Durin made his way to the meeting room and found all the Gumis, the host, Mycon and Tykar sitting in their seats, waiting for him.
He noted with satisfaction that the chair reserved for the Great Pharaoh was empty. He sat down in it.
"The ice people demand our surrender." Mycon said, starting a heated discussion about what action should be taken against them, but Durin and Tykar stared at each other, as if fighting a battle in their minds.
Durin was distracted and it took him a while to realize that they were waiting for an answer and he looked away from Tykar when he noticed the sudden silence. Everyone was looking anxiously at him.
"Excuse me. Did you ask me something?"
"We want to know your opinion on what we should do."
Durin stared at him forlornly.
"We have three options." Tykar informed to help Durin reconnect with the problems. "One; we can follow the Gumis' advice and surrender, and avoid a war. Second; we can refuse and fight, on the advice of our host. And third... We can pretend to surrender and spy, and discover their weaknesses and when they're not expecting it, we'll attack, following my advice."
"If we can avoid a war and with it, dead and wounded, I see no reason to send our people into a fight they are not prepared for." Durin said, waiting for Tykar to argue.
"Avoid a war? Our people are peaceful, but they will never be able to live being servants and paying taxes to someone other than their Pharaoh. Avoiding war will kill them. They weren't born to be enslaved."
Durin turned to Mycon.
"What's your opinion on this?"
"Tykar is right. Our people won't stand for being enslaved. All our technology would be taken by them. All our talents exploited to make them an even stronger people."
Durin turned to the Gumis.
"Your advice is definitely discarded." He said and looked again at Tykar. "Fighting? How much stronger are those people than our people?"
"They're not stronger than us. But while we were worrying about internal problems, they gathered allies. Many allies. And these gathered allies are stronger than us."
"We have weapons that they don't know the power of."
"Yes, with the exception of the Ice People, the allied nations know nothing about magic and that could be the difference between victory and defeat."
"But..."
"But we don't have enough combat-trained fire warriors. With the ice people's magic against us, our magic would quickly be suffocated."
"Our power is superior to theirs. How many would we be? A hundred against a hundred thousand? We would win."
"We would be a thousand against a million warriors. There's no chance of victory in a battle like that."
"We can train our warriors. A thousand fire warriors can teach more than a million how to use our magic. We would only need to dedicate ourselves more to their training and we would be ready for battle." The host argued.
"Good plan, host. And do you suggest that while the men train for these battles, we get our women to dance and distract them? Or do you think they'll wait for our people to prepare and become stronger than them before attacking us?" Tykar said mercilessly.
The host fell silent and Durin took a despondent breath.
"How do you suggest we spy on them? I cannot allow our people to remain even one day as their servants."
"That wouldn't be necessary, Great Pharaoh. I only need you to authorize me to use and surrender my magic."
"No." The Gumis immediately took a stand against this idea and argued furiously about the danger of something like this.
"Silence!" Durin demanded and the hubbub died down immediately. "Why are you against the only chance we have of ridding our people of this threat?"
"My Pharaoh, we cannot predict what will happen when Tykar becomes as powerful as our Pharaoh. The ice people will recognize him as their leader and if Tykar turns against us... He knows all our secrets and all our weaknesses. We beg you not to allow this, Your Majesty." One of the Gumis said sadly.
Durin met Tykar's calm eyes.
"I need to be alone with Tykar."
The Gumis and Mycon got up and left the meeting room, but the host stayed. Durin didn't mind.
"You intend to be the greatest challenge of my reign. Why do you ask me? They still don't know that you... Tykar, I won't allow you to stay with Yuki."
Tykar smiled.
"You can't stop me, Durin. I'm being kind to you when I allow you to be outraged in front of the Gumis when I become stronger than you. You can tell them that you already granted me this privilege a few years ago, or you can pretend that you did it now and leave with your honor intact. As for Yuki, if you want to keep her, you'll have to break one of our most valuable laws and our people won't be happy when they learn that their 'Great Pharaoh' forced their Farida to do something she didn't want to do."
"Do you think I need to force Yuki? She loves me and I can be romantic enough to win her over."
"In three days? No, brother. Yuki won't accept you."
"I wonder how you can be so sure of that. I could have left her room with a 'yes' and you wouldn't even know."
Durin stood up.
"It's not hard to make a prediction, brother. You can make an act full of sentimental symbolism turn into nothing, into something empty and emotionless. You can present her with lots of jewels, but that won't win her heart, because you don't know how to do it right." He said and left.
The host stood up too.
"You've just divided this kingdom. Go back to being Duhen, take up your blood and your honor, declare your name, because the bad deeds you will commit in the days to come will not be forgiven by the people, if you are still Durin on the morning of the last day without the consummation of the marriage." He said and left.
Durin smiled. He didn't need to explain all his plans to those men. Or did they think he didn't know he was surrounded by enemies?
...
Yuki went over to the bed and picked up the roses, sniffed them and placed them lovingly beside her. He opened the box of chocolates and found a letter.
"Yuki, I'm not very good with words, so I've left everything I feel in this letter, because I know you've probably already kicked me out of your room without opening my presents. It's a fact that I'll never be able to get over all the affection and love you've shown me and still show me. I recognize that you are unparalleled. I've never been loved like this. With resignation, without expecting value in return. You taught me with your silence that it's insulting for me to sully your pure feelings with gifts that have nothing special, nothing meaningful, other than what was intended by a man many years ago, and your behavior has become a rule. No one else knows you as the wonderful woman you hide as I do. Women like you aren't satisfied with the ordinary, the obvious. You deserve something different. That I offer you something that no one has done before. You deserve the unusual. And that's what I intend to give you. But it's impossible for you to unwrap me without living a day-to-day relationship with me. I hope you'll give me the opportunity to offer you the unusual during our journey together as husband and wife."
Yuki was moved by those words and leaving the letter, she picked up the velvet box and when she opened it, she found a necklace, a wedding ring, and earrings with diamond pendants in the shape of snowflakes and smiling, she got up, took a shower and when she left, still not knowing what to do with all that declaration from Durin, she found a maid cleaning the room.
"Please leave things as they are." She asked and the maid knelt down in reverence.
"Your Majesty, Pharaoh has asked you to clean the room."
"I don't want you to clean it yet." Yuki said and went to the balcony of her room and looked out at the garden lit by beautifully adorned lamps. "I need to go out tonight. I have an appointment, but first..." She said, thinking of her daughter and turned to the maid. "Where's Pharaoh?"
"He's in a meeting."
"Tell him to come to my room as soon as he leaves the meeting."
"Yes, Your Majesty." The maid said and ran off.
As soon as the maid left smiling and bouncing happily, Yuki thought that it had been a long time since she had visited Selytha, but she needed to take care of her heart and so she would be taking care of her little daughter's future, too.
Yuki went to the closet with Farida's clothes, determined to find and put on her best nightgown. That night, she would give herself to Durin.