Charlotte
I climbed down from the dragon alone, avoiding George's help by pulling his hand away.
"Do you want me to go?" He asked, looking straight ahead.
"We'll go together," I said to him. "Do you think they'll listen to you just because you have a dragon? I'm the queen of Torrem"
His expression changed and he sighed, looking impatient.
"What now?" I asked, ready to argue again.
"Nothing Charlotte, shall we go?"
I avoided twisting my face in disgust, it was hard to look at George's face without wanting to tear it. The honeymoon phase had only lasted five days, and soon the cohabitation and arguments had become unbearable, saturating me.
I wasn't born to cook and look after the house.
I was ready to go back to Torrem, make excuses and bet all my chips on it, my mother was sure that George wasn't the man for me.
But I was pregnant and that changed everything.
When I heard about my parents' death, I almost lost the baby. Leaving all the lies and fear behind, I returned to Torrem, at their funeral I cried while the anger grew more and more each day.
I was going to exterminate the royal family of Olimper at any cost.
Zaim and Torrem had no quarrels, a few sugar cane and coffee transactions from Torrem to Zaim had been our entire history, so I didn't see why we couldn't form an alliance, knowing that Zaim and Torrem had a murky past about which much speculation was rife.
Decades of war couldn't be erased out of thin air, I would even say that King Octavian had a platonic hatred for the royal family of Olimper and wanted to exploit that to my advantage.
Walking towards the castle, we were announced to the king as visitors. I wasn't expecting a grand reception, but I knew our visit wouldn't be refused.
We waited in the throne room where the king was not present, I looked around, only the guards, George coughed and I looked at him angrily, he frowned and shrugged looking straight ahead, even his breathing was annoying to me.
As my late mother used to say, love doesn't fill a belly and I thought that would be enough, what George and I had, but when our love ended I realized that all I needed was power.
George was useful to me, but if he hadn't been I wouldn't even have liked him. Maybe it was seeing him riding a dragon that made me want him, I was sure my eyes weren't lying, George was an attractive man, but he wasn't worth giving up my name and the life I had and maybe that's why I hated him so much now.
I had only been foolish once, now I would become the greatest queen in history, I would be one of a kind.
A man came towards us, bowing slightly as a form of reverence, he raised his head and spoke:
"The king wishes to see you in his pive."
"Pive?" I frowned: "What would Pive be?"
George smiled and I looked at him.
"Let me go, darling" He touched my shoulder, I pulled away from his touch.
"No way, I said we're going together!" I imagined that pive wasn't something for a conservative woman in society, just because of George's eyes and my lack of knowledge of what it was all about, I was going to go anyway. I turned to the man and said "Show us where this pive is".
I avoided George's eyes while a smile broke out on my face, not at all willing to deal with his irritation. I took a good look at the corridors I passed, looking for differences, things that would tell me that they weren't all the same, and I noticed the light bulbs.
There was a chandelier in the center of each corridor and it had a certain number of beads, some more and some less, you just had to count them to know which corridor you were in.
It was a riddle, just like in Torrem where the end of the corridor had a small number on a strip drawn on it, so small that it was almost imperceptible, it told you where you were so you wouldn't get lost, but this wasn't explained to visitors, only to the people in the castle and sometimes even they themselves didn't know this.
Shortcuts were only for intelligent people who dared to use their minds to know where they were going, this was something I learned from my father that I have never forgotten, each castle had its own tricks and Zaim would be no different, now I knew that I wouldn't get lost, unlike George who only looked ahead without focusing on the details, without looking for anything, without trying to record where we were, without studying the structure of the castle.
We stopped in front of a door from which the sound of music and laughter was coming out, a party? It was only three in the afternoon, the sun was high in the sky and the castle certainly needed looking after, but the king wasn't thinking about that.
When the guard opened the door, the first thing I saw was a woman's ass on a thin piece of cloth that looked more like a string, her breasts covered by a thin cloth that only covered them, causing me to feel strange. I entered the doors even before George and looked around, the smell of sex and drugs, the various drinks on the table, the bathtub, which was made for a maximum of three, was filled with five people, including King Octavian, who turned around with a bright smile on his face.
The door behind us closed and Octavian rose from the tub.
"Hello, big boys!" He raised his wet arms, wearing only tight underwear and a body that needed to get in shape or he would soon gain weight.
This place looked like hell.
"Queen Charlotte" He took my hand and kissed it, I liked being seen before George, after all, women always came second "I'm sorry for your loss, I've done a lot of business with your parents and I believe our partnership will continue"
"King Octavian wants our partnership to continue, but I've come to take care of other things here."
He nodded.
"First I want you to have a drink." He took the drink from the waiter's tray and handed it to me.
"Drugs here?" I asked, looking into his eyes.
Otavio laughed and turned to George.
"King George, it's an honor to have you here, I hope you'll stay and enjoy yourselves in my humble castle." He looked around and kept his eyes on the waiter who was away serving a group of girls, then he turned and handed George his own drink.
Otavio held up his hands when he saw two women kissing and said he was going to get in the middle of it.
"He's drunk," I said.
"If it was only that, he's hallucinating with drugs in his mind" George said, confirming my suspicions. He took a sip of his drink and threw it on the plant in the corner "Don't drink anything here or you'll be more than drunk".
I shrugged and took a long sip, teasing him.
"I'm serious Charlotte, we've come for a reason"
"Do you think we'll achieve anything if we close ourselves off in our own world? I don't want to become numb, let alone lose my dignity, but it's a private party and there's no way we can talk to King Octavian under these conditions, we need to be noticed by him, enter his world, make him comfortable for any kind of conversation or do you think you'll achieve anything by being boring?" I questioned him, handing him the drink and looking at him angrily, George was good at battles, but only by force, not by intelligence. "Drink up and let the diplomat here do things!"