Chapter 546: Kara And Aki [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 546: Kara And Aki [II / Bonus Chapter]

The Princess was sitting directly on Kara’s stomach with her navy skirts bunched around her knees and her face buried completely in her hands as she wept with reckless abandon.

Tears poured through her fingers like water through a sieve, splashing hot and wet straight through Kara’s tailored charcoal shirt.

"I-I’m sorry!" Aki wailed, her entire body jerking with each violent sob. "I’m s-sorry! I know it’s... it’s pathetic! I know I’m a mess! But I... I really just... I really wanted to cry so bad! I couldn’t... I had to hold it for so long...!"

Kara lay flat on the floor, staring up at the plaster ceiling with a dazed wide-eyed expression.

Having a weeping, royal girl straddling her midsection while soaking her bespoke collar in tears was completely outside her training but slowly, Kara raised her single right arm.

She didn’t push Aki off.

Instead, her broad calloused palm settled gently on the back of Aki’s head with her fingers threading through the soft loose strands of dark hair.

Aki gasped, her frame shivering violently and then... as if all the bone and sinew had melted out of her body, she collapsed completely forward.

Her forehead slammed into the crook of Kara’s neck, her arms wrapping desperately around Kara’s shoulders, burying her face into the warm scented skin of her throat.

SOB! SOB!

The sobs were muffled against Kara’s flesh, hot breath and wet tears pooling in the hollow of her collarbone.

Kara didn’t move.

She lay there on the cold wood with her right hand gently patting the back of the girl’s head, feeling the rapid flutter of Aki’s pulse against her own neck.

"It’s alright," Kara said softly, her voice carrying a rare quiet tenderness that had never once surfaced in the Grand Assembly. "Go ahead. Let it out... Everybody needs a good, ugly cry once in a while, even princesses... Especially princesses who have to deal with garbage families."

They stayed like that for several minutes.

The ragged gasps slowly began to slow as the violent shaking in Aki’s spine subsided into small occasional twitches, until finally, the room was quiet again, save for the rhythm of their breathing.

Aki sniffled with a wet loud sniffle that she immediately tried to swallow in embarrassment.

She slowly pushed herself up with both hands, her palms pressed against Kara’s chest as her face was burning hotter than a forge.

Aki’s eyes were swollen, puffy, and rimmed in angry crimson while her nose was bright pink, her hair was a catastrophic bird’s nest, and a damp dark patch was visibly soaked into the lapel of Kara’s charcoal suit.

She looked down at Kara, realized she was still sitting directly across the woman’s stomach, let out a tiny high-pitched squeak, and scrambled backward across the rug like a startled crab.

"I-I... I apologize!" Aki stammered, covering her swollen eyes with both forearms, her face turning an impossible shade of beet-red. "That was... that was completely unbefitting of... of anyone! I didn’t mean to tackle you! I just... my legs moved on their own and—"

Thud!

Kara sat up smoothly, resting her right wrist against her raised knee.

Her tailored jacket was wrinkled, her collar was damp, and her hair was slightly disheveled, but she had a wide amused grin plastered across her face.

"Tackle me?" Kara teased, tilting her head with a low chuckle. "You call that a tackle? I’ve been hit by monsters that had less impact, Princess. Though I gotta admit, you’ve got decent form for someone with no core reinforcement... You caught me completely off-guard."

Aki’s hands dropped an inch, revealing one puffy embarrassed blue eye glaring at her from behind her wrists.

"Don’t make fun of me..."

"I’m not making fun of you," Kara laughed, standing up and brushing a stray fleck of rug lint from her trousers.

She reached out with her single hand, grabbing Aki’s arm and hauling her gently to her feet. "I’m complimenting your initiative. Most people in this building are too busy bowing to remember how to move their feet."

Kara turned, walking over to a long plush velvet sofa resting beneath the tall lancet windows.

She didn’t sit down properly like a noblewoman as she collapsed onto it sideways, throwing her long legs over the armrest, letting her head sink deep into the cushions with an audible groan of luxury.

"Ugh, finally," Kara sighed, staring up at the gilded ceiling moldings. "If I had to listen to that old man drone on for another five minutes, I was going to lose my mind... No offense, by the way. I know he’s your father and all, but holy shit, Aki. What a piece of work."

Aki stood near the center of the rug, smoothing down the front of her navy skirts with nervous fluttering motions.

’Is it just me or are Silas and Kara different...?’

Even their mannerisms, at least Silas tried to contain himself. Kara made no such effort at all...

At the mention of the King, her lower lip poked out slightly with her eyebrows drawing together in a small genuine scowl.

"He’s..." Aki started, her throat tight.

She hesitated.

Her entire life, she had been trained under the iron laws of roya etiquette.

You did not speak ill of the Throne and you did not disrespect the progenitor.

The words in her throat felt heavy and dangerous, like trying to lift a boulder with bare hands.

"He’s a..." she tried again, her face scrunching up in intense concentration. "He’s a... a..."

Kara turned her head, watching her with an eyebrow raised in amusement.

"A what? Come on, spit it out. There are no listening arrays left to tell on you."

Aki took a sharp determined breath, puffed her cheeks out until they were round and red, and practically shouted.

"He’s an asshole!"

The word left her mouth with the force of a detonating cannon.

The instant the syllable died, Aki slapped both hands over her mouth, her eyes bulging to the size of saucers with her skin turning so violently red that Kara wondered if she was about to pass out from shock.

She looked around the empty room as if expecting the Citadel’s executioners to drop through the ceiling beams and take her head.

Kara stared at her for three seconds.

Then, slowly, Kara raised her single right hand, curling her fingers into a fist and extending her thumb straight into the air.

"Solid," Kara said, nodding with deadpan approval. "A classic with clean execution and good volume but honestly? You can do better."

Aki blinked, slowly lowering her hands from her lips, looking very lost. "B-Better how...? Isn’t that... isn’t that the worst word?"

Kara let out a loud, incredulous snort.

"The worst word? Kid, ’asshole’ is what you call a guy who cuts you off in traffic or forgets to bring napkins with the takeout... For a man who left you to rot in a dark palace for twenty-five years because your soul didn’t come with fireworks? That’s barely a greeting so what other insults do you know?"

Aki tilted her head, genuinely racking her brain.

She had grown up isolated in the inner sanctums, reading historical treatises, diplomatic registries, and poetry manuals.

Her entire social sphere consisted of cold tutors, silent handmaidens well except for Mira, and the distant polite sneers of court nobles who were too terrified of law to use vulgarity.

"Well..." Aki began, counting on her slender fingers with utmost seriousness. "There’s... scoundrel and ne’er-do-well. Once, when Alexander took my practice wooden sword and snapped it over his knee, I called him an uncouth barbarian."

Kara choked on her own spit, coughing into the sofa cushion.

"An uncouth barbarian?" Kara wheezed, her shoulders shaking with uncontrollable laughter. "Stop, please, you’re killing me. You’re actually going to break my ribs..."

"It was very harsh at the time!" Aki protested, her face burning as she stamped her foot against the Persian rug. "The maid made me copy thirty pages of the ancestral statutes as penance and... and during the winter feast, when Julian.Jr poured cold wine on my skirt and said it was an accident, I told him he was a witless popinjay!"

"A witless popinjay?!" Kara howled, wiping a tear of mirth from behind her glasses. "Oh, man. The venom! The savagery! How did Julian survive such psychological trauma?"

"Stop laughing at me!" Aki whined, her cheeks puffing out into an adorable frustrated pout. "I didn’t grow up in the lower sectors so that is the extent of my vocabulary!"

Kara pushed herself up onto her elbow, shaking her head with a wide, fond grin.

"Alright, alright, come here," Kara said, beckoning with her right forefinger. "Sit down before you hurt yourself."

Aki hesitated, but the warm relaxed atmosphere of the room was impossible to resist.

She walked over to the velvet sofa, smoothing her skirts before perching delicately on the edge of the cushions beside Kara’s hip with her hands clasped neatly in her lap.

Kara leaned closer, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial murmur.

"Repeat after me," Kara instructed, her violet eyes gleaming with pure mischief. "Your father is an arrogant, self-important, crusty old bastard who wouldn’t know real leadership if it bit him on his royal ass..."

Aki gasped with her jaw dropping open. "I can’t say that!"

"Yes, you can. Come on. Say it. It’s therapeutic."

"I... I shouldn’t! It’s treason!"

"The listening bugs are fried, Aki. Say it. Arrogant... crusty... old bastard."

Aki looked at Kara’s wide encouraging grin as she looked down at her own hands, taking a slow trembling breath.

"He’s an... an arrogant..." she squeaked, her voice trembling like a frightened mouse. "A cr-crusty... old... b-bastard..."

The syllables felt bizarre and utterly terrifying on her tongue, but the moment they left her lips, a strange electric thrill shot straight through her chest.

Kara beamed, ruffling Aki’s messy blue hair with her knuckles.

"Look at that! Natural talent. Memorize that one and use it whenever you look at his portrait in the gallery."

Aki swatted Kara’s hand away with a soft pout, but the tension that had gripped her jaw for years was completely gone.

She looked at Kara, taking in the elegant cheekbones, the flawless pale skin, and the rich dark bangs falling across the wire-rimmed glasses.

"Your... your female form," Aki murmured softly, her fingers tracing the hem of her sleeve. "It looks... really amazing. It suits you."

Kara chuckled, leaning her head back against the sofa.

"Thanks. Honestly, it’s pretty convenient. The disguise ring does most of the heavy lifting. It alters the skeletal perception, shifts the voice, masks the core signature completely... Which is a massive relief, because if people figured out what was actually under the hood, the entire summit would have turned into a circus."

Aki tilted her head, curious. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Kara said, tapping her chin with a lazy smirk, "in my male body? Right now? I’m completely naked."

Aki froze as her eyes dilated to the size of dinner plates.

"What?" Aki whispered, the word barely carrying through the air.

"Yeah," Kara said, nodding with nonchalance. "I was in such a rush to come here early this morning that I literally just hopped out of the bath, slipped the ring onto my finger, and let the illusion weave the suit over my bare skin so underneath the disguise, I don’t have a stitch of clothes on."

Aki’s brain short-circuited.

’N-Naked...?!’

The thought hit her with the concussive force of a blast to the face.

Instantly, an unbidden detailed image flashed behind Aki’s eyes.

Silas... his tall broad-shouldered frame, the lean muscle cut across his chest, the water droplets glistening along his collarbones and steam rising from his skin as he stepped out of a porcelain tub with nothing on standing right there in the room, separated from her by only a thin translucent film of disguise magic.

’Wait... wait... wait...’ Aki’s thoughts screamed in hysterical panic, her hands flying to her burning cheeks. ’If he’s naked underneath... and I just tackled him... and I was sitting directly on his stomach... that means... that means I was basically...?!’

Her breath hitched.

Her heart was hammering so fast, so hard against her ribs that she genuinely thought she was going to faint right there on the velvet upholstery.

Her imagination ran wild, visualizing the line of his hips, the broad expanse of his back, the scars running down his—

"Pfft... hahahaha!"

A loud wheezing laugh shattered the fantasy as Aki snapped out of it, blinking frantically.

Kara was clutching her side with her single hand, laughing so hard tears were prickling in the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, man, you should see your face!" Kara cackled, pointing at Aki’s beet-red visage. "I was totally lying! I’m wearing full under-armor underneath the suit! I would never walk into an imperial fortress without layered gear! You actually believed me?!"

Aki’s mouth dropped open.

The realization hit her, followed immediately by an overwhelming wave of mortification.

"You... you jerk!" Aki yelled, her voice pitching up a bit as she grabbed a plush velvet throw pillow and slammed it against Kara’s shoulder. "You’re terrible! You’re an awful person! That wasn’t funny at all!"

POOF!

Kara caught the pillow easily with her single hand, still chuckling softly under her breath.

"Alright, alright, I’m sorry," Kara grinned, tossing the pillow aside.