The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 665: Sending Them Home

The next morning marked the final day that the majority of the Royals would be in Wistover, according to the veiled maids, when they woke Dominic at first light.

The King would be departing with the Crown Prince, Princess Elanor and Prince Alex, leaving only Prince Russel behind, as he had been assigned to remain in Wistover to represent Royal interests in the new Alliance Bank.

As such, Dominic braced himself for the inevitably tearful and borderline extortionate attempt to remain behind that Princess Elanor was likely to make, in order to stay with her sister and out of the influence of the Capital’s event planners.

"Is there any other news that I should be aware of before we head down?" Dominic asked, accepting a clean shirt as he stepped out of the shower.

"Your new investigative team will not be at breakfast. Gordie, Alistair and Lord Blackwell were all working until just a few hours ago, investigating leads into the group that has been inquiring about you.

I don’t know what they might have found yet, but they were getting updates.

Sir Nallon of Shersdonia also intends to depart first thing this morning, but he will be accompanying a Merchant Guild caravan overland.

The rest of the Knights will be departing at some point during the day, likely in a group. We have arranged for them to meet with one of the mages from the Duskblade Sect who will open a portal if they need one.

We consider it a service of the Duchy, as they’re not charging for the effort as they normally would.

Other than that, we have noticed an unusually large grain crop in the last few days.

I was speaking with the bakery, the city’s largest flour customer, and they mentioned that the influx has decreased the price, so they have been stocking up.

You may wish to accelerate those plans to have more granaries built.

However, there should have been more of them here in Wistover to begin with, shouldn’t there? Even a small town as Wistover had been at that time would have needed them with the number of pulse crops they produced."

Dominic nodded. "There were more, and a potato barn underground. They were destroyed during or just after the attack. The same is the case all over the former Wavemates lands.

Other than in a few of the larger cities, all the granaries were destroyed to mark that they had been emptied by the army.

Any that survive now were mostly rebuilt by the locals after the battle."

"In that case, I will inform the infrastructure team when they arrive with their reports that it is of the highest priority.

There should be more documents waiting for you in your office."

"There always are." Dominic agreed.

How he had ended up volunteering for a life of paperwork was beyond him, but Dominic was beginning to strongly empathize with the Princesses and their obsession with going monster hunting.

It was a wonderful way to work off frustrations.

Dressed in his finest silk shirt, Dominic escorted Alexis to breakfast, presenting the perfect image of domestic harmony and Noble grace.

It was mostly a show, but to the majority of the nobles present, it was not their appearance that mattered, but the casually intimate affection they showed which was the cause for envy.

For the King, it was a reminder of life before the stress of the throne wore everything down to routine.

For the majority of the others, it was a reminder that they were still single.

But for Prince Russel it was a painful reminder that he was out of bed entirely too early when he could have been sleeping next to his wife, had his father and brother not decided to leave at an ungodly early hour of the morning.

His hangover was not cooperating with this schedule.

Everyone took their seats, ready to say goodbye. But the moment that the food was brought out, Alexis immediately felt queasy and rushed from the room, flanked by a pair of maids and followed by two of the Royal Guards.

"Dave!" Dominic called, bringing a pair of the Trolls in.

"Boss?"

"Check the food again, something set off the Princess. It smells fine to me, but another purification spell shouldn’t hurt anything."

"Got it boss."

The King frowned. He also had purification magic, and a detection amulet that would alert him if there were spoiled ingredients or poison in the meal.

Not that he expected either from Beth’s kitchen.

But he hadn’t gotten any warning, and if the food smelled fine to the Dragonkin, the issue was more likely to be with Alexis than the meal.

For a few tense minutes, he seriously considered delaying his departure, or perhaps instituting a quarantine for an unknown virus.

Then, the leader of Alexis’ Royal Guard team came back out smiling.

"Your Majesty, please rest assured that the meal is fine. The Princess’ current state was not caused by the meal, but by Lord Dominic."

The King glared at him as the wheels slowly turned in everyone’s heads.

Dominic had caused the Princess to become ill at the first sign of food? What sort of curse was that? And why would he...

OH!

The Princess was pregnant.

That was most definitely Duke Dominic’s fault, and explained the situation perfectly.

Her state was confirmed by Millie the Garden Witch, whose magic was perfectly attuned to such things, but arrangements were made to have a midwife with suitable magic brought in for confirmation.

This would be the first heir to the Duchy, as well as being a grandson to the King.

Technically, Princess Alexis had married out of the Royal Family to join the Wavemates Family, but that didn’t change the King’s love of grandchildren.

There was only one person in the room not celebrating this morning’s glorious news.

Princess Elanor.

She was about to be dragged back to her studies and her boring daily life just as things were finaly getting interesting here.

"Father, perhaps I might remain behind a while? To provide moral support to my dearest sister in her time of need. My Royal Tutors are already here, my studies won’t suffer." She began quietly, while the King smiled indulgently at her.

The timing was perfect, he was riding the wave of bliss that came with news of a grandchild.

Unfortunately for her, the King had heard this news many times before, and was not as soft as he once was.