The girl pulled open the drawer and saw contact letters arranged neatly and sorted carefully by size and the nature of the letters. She frowned upon seeing how overly careful the letters were arranged. She picked them up and examined their content.
Some of the letters were family letters, some were business letters with commercial guilds, and some were greeting letters from foreign kingdoms. She threw the letters she had read on the floor and found that the most recent personal letters, which contained traces of sealing wax on them, were dated the eve of the festival. Only one kingdom used sealing wax: the Kingdom of the Sun.
She opened the letters and saw mostly polite greetings, where the writer of the letter thanked Jharif for his enthusiastic help and indicated that the former would pay a visit to the latter soon. Letters with similar content were sent every month.
“Enthusiastic help?”
She tilted her head, feeling that this phrase was a cover-up for something. She looked down and searched for other letters from the Kingdom of the Sun. Sure enough, every letter mentioned trade between Jharif and the kingdom, but did not mention anything about what types of products had been traded. This was indeed odd.
She tried to picture the person who wrote the letter… Judging from the time that the letters were written, the writer must have arrived at the Desert Kingdom by now and had not left yet—nearly two months had passed since the festival, but the two parties had not yet written any new letters—the only reasonable explanation was that the person was still in the desert.
When a throne war was going on, human beings could stay in the Desert Kingdom for as long as two months only if they were of a certain status.
A frightening thought crossed her mind before the office door opened suddenly.
She instinctively headed for the window but was hit in the back by a vase, causing her to lose her balance—normal guards would not have been able to react this fast and must have held the vase in his hand before entering the room to prevent her from escaping through the window—she felt dizzy and a sensed imminent disaster. Before falling down, she flicked her tail and pushed open the window. The man jumped onto the desk and grabbed her tail. The force was so powerful that she screamed out in pain. She was immobilized.
“Ah…!”
“A woman!?” exclaimed the man who had grabbed her tail, surprised. He ignored her scream and pulled her tail violently, stepping on her back and restraining her. “Jharif, see if you recognize who she is.”
“My desk!” Jharif ran angrily from outside the door, yelling at the girl. “For the love of the Snake God! What did you do to my office! You thief—” Jharif’s anger turned into shock when the man removed the girl’s headscarf.
“Recognize her?” The man asked in a higher-pitched voice.
“Not only do I recognize her…” said Jharif, his pale cheeks now looking slightly more normal. He quickly lowered his voice and closed the door of the room. He then stared at the girl struggling under the feet of the human in surprise. “Diana? What are you doing here?”
