Chapter 206: Weight in Gold
"I heard you robbed us dry."
Soleia stiffened at her work desk before hurriedly spinning around. As she did, she spread out her arms and quickly gathered the papers on the desk, determined not to let any wandering eyes see their contents. When she saw Prince Ricard leaning against the doorframe, she rolled her eyes and scoffed, the puff of air that left her lips causing her fringe to fly as a result.
"Your Highness," she lazily greeted as she turned back to her work, gathering all the pieces of parchment into one neat stack, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Well, after how you cleared out the royal treasury, I was interested to see if you had made any developments over the course of the last few days," Ricard said with a laugh. He kicked off the doorframe and straightened up, a bright smile on his lips.
"That’s an exaggeration," Soleia said. "I barely made a dent. If the royal treasury can be cleared out by a single woman, then you might wish to make a bank deposit rather than build such an impractical dungeon just to store two shelves of semi-precious stones."
"Well, it was most certainly not the case, according to Minister Goldstein," Ricard replied as he sauntered over to the desk. "You ought not to scare the poor little old man like that. He’s getting on with his age, risky with heart attacks."
Right as he placed a hand on the table to support his own weight, Soleia packed away the last of her research papers, perfectly out of Ricard’s sight.
His smile widened.
Soleia, on the other hand, lazily looked up at him with a raise of her brow.