A bit useless - or at least unnecessary.
Something Victoria had struggled with most of her life. As the youngest child of a king, and a daughter at that, then the youngest sibling of another king, she felt like she was seen bymany as an add-on, an afterthought. The odds of her becoming influential in her own country were somewhere between slim and none.
It would be different in Dellisole, though that wasn't why she'd married Enzo.
It wouldprobablybe different, she amended mentally.
She'd seen enough of her mum's life to know there were still people who thought a queen consort was only good for ensuring the king had heirs. Not for having a mind of her own or impacting society in a positive way, only a negative one if she found herself involved in scandals.
It was one of the reasons she'd left Southern Santiero.
And now it was part of her life in Dellisole.
Wonderful.
As soon ashe walked into the observation room, Enzo knew something was off about his wife.
He didn't know her well enough to put his finger on exactly what it might be, but he knew something definitely bothered her.
Before he could investigate what it might be, Jeanette and Madeleine noticed his arrival. Almost immediately, he was drawn into a conversation with them detailing their investigations to that point in the day.
It really amounted to... nothing.
There had been a couple of anomalies, but nothing more than what turned out to be slight record keeping errors.
As Enzo spoke with them, he watched Victoria out of the corner of his eye. She sat perched on a bar stool of sorts and had a device out, staring intently at it.
He couldn't tell for certain, but he thought it was her larger ereader, the one she could write on. Was she reading a book? Studying their history?
No. That seemed unlikely as she used the pencil to make a couple of notations on it before she erased something then made another note.
Something Jeanette said moved his attention back to his discussion with them. There were several things she suspected might have been of interest to the now-disgraced historian, but the initial cursory inspection hadn't revealed anything questionable. A more in-depth investigation had been started, but likely wouldn't be completed for a couple of days. The most experienced historians and experts were working in those areas while others were divided among the rest of the artifacts.
Once their conversation with him ended, Jeanette and Madeleine left the room.
Enzo moved to Victoria's side, kissing her cheek gently as one hand came to rest on her upper back. "How are you? You were still sound asleep this morning."
She gave a one-armed shrug. "Fine."
He looked down to see what she was working on. It shocked him to see a grid with a bunch of numbers, but he didn't immediately recognize it. He felt like he should know, but it escaped him. "What is that?"
"Sudoku." She didn't look up at him or expand further. Instead, she flipped the pencil upside down and erased some small numbers in the corner of one of the squares. After flipping it back she wrote a large 9 before tapping on a box in the corner. That brought up an answer page. It seemed that she only checked that one square because it changed back quickly.
As much as he wanted to know why she was doing the puzzle, Enzo suspected it would be better to hold his questions for later. "I've never played it. Can you show me sometime?"
She nodded. "Sure. When we have time."
Time was something that would often be hard to come by.
He didn't move his hand, but watched as she studied the grid, writing multiple small numbers in each empty box before erasing them and putting a single number in the box and checking it against the answers. As the grid filled in, it seemed to go faster until there were four boxes left. After staring at them for a long time, she finally put the pencil back in the holder along the side.
"There's no way to tell for sure which one goes where." She didn't elaborate on why that might be. After flipping the cover closed, Victoria slid off the stool. "I'll be back in a minute." She leaned up to kiss his cheek this time.
"I need to get back to my office. I'll see you later?"
Rather than kissing her cheek, he gave her a soft, real one. Together, they left the observation room, but went their separate ways as soon as they did.
Once back in his office, Enzo found himself immersed in all of the things he needed to accomplish. Meetings in person. Meetings over the phone. Meetings over video chat.
