happening in the Kingdom, sorted first, but it was a bit more complicated and involved drumming up some support from key figures in the political landscape to ensure that those beneath them would not kick up a problem that could turn into a larger storm. We were nearing the point where we could start making big, impactful changes, which would begin in the capital and then spread south. Almost all of the Velgeins who had been enslaved were in the capital or just south in Fespen, with a small number in Roko, so it should not be too difficult to free them and return them to the north swiftly.

It should have been straightforward, but I had not fully considered the children.