Page 29 of Knowing Trust

“Before we get started, I know too many of you have made comments or had opinions on how much our future queen eats,” she said as she addressed the large group gathered. “I would suggest you cease that practice. Fairies in general use all of our meetings as a chance to eat and fuel up our magic. Going forward, if you feel the need to slander our ways, we will retaliate.”

“And you won’t be invited to the next meeting,” Neldor added. “Including your aides, guards, and everyone else you leak information to and pass whispers around like children instead of having the guts to say it directly to us or on the record.” He stared everyone down without fear. “I will also be doing the same.”

“You are?” I asked, glancing at him. “I’m doing it because… I forgot.”

He snorted, but all the fairies with us seemed amused as well. “Because of your large power jumps and the healers want to see how high you can push for the waking of fairies tomorrow. I am doing the same. Plus, the studies of protein powder and other options to help us have concluded.”

“Really? How did it go?” I asked.

“Well. Very well, Your Highness,” Calarel answered. “I apologize that we couldn’t get a meeting with you before this one to tell you, but hopefully we can have a quick one after this. We have several surprising findings.”

“Good. Well done,” I praised. “And the next steps?”

“To test which we like and with what,” Neldor answered. “Which we’re doing during this meeting as we suspect it will be a long one.” He snorted when I sighed.

Meaning that people were going to be babies about shit to annoy us.

“And I am doing some other training tomorrow, so I need to fuel up to my max capacity as well.”

“Glad we have a plan.” I handed him a potato.

“Just one?” he asked, looking disappointed.

“Fine, but get me more tomorrow. I was really craving them.”

“They are excellent,” he agreed, asking specifically for the BBQ meat-loaded one.

I sighed and ended up losing all but two of my potatoes as I gave them over to the other commanders as well. I didn’t even like some of them, and I fell for their pout faces like my cute dogs.

Jerks.

Still, I was glad because they were going to handle this meeting for me.

It was all of the councils and dragon royals gathered at our invitation to discuss the weather crystals and our sharing of them.

“We are not just giving them over,” Shael said loudly and firmly when someone immediately interjected and demanded we cut this “showboating” and just give them over if we had something needed for their world. “Enough. Stop trying to bully our future queen and her advisors because she is young and female.”

“Do it again and we will end the talks,” Onas cut in, dipping his head to Shael that he would take over. “Or simply exclude your group.”

“And we can’t just give them over,” I said firmly. “It’s fairy magic only able to be used by fairies like our runes. Unless some of you want to admit to unlocking our magic from items you have illegally procured and shouldn’t be in your possession? Please, tell me you have.”

Neldor snorted and kept eating.

“Plus, we’re not going to be blamed when some of you undoubtedly abuse this miracle to try and make our leader look bad,” Onas added. “So enough or this meeting is over.”

“And that would upset several parties here,” King Fergus warned, his tone cold. “We have had record heats in Europe and much of our infrastructure is not set up for air conditioning. Droughts and—even cutting through the worst of it now and again is something that could help our whole world, huge parts of which is on fire. Enough of the selfishness!”

Glad I wasn’t the only one tired of the crazy.

The problem was balance and how to really work this out. Several of the councils wanted to be the gatekeepers of this.

Except there was still a lot of corruption, so that would be a bust.

But we weren’t about to let just any Alpha or leader come demanding use of them from us like we were their personal magic. They needed to be respected better than that.

People started debating, and I was glad when the protein shakes started. In typical bottomless pit fashion, we were just all sharing.

I thanked the fairies who handed me a piece of paper with everything typed out. I looked over it and was pleased to see this was being taken so seriously. I was curious as to what it meant and how it would pan out, but it was simple enough to mark which ones I liked and write in any feedback I had.

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