Moonlight Ball

Iris glanced around the dining hall, unsure of what to do. The atmosphere among the servants and maids had changed completely, and she could sense that they were on edge. Finally, she looked at the King, who had a silly grin on his face.

“I cannot let a cook, who doesn’t know the Queen’s tastes, stay in my palace,” he said bluntly.

“What?” The cook unintentionally blurted.

“From today, you are fired!”

“No! Absolutely not!” Iris shouted as she jumped up from her seat, nearly knocking the handcrafted chair over. Until today she had eaten without complaint. Iris liked sausages and was a typical meat lover. Honestly, she preferred things like sausages and steak, so even in the workshop, she’d been provided with steak to eat.

Perhaps it was because she’d missed out on such food during childhood that caused her to become a fussy eater. Her pickiness about food had once brought her to the point where her teacher, Elaine, had tried to force her to eat vegetables. Of course, he’d given up as it went against his character to force anyone, and she was able to live her life freely as a picky eater.

“I respect My Queen’s generosity, but I cannot move on from today’s incident. How can a chef, who cannot even satisfy The Queen’s taste, be able to satisfy the taste of so many other guests?”

“B-b-but,” the cook stuttered as he tried to protest.

“This kind of job is something you must do,” the King spoke directly to Iris. He had no intention of scolding her, but Iris was shaken by his tone, regardless.

Now that she thought about it, she was The Queen. Well, she wasn’t the true Queen, but the King didn’t know that. He believed she was Rosemary En Letaire, which meant that Iris had to take on the responsibilities of that position, which was something that she hadn’t thought in-depth about until now. Iris blinked with an unreadable expression on her face. She honestly did not know at all about the duties of Queen Rosemary.

However, according to the King’s words, she had one task that she knew she had to perform immediately, “If I must, please leave the chef alone.” It wasn’t fair to punish the chef because she’d chopped up the innocent sausages and scaring the King. With pleading eyes, she turned to look at the King again.

“I thought you hated sausages,” The King said, looking somewhat irritated, and Iris nodded. “Was the sausage just particularly loathsome today?” At his additional question, Iris simply nodded again, hoping that he wouldn’t ask her why because she had no way to explain her situation.

To her relief, the King didn’t pry further into why she hated sausages. Instead, he pushed his plate towards her and said, “You can let out your anger on my sausage too.”

He sounded sarcastic, and she wondered if she’d perhaps misheard him as she stared at the King’s sausage with a distorted look on her face. It did look firm, and she chuckled to herself.

The King was affectionate towards Iris, and he hadn’t asked anything of her since her near-death experience. After Iris had fallen into the Haran’s river and had lost parts of her memory, he seemed to think that she wouldn’t be able to resume all of her duties as The Queen. Thankfully for her, it was an opportunity to figure out what these duties entailed.

Wondering about what queens were supposed to do, she had decided to visit the well-stocked library in the palace to gain some insight. For some reason, the large doors to the library had been locked, and she’d been advised that she couldn’t take any books out.

The King had ordered them to be removed after he’d deemed them too old and neglected. Iris didn’t know what to do without having access to the knowledge she needed so desperately. She’d quickly said to the guard that it was okay and that she’d come back another time and had walked away from the library feeling despondent.

In the end, Iris had gone to ask the handmaiden what she needed to do, explaining that she wanted to know so that she could start performing her duties. Iris knew that she’d figure it all out once she had a starting point. But if she was denied the help, Iris had the all-knowing, great teacher, Elaine, as her last resort. However, he was busy these days, so he may not come right away, and she had to figure this out now.

Iris looked at her extravagant long dress and the jewelry she wore. Truth be told the dress was uncomfortable, and the precious stones were heavy. She didn’t like any of them, but she was basking in luxury, and she needed to fulfill her duties in return. She just wished that the duties could be performed with magic!

With a sulking face and an overactive mind, Iris stared at the handmaiden. Puzzled, the handmaiden tilted her head as she asked, “What kind of job would you like? I am not sure I understand, Your Highness.”

The handmaiden, Ruth, was a lady in her mid-fifties who was a maid through and through. She had served countless fussy people, but Rosemary took the cake. Although she wasn’t the pickiest person she’d served, she was the most wicked. But Rosemary had been so calm of late that Ruth was getting concerned. And there were even credible rumors within the palace that magic fungus had started growing in the Harans river since the Queen had fallen in it. All of these strange happenings added to Ruth’s suspicions that something wasn’t quite right.

“Any job that the Queen usually does,” Iris replied, sounding irritated.

Usually, Rosemary would push all the tedious tasks to the handmaiden and order people to do what she wanted. One couldn’t say that Rosemary fulfilled any of her duties. The fact that the Queen was attempting to do something productive set off alarm bells in Ruth’s head. For a moment, she was flabbergasted but managed to disguise it with her copious years of experience, and she asked with a straight face, “What kind of a job?”