The foreign visitors slowly dissipated over the following week but before they did Al and I still had to keep up appearances as 'important' members of the royal family. We hardly had a moment to ourselves. The small talk was really starting to get to me.
The only somewhat interesting part of all this was seeing Mariela's reaction to the delegates from Shibatsu. The king had sent over one of the warrior members of his royal cabinet, who apparently knew Mariela well, and the second prince Jondein. While she seemed very happy to see her brother her reaction towards the cabinet member was odd. If I didn't know any better I'd say it looked like a meeting of exes after a relationship didn't end well.
Come to think of it, I didn't know much about Mariela's life before she became a princess of Annalaias. She typically used generalities when talking about the people she knew back in her homeland.
