Chapter 103

"Please open it when you get back to Rene's palace, Your Highness — or better yet, at home—!"

As if Rene would ever wait that long. I tore into the gift immediately, and what tumbled out left me momentarily blank-faced before I slammed the lid back down.

I wasn't certain what they were, precisely, but they were without a doubt the so-called "devices for the passionate evenings of married couples."

"…Do the Tower Master and Vera know you make these things?"

I asked, somewhere between exasperation and disbelief. Every mage in the room nodded in perfect unison.

"The Tower Master was the one who suggested the idea."

…So behind that gentle, grandmotherly face lurked something altogether more formidable.

And now I found myself wondering: were the medicines she gave me actually safe? What if the sleepwalking cure was just a pretext, and she'd given me something entirely different?

A perfectly…