The Reason for Marriage

“Why? Did you send someone who wasn’t good enough?”

Raina grinned at the question.
Iveca looked stung before Raina hurriedly explained.

“I’m sorry.
He was a close colleague of mine, so I suddenly thought of something amusing… Rihan Kadmin was excellent enough to be dispatched by the Bureau’s Director, Mr.
Lucas himself.
What we have investigated is the fact that there was not enough magical power on the site of the Empire during the war.
Rihan Kadmin was a better soldier than we had anticipated, even with Mr.
Lucas on his tail.”

Iveca calmly looked at Raina.

“Then what happened to the employee? The Empire is at war, and Rihan Kadmin is alive.
He failed the assassination, so he couldn’t come back?”

“That… we aren’t certain of.” Raina’s eyes lowered and she quickly changed the subject.
“The situation is overly complicated now compared to four years ago.
As the spell disappeared and Staram’s illegal goods flooded in, including more copies of that republican book, King Daniel saw an opportunity to establish the Bureau of Technology.
We started to pick up things that could be useful.”

“From the smugglers?”

“It was an urgent matter,” Raina replied coolly.

“Then the people who have been doing business properly…”

“Yes?”

Iveca was somewhat taken back by Raina’s interruption, but she didn’t stop talking.

“The lawbreakers, smugglers… they were rewarded for their crimes… It seems unreasonable.”

“My Queen.”

“Yes?” Iveca wondered whether she had been too critical in speaking her mind.

“You are a full-time employee of the Judicial Affair Bureau.
I heard it’s been a month since you moved.
I do hope you understand the King’s decision.
Maybe that’s the reason he sent me.”

Raina, for all appearances, didn’t seem that formal.
It was strangely inconsistent with the stern image of the Bureau of Investigation that Iveca knew and it put her at ease.
However, the tone of the conversation was more serious now than before.

“As King Daniel became the King unexpectedly, he had no supporting parties.
In the early days of the reign, too many decisions were made in a short time, and there were both formidable gains and losses as a result.
Even our Bureau of Investigation, which initially decided to assassinate Rihan Kadmin on its own judgement because they did not believe in His Majesty in the beginning, now distances itself from that decision.”

Raina glanced at Iveca’s purple eyes.

“When it comes to the direction of the country, I believe in Your Majesty’s wisdom and prudence.
I trust in the agreements, the decisions he made and recognize the sacrifice.” She said it in a way that Iveca took to mean she was trying to be reassuring about her new husband.
Iveca thought again how little she knew of Amethan now.
Amethan did not change much from her birth until eighteen, but she felt that it seemed there was a wave of change from day to day over the past four years.
Crucially, the four years she was missing.

And how lonely was Daniel holding the arrow keys alone in this wave of change?