Meet You When the Night Ends - Chapter 10

As Leticia had hoped, the morning paper headlines were not decorated with the news of Les Kishir’s suicide. Instead, they had found a rather lurid topic to cover in each and every newspaper.

[Shocking! Princess Leticia gets rejected by her brother’s lieutenant!]

[Exclusive coverage: The man who rejected Princess Leticia’s hand or her brother’s deputy? Who in the world is Les Kishir?]

[The decline in royal authority: Even fallen nobles are rejecting the royal family!

[Is this the end of Princess Leticia’s habit of taking men?]

Leticia gathered all of the morning papers that had been piled up on the desk and threw them in the fireplace, imagining that each burning page was the face of one of the reporters that had written up this nonsense and called it a news article. She grabbed the poker and fiercely prodded at the scraps of paper. The moment she had dragged Les Kishir into her bed, she had forgotten all about the flashes of cameras that had surrounded her in the banquet hall after her first encounter with him.

“Do they really have so little to write about that they would put THAT out as an article? This is an invasion of privacy. I will sue them for contempt for the royal family!”

The princess’ rant hardly garnered any sympathy from the chief secretary, Tesira Jarden, who slowly sipped at the tea that she had poured for herself. Many replies passed through her mind like, “You brought this upon yourself”, “I knew this would happen eventually” or “Take this opportunity to fix your habit of sleeping around as you please.” But not wanting to lose favour with the princess for saying things that she would never listen to anyways, she decided to stay quiet.

“Well, it’s been pretty peaceful these days, they need something exciting to write about.”

“That’s not an excuse! My father decorated five officers. Why don’t they write about that?”

“That’s why they wrote it. Les Kishir not only received an award from the King of Saint Mi Catella, he also turned down the Princess in front of—”

“That is not what happened!”

The photo on the front page of the morning papers had been a bit too decisive for her to be able to deny it, but once more Tesira wisely kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to provoke the princess who signed her pay-checks and put her purchase of the long-awaited limited-edition shoes in peril.

The princess put the poker down only after the morning papers had burned down into mere particles, and paced back and forth across the room before suddenly raising her head.

“Did any letters arrive this morning? Was there anything for me, a memo, telegram or whatever?”

“Um…there were a lot from reporters, of course. Oh! And an exceptional interview request came from the ‘Lanstein Daily’ who swear they don’t write gossip—” she back-tracked at the look on the princess’ face. “But of course, you wouldn’t be interested in that.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t. But there must have been more than that, right? I saw Emery come in with a whole bunch today.”

“Yes, yes! I’m on the verge of asking for extra wages just to read through all those; from Ms. Everton on behalf of the clubhouse members inviting you to join them for brunch—”

“Not that! Ah, while we’re on the subject, don’t ever let those people into this place unless I say so, especially Cersei Jose, that brat.”

“Just tell me whose letter you’re waiting for—” Tesira started responding in an annoyed manner because the princess kept beating about the bush but stopped short as a realization hit her like a meteorite in the back of her head.

She suddenly stood up from her seat, knocking her chair back.

“Princess, did you sleep with him?”

“Huh?” Leticia’s eyes flitted from side to side.

“No! No way! No matter how much you would try to sleep with any person wearing pants, I believed in you!”

“Hey, what do you mean?! My standards are very high!”

“No, that wasn’t what I wanted you to deny!”

Holding her dizzy head in her hands, Tesira sat back down. Even without her saying anything definitive, she could guess exactly how everything went down last night. The princess had slept with Les Kishir. Considering her usual behavior, it honestly shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. If she had really been turned down in front of the public, it would have lit a fire in her and she would have chased that person down. There really weren’t many men who could deny a princess who was determined to sleep with them.

If this was all, Tesira would have simply thought of it as half-pathetic and half awe-inspiring, but that wasn’t it. This was a man who had somehow received a medal from the king despite rumors that he had leaked confidential information to the enemy and gotten his entire troop destroyed for it. With the military refusing to comment and the royal family never having issued an official statement, there were thousands of speculations going all around the place. And on top of that, if the princess were to get involved with this man…

“Princess, did you think about the fact that some people might think that your unrequited love for this man might have caused you to intervene in his military trial and manipulate your parents into awarding him a medal?”