Chapter 12: Chapter 12

Ace, Rose, and I made our way to the Kingdom of Magic - Hazel - the next day. I’m very familiar with its town because Hazel is one of the kingdoms that buys most of my potions. As such, I was invited here by King Fred and Queen Sophie a lot.

This was one of my favorite places to visit because there were many magical items used as ingredients in my potions. Of course, King Fred always insists that I keep them instead of purchasing them.

I sat beside my sister as we rode in the carriage and looked out of the window. The palace was already in sight, and I let out a sigh. “Sophie is so lucky. She got to marry the kindest King in the whole realm.”

Rose laughed beside me and caressed Custard, who was laying his head on her lap. “Get over your crush with him, Stella. He’s already taken.”

I turned to her and brushed Viex’s ears as he slept on my shoulder. “You’re one to talk. I heard from Nate that you got a huge crush on him before.” I snorted. “Why didn’t you go with Fred and went with that guy?”

“I’m right here!” He snapped, and the intensity in his voice made my sister and me flinch. His eyes darkened as he locked them on both of us. I'm not usually afraid of my brother-in-law, but I was so terrified this time that I leaned into my sister.

I guess I finally found another taboo topic that would trigger his anger. Maybe I shouldn’t have talked about my sister’s previous crush on King Fred in front of her husband, I thought as I made a mental note at the back of my head for that.

“Ace, cut that out. You’re scaring Stella.” My sister chastised him. “That was a long time ago, and you know that. I mean, I was young, and my reaction back then was natural because Fred was the normal prince among you guys. Have you guys seen your younger selves?” She explained to him.

“Normal?” Ace raised a brow at her. “I can understand that the moronic twins and that perverted vampire are abnormal, but not me. I was the most normal one among the group.” He crossed his arms defensively.

My sister’s gaze lingered at him for a long time as if she was trying to process the bullshit that came out of her husband’s mouth. “You,” She says with a steady and unwavering gaze, “You think that asking people to jump off of a cliff and yelling at them when they don’t call you PRINCE is normal?” She questioned him. “What’s more is wearing a dress and obsessing about your little sister?”

I blinked as a certain sentence caught my attention. “A dress?” I looked at Ace. “You wore a dress?”

A long pause settled in the air until Ace finally responded. “Oh, look. We’re here.” He said, clearly avoiding the topic. When I looked at my sister, she looked at her husband like she already knew that this would happen.

As we disembarked from the carriage, we saw that a butler was already there to greet us. “Your highness, Kind Fred has been expecting you.”

“Expecting us? How?” I began to question because our departure was so sudden that I didn’t think that we would be able to send them a letter in time. I looked towards Rose for an answer, but I saw her glancing at Ace instead.

My brother-in-law smirked arrogantly and gave us both a side glance. “Can the king that you used to admire do that?” He scoffed arrogantly at Rose. “I don’t think so.”

“Wow,” Rose said in a deadpanned tone. “How amazingly gifted you are, my dear husband.” She responded sarcastically in a robotic tone.

A horse's neigh brought our attention to the entrance where we came from. Chace, who was riding a black stallion, has just arrived. When he saw us, he immediately dismounted his horse and gave the reigns to an awaiting stable at his side before making his way towards us.

“Good morning, your highnesses.” He greeted us.

“Just morning. Nothing is good about the morning anyway.” Rose muttered.

“You’re late.” Ace said in annoyance.

“Sorry. It’s just that my mother and brother were fighting again. I just can’t leave those two alone.” He sighed. His eyes fell onto me, and I immediately turned away as soon as I remembered our conversation from last night. It’s not like I was still mad at him. I just felt a little awkward about how I behaved last night for being so emotional.

We all followed the butler as he led us inside the castle. It was still just as I remembered it—Whitestone walls with light gold detailing. White floating orbs are used to illuminate the whole palace, just like the ones back in Gija, along with natural lights coming from the large floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor is made out of white marble, and running along the hallway, they covered it in red carpet.

We were led through multiple rooms after room until we finally stopped at the one with a white door and gold circling pattern designed to its door frame. The butler knocked on the door three times before speaking. “Your highness, King Ace, Queen Rosalie, Princess Stella, and Prince Chace has arrived.”

“Let them in, Nigel.” Came the response of the King of Hazel. The butler, Nigel, opened the door for us as we all headed inside.

“Hey, Stella. Did you know that the Kingdom of Vertez has a vampire butler named Edward?” My sister leaned in to whisper to me.

“No way,” I gasped. “I hope that there’s also a werewolf butler in Sanver named Jacob. That will be so cool.” Came my response.

“You guys seem well.” Light laughter interrupted our conversation as he looked in front of us as saw a man with blonde hair and crystalline blue eyes. The king of Hazel was standing before us wearing a white ruffled long-sleeved polo shirt and golden brown vest. For his bottom, he wore simple black trousers that complimented the whole look. “You guys came at just the right time. I was just taking a short break from work.” He said and pulled out a letter from his pocket. “I got your letter last night.”

At the mention of the letter, we heard King Ace making a sound as he smirked in satisfaction and smugly glanced in mine and my sister’s direction.

“Yeah, yeah. We get it.” My sister said tiredly and gave him a pat on the back. “You’re the best. You happy now?” In response, Ace puffed out his chest in pride and gloated at Fred with his eyes.

King Fred smiled questioningly in his direction even though he did not know what that smile was for. Then, his eyes shifted in the direction of Chace and I suspicious. A slow grin began to spread across his face. “Don’t tell me,” He mumbled before a huge beam spread across his face. “You two are engaged! And you guys want me to walk Stella down the aisle!? Prince Chace, after all these years, one of your proposal letters has finally been accepted. Congratulations.”

At the mention of the rejection letter, Chace blushed in embarrassment. “My mother sent most of those.” He mumbled and facepalmed in embarassment.

I didn’t speak. I just bit my lips before the colorful foul words that I learned from my sister be uttered in front of a highly respected king. All I want to know at this moment is “how?” How the hell did he assume that much? Didn’t brother-in-law explain anything in that letter of his!?

“You guys are what?!” What’s more unbelievable is that my sister began to react as well, clearly believing King Fred’s assumption. Even Custard, her wolf familiar, seemed stunned as his wolf eyes grew wide with surprise. Thankfully, Viex kept sleeping in my arms and covered his ears from all of the commotion going on. “You!” The moment my sister glared at Chace, Custard also barked at him. She grabbed my arm and move me behind her so that I was in between her and Ace.

“Just what was exactly written in that letter of yours?” I interrogated Ace with a leer.

The Elf King merely scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I wrote that we would be visiting him in the morning to ask him a favor. It’s not my fault that the ‘best king candidate’ made his assumptions.”

Boy, this guy can be really petty, can’t he?

Viex probably had enough of Custard’s loud barking because he soon leaped from my arms and onto Custard’s back, where he began to bite his ears. The spirit wolf yelped, making my sister’s attention turn towards them instead of Chace.

“Hey, stop fighting, you two! If you want to hurt someone, murder the ice prince!” Rose yelled.

The wizard king laughed at the scenario in front of him. “If you are asking me for a favor on disposing of the body, I probably could. But I think your husband would be better at it than I.”

“Damn right I am.” Ace agreed without a second thought.

I rubbed my temples in frustration. I don’t even know why we’re here anymore. It seems like the topic was immediately forgotten. I guess that it is now up to me to bring things running again.

“Rose, I am not engaged. I’m still 18, for goodness sake!” I yelled amidst all the noise in the room. Fortunately, that caught my sister’s attention as she, the noisest person in the room, halted.

“You’re not?”

“That’s disappointing.” King Fred looks genuinely saddened about the news.

“Can you all just-” I took in a deep breath and tried to calm myself so that I could choose my following words carefully. “Can we all just focus on the real reason why we’re here?” I asked calmly.

“As the twerp says,” Ace agreed. “We’re here to ask you for a different reason, King Fred. It’s about the rogues.” As soon as Fred heard the seriousness in Ace’s tone, he straightened up. Ace began to tell him about the rogues and of my recent attack. Judging from the look on Fred’s face, it seems like he knew about the rogues leaving their assigned new homes and choosing to live out of their own respective races. And then it got to the topic about Kellar and how the rogues are trying to find him.

“I see.” Fred placed a hand on his chin and cast his gaze on the ground. “So they want to revive their Tereau. This is not good.”

“Yes. But we may have a few leads on Kellar. Well, it’s not a big lead, but we are hoping to find something.” I said.

“What do you need?”

“The lists all the rogues residing in Hazel. For if we are being specific, someone that used to be a cook in the palace.”

Fred began to grin. “So this is the reason why she told me to keep him.” He chuckled to himself. “It seems like my wife has done it again.”

Ace raised a brow at the King’s statement before looking at my sister. “What’s this fool talking about?” He asked while rudely pointing to Fred.

“I’m sorry,” Fred says before collecting himself and heading towards us. “It’s just that we recently hired an extraordinary cook last month. Courtesy of my Sophie.”

Ace studied him as if he was trying to decipher whether Fred was joking or not. “Hold on. You’re serious? Is that cook from...” Ace trailed on, unsure of the right words to say, before Fred cut him off with a nod of confirmation.

“Yes. He’s a cook from Tereau.”