Both Guards eat in silence.

  With his usual gauntlet of poison testers absent, the duty of ensuring the Crown Prince’s own home cooked meal was free of any lethal additives was placed upon perhaps the most (un)qualified of his guardians as well as his wife’s personal weapon.

  As the Impericutta legionary slowly passed food behind its faceplate from below, Zai could hear some biology within chew; how as its senses gathered information and processed any autonomic responses to the food it held a lidless stare at all the occupants sitting around the table. A science to its pattern of tasting, how the humanoid creature would take specific portions from different parts of each dish—sampling at least five randomly chosen locales on each to ensure edibility.

  While Mori’s food tasting technique was more…

  Well, this was Guardsman Mori Fushimi.

  A bowl filled with a greedy amount of rice and large spoonfuls of each dish, it seemed that the woman was less focused on protecting a charge and more so filling her own stomach. Wooden eating sticks clicking both together and upon the porcelain bowl like swords clashing (extraordinarily bad table manners, unthinkable in the presence of royals), indicative of a rank deliciousness as she very happily hums to herself.

  “It is safe to consume.” The Legionary growls underneath its faceplate once it completes its inspection.

  As one they all turn to the Tianci Guardswoman, who stops her gluttonous consumption for just a small moment to answer the unspoken question. “Oh, I’m not dead yet so it should be good.”

  And so the royals eat.

  Mori had taken the initiative as she was laying out the utensils from within the well organized drawer, to give the Ensolian Heir a standard set of Ensolian silverware alongside the usual pair of Tiancin eating sticks. A small reminder of her home, in case the young woman couldn’t handle using this strange method of food consumption (despite the eating sticks’ origins in what was now an island based Imperial Province).

  But she wasn’t using them.

  Sophia Elise the Eighth eats carefully. Deft hands with the eating sticks, like a trained professional she ever so carefully removes bits and pieces from each small spoonful of her selected dishes upon the rice and carries them into her mouth.

  Like a heron bird picking through thick reeds for hiding minnows, the young woman was slowly but surely selecting specific portions of each dish for her own consumption. Ignoring possible dangers, only focusing on isolated pieces of guaranteed edible goods from a torrent of contaminants.

  Zai could relate, somewhat.

  The first time someone had tried to kill this sitting Crown Prince of Tianci it was through the vector of poison. How when one of his personal nurses accidentally splashed pasteurized milk from the bottle she was preparing to feed the infant onto her hand, she quickly lapped up the small pool of the liquid that had settled onto her palm without thinking.

  By the time the present Guardsman in the room could even react, the nurse’s body was already on the floor convulsing and drooling foam.

  But even Zai could eat like a normal human being, not in the manner that this young woman was doing to her food. Whatever life Sophia Elise had lived within the Imperium must have trained her to a level of immense caution that was beyond even the most targeted noble child of Tianci.

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  Mori speaks to her Prince in a hushed tone of accusation, a sub-religious dialect of the Xiaoshan tongue that was far enough removed from the standard language that she gambled the Ensolian girl couldn’t understand this small conversation. “You didn’t prepare anything Central Ensolian for her?!”

  The Fourth Princess blinks at the foreign words, but continues to eat as she keeps her eyes glued to her bowl.

  “There isn’t anything central ensolian stored down there.” Zai replies in kind, noting that the Impericutta legionary was very much so reactivated as beneath its ceramic plates something was shifting. “And I don’t know how to cook anything central ensolian.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying you need to go grocery shopping in town? Tomorrow? We can go after the morning exercises~”

  Zai continues to eat, ignoring his Guardian’s sly smile.

  “Remember Zai, you need to make a good impression on her as her husband.” Mori continues to tease in the middle of stuffing her face. “Try talking to her. You know, connect with the girl…”

  “Very well… I’ll try…”

  Sophia Elise the Eighth was definitely listening in, a tiny reaction as her jaw twinges -- caught by the Crown Prince of Tianci. How as the words escaped Mori’s mouth he could perceive just the most subtle of automatic movements from the Princess’ nervous system, uncontrollable by even the most trained of operatives.

  She knew.

  Zai wondered how well this marriage was undoing the political stability of the Dominion. His royal line was already perilous with his father, and with just a single heir dangling by a loose thread it was always whispered that Tianci could very well turn extinct before the end of the century. That before long, a small succession crisis would unfold within Landfall or even beyond; a minor civil war or two as foreign interests and various internal powers would jostle over the rule of a nation… or a fractured version of it.

  Not anymore.

  This infusion of blood-backed power from this Imperial Princess was certainly ruining the plans of almost every schemer eyeing the Palatial Temple and foreign power desiring the vast tracts of untouched Tianci land.

  Where blades were already sharpened against sitting allies and national treaties pre drafted from political think tanks now would come the panic and fear of an unknown variable. But once the realization and shock that the usually conquering Ensolian Imperium had taken such an incredibly subtle route of action subsided, then the real danger would start to emerge.

  It was rumored that the Amorian Republic, whose nobility was long ago stripped of their official capacities for governance, was planning to marry off its first princess to Zai in some reaching attempt at making peace with an old enemy. They were, after all, dealing with what was now a military payroll crisis and one less possible invasion front to worry about (and pay for) could be critical.

  If the Amorian Republic, the Axial foothold in the Ensolian continent, could be made allies; then the Dominion could begin to rebuild.

  And, even more obviously from the Xiaoshan State, was the marriage hand of a daughter of one of their Governor-Generals. Ayame Tetsuyama, for one, was a distinct possibility for the Crown Prince. A childhood acquaintance of Zai’s who was conveniently the daughter of the Governor’s family — A family that was rumored to be turning a blind eye to the smuggling of weapons from Amoria into the countless resistance groups in the state. If he had married her, then it would basically have equated to a marriage to the defeated exiles of the Apostasy Wars.

  If Xiaoshan and its neighbors could be brought under control, then the Dominion could stabilize itself once more.

  But now that his hand belonged to Sophia Elise the Eighth of the Ensolian Imperium… it was all a moot point.

  She would quickly come to dispose of him, politically or physically, and take beneath the Imperial banner an entire nation without firing a single shot. How this young woman, who was carefully picking through her meal, would be the one to sink the proverabal or literal dagger into Zai’s chest.

  And there was nothing he could do about it.

  So as the Crown Prince of Tianci ate his own cooking slowly, he hoped that despite everything, his realm would be alright. He hoped that in his short absence/exile here in Port Azuru, and in the months or years to come it wouldn’t all fall apart without him.

  "Opportunity cost is the value of the best alternative you give up when making a choice."