Chapter 79
Lui opened the passenger door with a sharp click and swung it wide. The interior lights flickered on automatically, casting a soft glow over the leather seats and polished dashboard.
He waited.
But Queen Henriette didn’t get in.
Instead, she stood before the open door, her head tilted slightly, eyes fixed on the inside like she was peering into the chest cavity of a creature she might have to ride or fight.
She took a slow step forward, then stopped, her hands twitching faintly at her sides.
“It’s smaller on the inside,” she said finally, voice soft with disappointment and wonder interlaced. “But it smells like burnt lightning… and something artificial. Plastic and ghosts.”
Lui arched an eyebrow but said nothing.
Her fingers drifted to the roof of the car, brushing along the metal edge. She leaned forward, not yet inside, simply studying, absorbing.
“Does it remember the roads?” she asked, still not looking at him. “Or does it need you to tell it every time where to go?”
He cleared his throat. “Both,” he said. “I use GPS.”
Henriette narrowed her eyes, as though she understood none of that but filed it away for future dissection.
A breath escaped her lips, slow and barely audible. Her spine straightened. Shoulders back. Something inside her, some deep-rooted ritual from another life, clicked into place.
Then, with great ceremony, she stepped forward, one foot into the car.
She sat with cautious precision, lowering herself like she was entering a royal carriage surrounded by invisible crowds. Her hands remained in her lap, as if afraid that touching anything inside might either break it, or reveal her ignorance.
She looked straight ahead, expression unreadable.
Then she said, softly, with the smallest quiver of excitement disguised as detachment:
“Proceed.”
Instead, she stared at the front of the vehicle as if it might move without warning. Her brow furrowed, lips parting ever so slightly, and then she glanced back at him. There was genuine confusion in her eyes now, not performative, not distant, but raw and childlike, the kind that slips in when the rules of reality no longer hold.
“Where are the reins?” Henriette asked, voice low and utterly serious, as if the absence of them presented a dangerous flaw.
Lui’s mouth twitched into something like a smirk, but it faded quickly. “There are no reins,” he said, lifting a hand and gesturing toward the steering wheel and the blinking digital dash. “That’s how you drive it.”
Her frown deepened. Her gaze swept across the sleek interior, buttons that glowed without candles, icons pulsing like quiet heartbeats, lines of light that flickered in cryptic rhythms. She looked at the wheel like it might start spinning of its own accord.
Her fingers twitched slightly at her sides.
“Then how do you make it obey?” she asked again, her voice now shaded with suspicion. Not fear, exactly, Queen Henriette didn’t fear things, but something close to reverence, laced with wary respect for this strange creature she was about to ride.
“Buttons. Pedals. Technology,” Lui said, tapping the controls. His tone danced somewhere between amusement and mild exasperation. “You steer it where to go, and it listens. Usually.”
Henriette tilted her head slowly, as though weighing whether he was lying. Then she turned back to the car with narrowed eyes, studying it not as a tool, but as a creature. As something alive. Dangerous, perhaps. Unseen rules governing its temperament.
“A war machine, then,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Without a beast.”
She took another breath, subtle but steadying.
She lingered for a moment longer, her posture regal even in hesitation. Her eyes didn’t leave the dashboard.
Inside, the car felt smaller. More enclosed. She flinched almost imperceptibly as the lights on the dash shifted and pulsed. Her hands hovered over her lap like she didn’t know where to place them. Her chin lifted just slightly, spine stiff as if the entire machine were watching her.
When Lui slid into his seat and buckled his belt, he noticed her gaze shift. She was staring at the strap across his chest with narrowed eyes, not alarmed, just deeply curious, as though the restraint were some strange symbolic ritual she hadn’t yet been initiated into.
“What is this restraint?” Henriette asked, reaching slowly for her own belt, fingertips grazing it with delicate uncertainty. “Is it ceremonial? Do you expect turbulence?”
Lui snorted softly, amused despite himself, and leaned over to pull the belt across her with practiced ease. It clicked into place with a satisfying snap.
“No,” he muttered, adjusting it for her. “I expect idiots.”
She didn’t reply, but her brow furrowed again, thoughtful. As if trying to decipher whether she was the idiot, or whether he meant others who might come hurtling at them from outside, like enemy knights.
Then, they drove.