"Nice to meet you, Your Majesty," the young woman said. If you look closely, her dress exposes her navel and back.
"Nice to meet you too." Tristan scratched his head. He was confused about what to do.
During his ten years in prison, he had never interacted with women. Everyone in the prison was male.
Now he felt like a teenager who was new to women.
Would they sit on the bed or on the floor?
Then what would they do?
Tristan was not ready to bring that woman or any other woman onto his bed yet.
Tristan's heart was beating so fast. Then he realized something strange about himself. His elephant's trunk was not standing straight; it was tending to be limp!
"Oh, Gosh." Tristan suddenly panicked. "Am I impotent?"
If he was impotent, what made him like that? This was so embarrassing.
"Is it because I didn't see any women in prison?" That was the only reason Tristan could think of.
"Is Tristan Madigan the impotent one? But he's still young." Tristan was so dizzy that he ignored the young woman still standing in front of the door. "Or is he just not interested in the opposite sex?"
His eyes widened. His assumption could be right because Tristan Madigan had never liked women.
"Oh, shit. This can't be right." Tristan shook his head. "I have to be able to cure this disease without anyone else's help because this is so embarrassing."
Tristan nodded. He made a very good decision. Now he could relax a little.
"Your Majesty." The young woman, wearing a long, light blue sleeveless dress that exposed her navel and back, walked towards her king with her heart beating like a drum.
She smiled very widely and tucked her black hair behind her ear as she stood two steps in front of her king, who was staring at her sharply. "I will give you a wonderful night, Your Majesty."
Tristan swallowed for the umpteenth time. He had difficulty breathing, as if he were in a cramped room. He inhaled and exhaled through his mouth repeatedly so that his lungs would not run out of oxygen.
When the young woman with long black hair approached him again to close the distance between them, Tristan hurriedly stretched his hand forward to stop the young woman.
"Your Majesty." The young woman blushed, and she did not take a step back as Tristan had expected.
"Oh, Gosh." Tristan was shocked when he realized that his palm was on the woman's breasts, which were quite large!
Tristan cleared his throat. Slowly, lust stirred in his body, making him hot, but his elephant trunk did not react. If it was like this, he wouldn't be able to have fun with that young woman.
Aside from feeling embarrassed, this caused him to suffer. He never imagined that he would be impotent.
"We better just chat." Tristan sat on the floor and then put his elbows on the table and supported his chin with his palms.
"Sit down." Tristan told the young woman to sit in front of him. He had to be able to hide the illness he was suffering from. No one needed to know.
The young woman was confused. The innkeeper gave her the task of pleasing their king on the sheets. If the innkeeper found out that she failed to do it, she would be fired or her position would be lowered, and she would not be able to serve the officials anymore.
"Relax, I won't tell your boss," Tristan said.
If the young woman told her boss that they were just chatting, bad news about him would spread, but on the other hand, he also didn't want to be considered a king who liked to sleep with all women.
"How long have you worked at this inn?"
Tristan's question made the young woman even more confused.
"For five years, Your Majesty."
"May I know why you work to serve men's lust? I apologize if my words have offended you."
"It's okay, Your Majesty." The young woman shook her head with a smile. "I am no longer ashamed of my job." She said this without any sadness or regret in her eyes.
"It's a long story, Your Majesty," the young woman explained. "I will keep it short. A man who helped me when I was evicted by my aunt after my parents died sold me to this innkeeper because he needed money for his critically ill mother."
Tristan's jaw dropped. He pitied the young woman, but there was something that bothered him.
"You say the man helped you? He sold you." Tristan had no idea what the young woman was thinking.
"I lived with him and his mother for 7 years. Even though he sold me, he was still my savior." The young woman smiled, remembering those who had been kind to her.
Tristan frowned. The young woman had a beautiful face, a lovely smile, white and clean skin, and a tall and slender body. She had the ideal body that women in his previous life had dreamed of.
"Don't you want to find another job?" Tristan knew he shouldn't ask such a thing because he couldn't help the woman and her coworkers.
"When there are no customers or guests who want me, the innkeeper will kick me out. That's the rule." The young woman smiled broadly with teary eyes.
Tristan was at a loss for words. He hoped that the woman and all women who had the same fate as her could find a man who would accept them for who they were.
"I'm going to sleep. You stay seated, don't come near me." Tristan said it firmly. The young woman nodded with a confused face.
***
"Let's go back to the palace," Tristan said to his two knights as they finished breakfast.
He has nothing more to do in this region. He had already visited the couple sick with the dreadful disease and seen the locked border fence and hundreds of soldiers defending it.
"Please, I want to see my daughter."
Tristan was shocked when he found the woman who had begged him yesterday afternoon to help her get her daughter out of the brothel screaming in the front yard of the inn.
The four palace soldiers who were guarding him were gripping the woman's hands tightly.
"I can't do it." The innkeeper said it fiercely.
"Your Majesty, please help my daughter, she works at this inn." The woman with messy hair did not give up, asking her king for help.
Tristan's brows knitted together. Yesterday afternoon, the woman had said that her daughter was sold by her husband to a brothel. Why was she saying something different now?
"Your Majesty." The innkeeper and his assistant bowed to their king. They were surprised to find the king and his two knights standing behind them.
They were on the terrace, three meters away from the woman.
"I apologize, Your Majesty. I will resolve this matter quickly," said the stocky and bearded innkeeper.
"Please help my daughter, Your Majesty. She is 12 years old," said the woman, looking at her king with pleading and desperate eyes.
"What is your daughter's name?" The innkeeper was forced to respond to the woman. He could not order his subordinates to chase the woman away because the king was standing next to him.
Just as the woman mentioned her daughter's name, the innkeeper's assistant looked for the contract letter in the woman's daughter's name.
"Your husband sold your daughter to me because he couldn't pay his debt to me. Just so you know, your husband and his friends often come to this inn, and sometimes they don't bring money!" The innkeeper shouted angrily.
"If you want to take your daughter out of my inn, you must pay off the rest of your husband's debt." The innkeeper stared sharply at the woman, who was shocked by his words, and her tears flowed even more.
The woman did not know what her husband had done behind her back.
"At least let me see my daughter. We haven't seen each other for three months." The woman begged the innkeeper.
Tristan felt sorry for the woman and her daughter. He wanted to punch her husband. Why did so many poor men hire prostitutes, consume alcohol, and gamble?
Tristan remembered his father, who troubled him and his mother.
"Your Majesty," a soldier ran into the inn to see his king. When the king questioned what had happened, he replied, "We discovered a man infected with a purulent and red eye disease."