“Hera, welcome. I was starting to wonder if perhaps, you had decided against sharing your evening meal with us, which would have been quite problematic, since there are some things that I would like to discuss with you.”
I stopped walking for a singular moment, my foot pausing in mid-air as I recognised what the Queen was saying, as well as everything that it implied, before I put my foot down again and continued to close the distance between myself and the seat that I would usually occupy whenever we found ourselves having dinner in this particular dining room. It had become the norm for me to seat myself in the exact same place every day, just as the Queen and her brother did.
And what made it even more expected and natural for me, was that the palace staff had starte
