I Have Conditions

Adarian thought about it for a moment. He really didn't want Olivia to be that far from him. But it was true that Olivia Praxis had never picked out clothing for herself in this life, and he had no idea what kind of clothing Olivia Carter liked. He remembered his mother used to love shopping with her sister because his father 'had no taste.'

He really wanted Olivia to be happy. He thought about it and realized he had the perfect solution. There was a personal designer that the crown used. He knew that this designer was getting tired of only doing men's clothing and wanted to shine in women's fashion too. This designer had shown him some designs for his late wife, but those designs were not liked by her. She said they were obscene. He hadn't cared much then, but with Olivia he really wondered how she would look in those clothes.

But if Olivia was going to be away from him for a while, then he needed someone he could trust to protect Olivia and be by her side. He also decided that Olivia was going to have to learn to protect herself soon too. He didn't want her to ever be in a situation where she would have to use such knowledge, but if the time ever came, she would not harm herself trying to get away.

Adarian stayed silent while he deliberated. Olivia was almost certain he was going to say no. The longer he was quiet, the more certain she was.

"I have conditions," Adarian announced. Olivia looked up at him in shock. He agreed!?

"Name them," Olivia said curiously.

Fredericka looked curious as well. What would her little cousin want? Did he want to join them?

"One; Davier will be there to guard you. Two; You will use the Crowns personal Designer. Three; If your session is going to last past lunch, you will put everything on hold and join me for my lunch. Four; If your session continues on into the afternoon please notify me. And Finally; show me some of your decisions. I want to be excited about what you are going to wear too."

Olivia looked at him with veneration leaking out of her eyes. How was he so good to her? He didn't ask for anything unreasonable at all. She smiled, "I agree to those terms, but I want to add something."

Adarian looked at her bemused, "What do you want to add?"

"If our session continues on into the afternoon, and I send word to you about it. Come and join us if you aren't busy, and don't mind shopping." Then she added on. "-Then you can see what I chose first hand."

He smiled at her. "I agree."

"Don't forget that you will also need three major dresses; a wedding dress, a dress for the coronation, and a dress for the introductory ball that is to follow those two events."

Olivia almost forgot that she was going to need a wedding dress. She didn't know what his favorite color was, or if he had an ideal wedding planned out in his mind. Olivia knew weddings were just as important to the groom as they were to the bride. Unfortunately in modern times it seemed that a lot of men didn't seem to be able to make a lot of the decisions for the wedding. The bride made all the choices. At least that's how it was on television. She wasn't involved in any weddings first hand to know if that transferred over to reality as well. She didn't want her wedding to follow that pattern. She was going to need to have a serious talk with Adarian after dinner.

This time when eating dinner, Olivia tried to keep in mind all of the things Lady Lowenheim had taught her. She hadn't realized that they had convoluted everything so much that men and women even had to eat their food differently. Did they have to make everything so complex? Why was that even a thing?

If she had been transferred into a more modern novel she wondered if there would be different rules rich girls had to follow when eating. Somehow she doubted it. But she still wasn't certain. Mr. Carter had never said anything to her at all about her etiquette the few times he met with her. At least two of those times had been during meal time.

If he thought she wasn't doing something correctly, he scolded her for it. Mr. Carter expected perfection from his children. But she still didn't know if he actually considered her to be his child. He had never allowed her to meet her Brothers or her sister. She knew their ages. One brother was older than her by almost exactly two years. Their birthdays were nine days apart. Her sister was close to her in age, her sister was younger than her by almost seven months. Her other brother was younger than her by two and a half years.

She had remembered seeing them in a magazine talking about how they had the perfect family life. The husband and wife were so loving. The children had grown up all having a 4.0 GPA or higher. They were the perfect family. Of course the article left out that her father had stepped-out on that perfect family to sleep with a crazy woman, and had an inferior sickly illegitimate child. But she really didn't care much about it at the time. By then, she was used to him treating her as if she didn't exist. As long as she acted like she didn't exist, he would keep her mother in the psychiatric facility where she could get the help she needed.

She knew that her mother was better off in the Psych ward. Her mother was doing really well on the latest pills they had put her on. She even apologized to Olivia for the things she had done to her when she was little. She knew that if it wasn't for her, Olivia would not be so sickly as an adult. She admitted to being a terrible mother. Olivia didn't forgive her. But she had stopped being angry at her after a lot of therapy. She learned that it was ok to still feel the anger from all of that pain and suffering, but that she should not allow either her anger or her fear to rule her life.

She wished now that she could talk to her mom at least once. Just to let her know she was ok and having a much healthier life. She was finally going to fulfill her mothers wish for her to get married. She felt a little melancholy thinking about her mother.

She was just about to put some food into her mouth, and suddenly she couldn't move her arm any closer. She took the food off the fork and examined it closely. It was still silver.

Adarian had pure silver place settings any time ha and Olivia were eating, that was what was used. The silver would change color once it came into contact with poison. It made eating things that she hadn't witnessed being prepared easier.

Once she noticed there was no change in color to be seen anywhere she continued to eat. She hadn't noticed that both Lady Lowenheim and King Adarian had stopped eating while they watched her.

"Are you ok?" Adarian asked her.

She looked up at him and smiled, still chewing, she nodded.

'I'm fine, don't ask me something so weird.' Then she realized he must have seen her actions just now. 'Oops.' She swallowed quickly and took a drink of her water.

She cleared her throat, "Sorry," she said for worrying him. "I was lost in thought for a moment. But I'm fine now."

Fredericka looked at Olivia astonished. This was fine? What thought process did she have that made her think this was fine? Didn't she just check her fork for poison? What had she been thinking of that she suddenly checked for poison in the middle of her meal?

She had thought Adarian had taught her to check for poison at the beginning of each meal. Olivia had already checked for poison for this meal as well. She thought her cousin's paranoia about poisons had rubbed off on Olivia from the past few days.

But Olivia actually acted like the idea of herself being poisoned was normal? What kind of life makes you think that you could even be poisoned in the middle of a meal?

Adarian nodded and asked, "Is there a strange flavor?"