Moonlight Ball

Iris was well aware that people wanted a successor to the King’s ministry. The King’s younger brother, who was now the first in the line to the throne, was an imbecile. Rumors were widespread about how he lived like a scoundrel in his inconspicuous lands and only acted like a civilized man in the capital. Therefore, people wanted Sidrain to reign as king for a long time, and they wanted him to make a successor quickly so that the child would be next in line to the throne instead.

Eventually, Iris relaxed and laid her head on his muscular arm, which felt hard and rather uncomfortable. Staring at the ceiling blankly, her view was suddenly blocked by Sidrain’s face as he loomed over her and kissed her forehead, and her body reflexively became rigid.

“I won’t do anything you don’t like. I behaved stupidly earlier this evening. My Queen is so beautiful and sweet and I just lost my mind for a moment. But I’ll never make that mistake again,” Sidrain gently hugged Iris and stroked her shoulders. “Close your eyes, my Queen, so that you can get a good night’s sleep.”

Iris was concerned about what Sidrain might do as she laid there feeling vulnerable, but she closed her eyes nevertheless, feeling exhausted after the evening’s bizarre events.

Sidrain’s large hand gently patted her which reminded her of a time when her teacher patted her when she was very young. Every time he’d done that, she would feel safe and comforted and it didn’t matter where she was. Feeling nostalgic, she laid in the bed awkwardly; she just wanted that hand to pat her.

There was a time like that… “It smells good,” Iris murmured as she drifted off to sleep and Sidrain looked down at her pretty face, which had a faint smile on it. He wanted to kiss her and hug her and rip her clothes off, but someone managed to control his animalistic urges and kissed her face affectionately instead.

“Is it the scent of flowers,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Iris replied sleepily.

Sidrain pondered in the darkness, about how a lady who used to study magic, day and night. The magical scent of sleep was not widely known, but it was said that it was used by the Queen in the royal palace of this country. Sidrain had been exposed to so much of it since childhood, that he’d developed an immunity to it. But it was different for Iris and she fell asleep in an instant and he watched her bre*sts rising and falling, yearning to be closer to her. Distracting himself from his desires, he blew a whirl of air that removed all the scents in the room.

“Good night, Iris Elaine.” Sidrain kissed her on the forehead and closed his eyes.

The way her name rolled off of his tongue was as sweet as the scent but was incomparable to flowers and sleep. With his mind full of thoughts, Sidrain couldn’t fall asleep because his heart was pounding.

At the same time Elaine shouted his disapproval against Iris and Sidrain’s marriage, the latter was persuading Iris to trust him. But the two men overlooked one thing: Iris was a woman with free will.

***

Three places in the country had very good libraries: a university, the tower, and the royal palace. Iris stood in the exquisite library of the royal palace and giggled as she looked at a book that Rosemary would’ve discarded in a hurry! She read the title again, chuckling to herself, ‘Everything about pregnancy! From being pregnant to giving birth without getting sick and everything in between.’

It was a dishonest book, but the royal palace collected all kinds of books, and it caught Iris’s eye.

‘Chapter 1, How to Be Pregnant. Part 1: Precautions Before Relations.’ Washing the back of my neck clean? Iris didn’t understand the relevance of that but she continued reading, ‘How to practice bathing and how to pray to Ruthna, whose temple’s amulet works well.’

Iris’s slender white hand hurriedly turned the page and she tilted her head, baffled by what she was reading. She didn’t know much about the bathing world, but praying to Ruthna probably wouldn’t do any good, but the temple spirit would help.

Iris had once made a drug that could make someone pregnant. It was a potion that made life easier to create, but it was not an auxiliary potion that could cure infertility per se. There was a separate obstetrician for that. In the Empire, obstetrics was one of the most respected professions, and that was the work of the Matop. He was only talented in using and creating magic for medical purposes. The two were distinctly different.

Iris once tried to study medicine, but eventually gave up because she didn’t tolerate her departure from the first tower, and secondly, she preferred magic.

‘Part 2: Outpost of a relationship. How to encourage men who are struggling.’ She looked at the picture depicting a woman eating something, but she couldn’t fathom what it was. Iris hadn’t met a male narcissist since childhood, but of course, she knew that men had genitals. Her journey up until now never required her to have to think deeply about what a p*nis looked like. Tilting her head to the left, then to the right, and even looking at the book upside down, didn’t help her to figure out what it was. What is this strange sausage-like food that this woman is struggling to eat? Turning the page, to her shock and horror, she found the answer. Another picture revealed that it was a man standing in front of a woman, who was on her knees, with his p*nis in her mouth…