When Lilyca pulled her feather hoodie off, Rinne felt like he had been hit by a meteor.

Yes. A full, extinction-level, world-reshaping meteor of the kind that fell from the sky once every few million years and rearranged the entire landscape on impact.

His brain stopped. His lungs stopped. His heart stopped and restarted at a completely different tempo.

It felt like he had never seen any single thing more beautiful in his entire ten years of life.

The black hair, the silver-white eyes, the small, solemn face that seemed to hold secrets older than mountains... The way the light caught her features as the hood fell away, illuminating her like a figure in a stained-glass window, like something holy that had wandered out of a temple and into his father’s sitting room.

He had been in a daze ever since. His mouth had fallen open at some point, and he had not noticed. The entire world had narrowed to the space occupied by this strange, feathered girl, and Rinne Dawnoro had simply... stopped functioning.

Until Cecilia nudged him.

It jolted him back into his body, making him turn to Cecilia, and he remembered that he had seen something equally beautiful before.

Of course, it was this mother of his.

She was... ahem, also beautiful. How could he forget? Ahem.

He closed his gaping mouth. "Yes, Lord Mother?"

Oh, thank God, his voice came out mostly normal. Mostly.

"How about you escort Miss Lilyca for a little tour?" Cecilia suggested.

"Tour?" Rinne blinked. "Where?"

In the distant, mortifying future where he would look back on this moment and cringe so hard his soul briefly vacated his body, he would remember how dumb he sounded.

Tour? Where? Well, take her out, dummy! Walk! Snack! Whatever!

"Take off the feather costume and get her to rest. Go on." Cecilia gestured with her chin gently toward the door.

Rinne immediately stood upright, his spine snapped straight and his shoulders squared. "Yes. Copy."

Cecilia turned to Arkai. And Arkai, who had been watching the entire exchange with the pained expression of a father witnessing his son’s first crush unfold in real time, immediately looked away.

He was experiencing secondhand embarrassment so intense it was almost physical. His wolf ears were pressed flat against his head, and his tail, curled behind him, gave a single, awkward twitch.

But also—

Did he look like that when he first saw Cecilia? Was that why Oathran had realized so quickly? Had the Dragon Lord taken one look at Arkai’s meteor-struck expression and thought ah, future wife-slave-bro?

Forget it. He resolved never to ask.

Meanwhile, Rinne awkwardly escorted Lilyca out of the room, leaving the adults alone. The door clicked shut behind them, and the sudden quiet of the corridor felt very loud. He cleared his throat.

"Ah, um—" He had not planned anything to say at all. His brain, which had been doing such a good job of recovering from the meteor strike, had apparently decided to take another break. "Rinne, call me, you see."

He did not know what was coming out of his mouth. The sentence had the general shape of an introduction, like call me Rinne, but the words had arranged themselves in an order that made no sense.

He could not remember what he had just said one second ago either. He was floating in the cosmos, untethered, and the cosmos was shaped like a girl with silver-white eyes.

"Hello."

Lilyca smiled.

Rinne’s brain melted irreversibly. There was nothing left but a puddle of warm, pink goo where his higher functions used to be.

"My name is Lilyca. You can call me anything. Lily. Lyca. Luca. Caca. Acylil." She listed the names. "Those are what people usually call me."

"Nobody calls you that last one..." Rinne said distantly. Dreamily. He was still floating somewhere in the upper atmosphere and had not yet come down. "It is silly..."

Lilyca giggled.

It was like a bell rung underwater, like the first birdcall of spring. It hit Rinne somewhere in the chest and ricocheted around his ribcage, and he knew that he would remember this sound for the rest of his life.

He blinked and showed her the way, his feet moving on autopilot, his body remembering how to walk even though his mind had checked out entirely.

And then, because his brain had apparently decided that today was a day for asking the dumbest possible questions, he opened his mouth again.

"Did you come from the same planet as Lord Mother...?"

In the long, merciless hindsight of years to come, he would recognize this as perhaps the single stupidest thing he had ever said to a girl he had just met.

Did you come from the same planet as Lord Mother? What does that even mean?!

"Huh?" Lilyca tilted her head as she followed him, her black hair swaying with the motion, her silver-white eyes blinking in confusion. "Is Lesser Goddess an alien?"

***

Back in the room the kids had just left, Cecilia sighed.

"Why do you want me to have the Saintess Candidate, Your Highness?" she asked the woman seated across from her.

Ivy smiled, no less radiant, but more earnest. It looked like she was ready to be honest. "Because we, Cassia, want to have a good relationship with you, Your Majesty."

Huh?

Cecilia blinked behind her veil. She had assumed somewhere along the way that they already had a somewhat good relationship.

You know, through Damon, who had been Ivy’s almost-fiancé and was still clearly tangled up in the Cassian orbit. Through Roarke, who worked for the Twins and had been loyal to them for years. Through Cassian’s Prime Minister, Qinryc Lukas, her elixir’s biggest distributor...

Not to mention the frozen riverbank, where they had reached an understanding, however tenuous. Was that not enough?

"You said you had something set in place," Ivy continued. "When we talked at the riverbank, you implied that you have a vision you preferred for this world. A plan. A design. And we, Cassia," she paused, her eyes meeting Cecilia’s veiled gaze, "we want in on that."

Ah.

They wanted to be included. To be part of whatever Cecilia was building. Not merely allies or contacts. They want to be insiders, stakeholders in the future she was shaping.

Again, it was not that Cecilia did not want their help or involvement. She did. She had always intended to bring the Cassian Twins into her fold eventually.

Their resources were vast, their intelligence network rivalled Angela’s, their motivations aligned with her own. But just like what had happened today, their movements were still so unpredictable.

Again, wild cards. Wild cards were difficult to plan around.

She turned to Damon, and Damon looked back at her, equally speechless.

"You found the Saintess Candidate. You have also sponsored her so far," Cecilia said, turning back to Ivy. "Princess, you have the right to keep that credit for yourself. Not to mention," her gaze flicked toward the door through which Lilyca had just departed, "you must not betray Miss Lilyca’s trust by offering her to someone else."

"But as you can see, Lilyca even called you Lesser Goddess." Ivy insisted. "What does that mean?"

It could mean many things. It could mean that Lilyca had consented to being offered. It could mean that Lilyca had volunteered, that the voices in her head had told her where she needed to go and who she needed to serve.

"This is not something you need to do to be on my side, Your Highness." Cecilia narrowed her eyes, seeing the desperation.

"Then," Ivy leaned forward, "what do I need to do?"

Cecilia shrugged. "Marry Damon, and we will talk."

"Deal." The word came out of Ivy’s mouth before Cecilia had finished her sentence.

Cecilia froze.

Then, everyone looked at either Damon or Magnus.

"What?" Damon raised both hands. Man had been volunteered for something without his consent. Again. "She is the one speaking!"

Meanwhile, Magnus shrugged, mirroring Cecilia’s earlier gesture. "I do not mind. As long as Ivy cheats with me once in a whi—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa—" Damon’s hands rose even higher, as though he were trying to physically ward off the suggestion. "Whoa!"

"I was kidding." Cecilia quickly said, amused. She turned to Damon, her veiled expression unreadable but her tone reassuring. "Myself and Angela already prepared Damon’s potential suitor. Someone who will help bring significant change to the world. For the better."

Damon let out a breath, long and shaky. What a relief. His sister and his sister’s friend truly had his back. He owed them. He owed them so much.

"Mm." Ivy hummed, sipping her tea. She looked at Damon over the rim of her teacup, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Emperors can have more than one wife, you kno—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Damon’s finger jabbed toward Ivy in warning. "Why are you trying to drag me into some sort of a... a... relationship rectangle?!"

"We call it a polycule these days," Cecilia murmured, half to herself. She made a mental note to research this concept further. A unique relationship dynamic outside of her own three-husband arrangement.

"The point is," Ivy set her teacup down with a soft clink. She looked straight at Cecilia, "—we will do anything to secure a pleasant relationship with you, Your Majesty. And when we say anything, we mean anything."

"Including becoming your barking pets ourselves," Magnus added.

DING!

[Capturable Love Interest detected! Would you like to roll for Five-Star Love Interest, Magnus Karas? You have 10 free rolls!]

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HUH?!

What the fu—