In the aftermath of the engagement feast, the kingdom was in a precarious state. Not only had several high-ranking nobles and merchants ended up dead in the chaos, but the family of the noble girl that was supposed to marry the prince had withdrawn their support of the crown and pulled all of their assets out of the capital.
This lead to an economic crises the likes of which the kingdom hadn't experienced for over two hundred years. It affected everybody from the highest noble to the lowest commoner.
Nobody could escape its suffocating grasp.
Not even the royal family.
Within a month, a third of the castle's staff were let go. Within two, over half of them (including the guards) had lost their jobs. Within three, there was barely a quarter of the original staff remaining.
To be honest, Ira had been one of the very first ones to lose his job, but it wasn't like he was going to let that stop him. He kept on living in the servant's quarters regardless.
Somehow, nobody had caught him.
And he was essentially a trespassing homeless person.
Well, it was their loss. Quite literally. He kept on eating their food and using their stuff, after all.
As the months slowly trudged on, winter set in with an unrelenting chill. Fairly soon, nowhere was safe from the frankly biting cold and Ira did as the rest of the staff and burrowed into a pile of blankets to keep warm. He didn't have to, but he liked the sensation.
It was a little bit like those pillow forts he had read about.
With winter setting in and the economic crisis, a food shortage set in like a crashing tsunami. With a viciousness that the prince had never seen, food stores depleted rapidly until they hardly had anything left and were forced to import it from the neighboring kingdoms. Which effectively emptied out their coffins.
They did get a discount from their allied nations due to the sheer volume of food that they were buying, but even that didn't make a difference in the long run.
The country was broke.
In the midst of this brutal crisis, the mermaid princess lived a pampered life in the castle, kept ignorant of the outside world and its hardships. This was not, actually, entirely her own fault, but rather the fault of the prince who wished to "protect" her from the ugliness.
As such, she was not made of aware of exactly how dire the situation outside of her doors was.
Because of this, the constant pampering and the hiding of such an important thing, she spent more money then the kindgom had collectively, ate and wasted more food than an entire city and was generally despised by the servants and maids still employed. It only took them a few days to start dividing up the leftovers of her large, fancy meals between themselves to take home to share with their own starving families.
At this point, Ira didn't know if he pitied her or felt embarrassed for her.
Nonetheless, time was a singularly cruel thing and kept on moving.
By the time four months had passed since the engagement feast, his Host was only barely managing to hold onto her job. Unfortunately, due to the lack of staff, the workload had tripled and she had neither the time nor energy to be of use to the mermaid princess. The few times she wasn't the equivalent of a modern-day corporate slave persistently doing overtime with no pay, she was sending letters and small gifts to the nobleman she had a crush on.
Out of curiosity, Ira had checked up on him. The man was happily married to his childhood sweetheart and had had a pair of squishy twins just a few months ago.
Ira was really looking forwards to his Host getting her heart broken.
In addition to the food shortage was a looming civil war. The family of the noble girl and their supporters were disgusted with the prince and had rallied their troops when it became clear that a show of force was needed.
Again, the mermaid princess was unaware of all of the suffering she was causing. Not that she would care if she did know.
Currently, Ira was hiding out in the Queen's rooms from the cold winter, bundled up in a whole pile of blankets. On the other side of the bed sat the Queen herself, looking regal even while she was frowning at the cards in her hands and surrounded by more blankets than he could count. This had recently become a habit for them, he sneaked into her room and instead of throwing him out, she used him to complain to.
And she had a lot of complaints.
The fact was, that despite being technically the Queen, she didn't actually hold a lot of power of her own, as her husband — the former king — was dead and her son was now of age. This meant that when the prince tired of his mother trying to break up him and the mermaid princess in order to fix the mess he had made, he ordered her to stay out of the kingdom's affairs and forbid her from meddling.
Things rapidly took another turn for the worse after this. While the Queen might not have a lot of official power, she did have a lot of powerful connections, a personal wealth that shamed the prince's and a solid support network.
The prince had none of this.
The result was depressingly predictable. The country fell apart even faster, and without the Queen to negotiate with the noble girl's family, those relations just soured even quicker, as the prince was not even a little bit sorry for first cheating and then dumping her.
"All of your sevens."
Frowning, Ira stared at his cards and clicked his tongue when he found he had two of them. Unwillingly, he handed them over with nothing more than a grimace.
The Queen smiled as she received them. "Tens."
This time, Ira was the one to smile. "Go fish."
After she had picked up a card from the many still laying in between them on the bed, Ira stared down at his cards and thought it through. After careful deliberation, he said, "Fives."
"Go fish."
He narrowed his eyes but dutifully picked up a randrom card. A queen.
How fitting.
"All of your aces." the Queen said with a frankly scary intensity.
Grimacing again, Ira had over three of them. Then he promptly lost a four and three eights. And then two threes and two twos. Finally, she called a number he didn't have and he immediately demanded kings.
"Go fish."
Unwillingly, he picked up another card. It was a two. Before he could do something with it, he lost it.
The game ended, once again, in the Queen's favor. This is what happens when you don't cheat.
"Rematch." Ira demanded.
The Queen sighed and said, "I've won twelve times in a row. I don't think a rematch will do you any good."
"You never know." Ira stated tonelessly. "Luck is a factor as well."
"Yes," the Queen nodded in agreement. "but you don't have any."
In a huff, Ira threw the cards still in his hands down on the comfy bed and laid down on it. "It's just because I wasn't cheating. If I was, I'd win so fast you wouldn't have time to blink."
"But then I wouldn't play with you at all."
Sulking, Ira ignored her words of wisdom.
"So," the Queen started in a drawling voice. "how are things going between you and that gentleman?"
Furrowing his brow, Ira asked bluntly, "Who?"
The Queen leaned back against the head of the bed in her mountain of blankets. "The gentleman from the engagement feast?"
She positively spit out the last words.
Ira tilted his head sideways and stated. "There was no gentleman at the engagement feast."
"The man that kissed you."
"Ah... him." said Ira monotonously.
"You have no idea who I'm talking about, do you?" the Queen asked in an exasperated tone of voice.
Ira just shrugged his shoulders.
The Queen sighed again. She seemed to so a lot around him. "The man that fed you chocolate cake."
Nodding, Ira agreed. "Yes. He's a good kisser."
"I give up." said the Queen and closed her eyes. Ira wondered what she was giving up on but then realized that he didn't care.
"Another game?" he asked hopefully.
The Queen snapped out a tired sounding, "NO."
Shrugging his shoulders, Ira just closed his eyes as well. This was the best bed to nap on anyway.
The food crises was going badly. The prince was a young man that had had everything delivered to him and no sense of monetary value. The only job he'd ever had was as a captain in the kingdom's navy, and he hadn't even worked his way up to the position. He had no bright allies to help him — those were all dead — and no loyal friends to give aid —those had left him due to him breaking off his previous engagement of which they were family — and he had alienated his own mother.
Needless to say, he simply did not have the skill or knowledge to lead a starving nation. While he might have talent and he might have brains, he did not have the corresponding experience and so kept on making small mistakes with lead to big consequences.
When he tried to get cheaper prices importing food from neutral or enemy nations, he got ripped off and got bad products. When he tried to negotiate with the noble girl's family, he was too unreasonable and refused to compromise. When he tried to fix the economy, he gave aid instead of jobs, which helped nobody in the long run.
The prince might be the protagonist of the story, but he was also unreasonably stubborn.
It kind of killed the attraction.
During the many months following the engagement feast, Ira had met up with the former merman — who was now apparently a merchant in another country? — about once a month.
They usually met up at an old house that the former merman seemingly owned in the city below the castle, and while it wasn't as comfortable as the castle, there was still something appealing to it for Ira. It might have to do with the large collection of books from all over this world that the merman kept collecting for him.
It also might have something to do with the distance from idiotic mortals.
Who could tell, right?
Regardless, Ira quite enjoyed their secret rendezvouses, mostly because it felt like he was in a story and it was amusing. He especially enjoyed the feeling of being alone with the former merman, even if he didn't quite know why.
He had fun and there was something pleasant burning in his chest when he spent time with him. That was all he needed to know.
Having a friend was a novel sensation, but it was proving quite enjoyable.
Not that he was going to go out of his way to make more friends. That required way too much energy.
No, having one friend who wasn't also a work-colleague was more than enough for him.
Any more than that and he'd start killing people.
Literally.
Due to his regular outings to the world of commoners, he saw more of the devastation than he cared to. It wasn't that it bothered him (in fact, it amused him) but they kept on asking him for money or food and eventually he got sick of it.
And besides, it wasn't like he had either. He either stole it from the castle or got it from his former merman.
So he told the former merman to throw some money at them or something, because lately they had been getting really touchy-feely and the kingdom was about to have a massacre on its hand.
That would be the kind of thing that would dock his pay, unless in a world where such actions were acceptable.
And yes, such worlds did exist.
Humans were such a troublesome species.
Why did they have to insist on having so many kids?