Dinner went relatively smoothly until the dessert course was served, and the Queen noticed the friendly laughter and smiling from the children's table where Princess Rue was seated.
In her mind, that would never do.
She was about to speak up, but the King's expression caught her attention. He looked pleased with the situation, and he had always had a soft spot for that particular Princess.
Sothing had to be done.
A brief ssage to the older Princes, her own sons, set the stage. Today, the brat wouldn't escape without humiliation. No bastard child was going to suddenly make a run for heir. Not on her watch.
[The Queen needs to work on being subtle. Even the King has noticed her open scheming.] Cara laughed as a pair of older boys stopped a server to add sothing to the dessert trays headed for the kids table.
For a mont, she seriously considered pretending to be poisoned by whatever they had sent over, just to watch everyone's reactions when they realized that a pair of Princes had poisoned a foreign emissary.
But when the maid arrived at the table, she was very insistent on which dessert went to Princess Rue, and then remained after serving, as if to be certain that she actually ate it.
That just made it even easier on Cara, who had already sniffed out the magic.
[It's the opposite of that potion that Cara got from the new demons. It gives you mana poisoning if you eat it.] She inford Karl.
[Are you going to nullify it?] He asked, curious what her approach was.
[Nope. I'm going to eat it. I've never been mana poisoned.]
The question was how to do it without causing a scene.
The dessert for the Princess was slightly fancier than the ones for any of the other kids at the table, so it was clearly intended specifically for a mber of the Royal Family.
Simply snagging it would be poor manners.
So, the obvious answer was deception.
"You get a different flavour? Are you allergic to one of the ingredients?" Cara asked the Princess, using her best 'curious and innocent' tone, but a regular conversational volu that would carry to the other tables.
Rue shook her head. "It should be the sa, they just make one fancier, so the Royals know what one has been double-checked."
Cara smiled, and the Nobleman sitting next to Karl leaned over to whisper to him.
"Shouldn't we stop this before it gets out of hand?"
Karl shook his head slightly. "No, let it play out, my associate has already identified the additive and I can reverse the effect. I just want to see their reaction when that cake doesn't make it to its intended recipient.
Besides, isn't this scheming just a bit too obvious?"
Honestly, none of them would have noticed if Cara hadn't pointed out that one slice of cake was not the sa flavour to her senses, and that the ingredients were different.
It should just have a bit more icing on top.
But now that it had been openly announced, everyone in the room was discretely taking notice.
Everyone, that was, except the kids at the table, who hadn't realized that it was a poisoning attempt, and not the Princess getting a special cake. Secret special cake, at that.
"Princess, would you like to switch? I've got an extra big slice." One of the boys suggested.
Rue stared at him suspiciously. Cara had said that it was a new flavour of cake, which ant it might be better.
But he had more cake.
"Halfsies?" She suggested.
The boy nodded eagerly, and waved over a maid to cut each slice in half to share them.
The look on the Queen's face nearly made Cara laugh out loud and ruin the whole ga. But the Princes who had actually done the poisoning were stone faced, as if completely unconcerned about the fallout, or exceptionally skilled at hiding their emotions.
"One mont please, Princess. We will send for a knife." The maid agreed.
Cara gave her a twisted smirk, as her scars caused her face to curl up on that side naturally, and the maid knew that she was done for.
"Forgive , Highness. We will take them to the kitchen to split them evenly and put them on fresh plates. Please wait."
Karl laughed quietly as the maid left the room, and he heard the sound of dishes clattering into a garbage can, followed by running feet.
"Not as confident as she seed at the start. But the real chaos is about to start
if those cakes aren't replaced." He joked.
Cara was thinking the sa thing, and held off on starting her own dessert. If there was no more cake coming, she would share. But she was interested to see if soone would try the sa stunt twice in one al.
The first thing that Cara noticed when the cake ca back was that while there were two narrow slices on each of the plates as expected, they were not from the sa cake as the first ones.
They were the sa flavour, but the pattern on the edge was different. They had attempted to make every cake served at dinner the sa, but no two cakes were identical.
It was a sha that Hawk wasn't here to see it. He had beco quite the foodie since he got the skill to enhance his at roasting skills.
The new maid looked relieved when Cara sniffed delicately, but didn't object to the new cake.
That was the first test that they had to pass, and the senses of a Mythic Beast were too keen to get much of anything past them. Why the Queen had forgotten that, they didn't know.
Or she might not have cared. She was used to getting away with anything that she did, and acting with impunity because she had married into the throne. There were rumours about what she had done to get to the top of the contender list, but the fact remained that she had given the King four healthy clutches, and she held imnse political power.
Power that was making her look increasingly unhinged. If the King didn't act soon, soone else would certainly use it against him.
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