The princess perches on her bed, one hand on her face as she smiles smugly at her lover-to-be.

"Darling. I know you must be wondering why I've called you here today."

This is not the first time Gloria has called her for an intimate meeting over some trivial matter, often as a simple excuse to shoo her maid out of the room through the secret door, thus leading to rather more intimate acitivities than are strictly proprietary for two noblewomen who are not strictly supposed to even be engaged. 

The Princess's whims change like the sea or the wind; Ishaza has long since learned to flow with them as best she can. 

After all, the two of them love each other very much. 

"What is it, starlight?" 

Gloria does love her pet names. 

Gloria smiles brightly, and gestures with one hand. "Why, I've fallen in love!"

Oh dear. 

The princess's wild romantic whims are so difficult to suppress the public knowledge of. Her trysts range the gamut of the court, from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low. There's no telling who she's fallen for now. 

"Who is it this time?"

"You don't need to give me that look, darling. It's a perfectly acceptable match. I met her at the academy just this morning. Corvina Quill, I believe was her name. The most beautiful little thing with silver hair and such a bright smile. Earnest, dutiful. Strong with magic. I simply must have her." 

Quill? 

That's not a last name she recognizes.

At least it's not someone from the conservative faction, but she has a sinking feeling that she knows who has that name. The prodigy who tested into the academy on raw magical merit and otherwise has nothing to her name.

Gloria has gone and "fallen for" the lowest-born woman she could possibly have had contact with, as a princess. 

Ishaza sighs. "And you want me to arrange her, is that it?"

"You know I can't go to Indigo for things like this. And my mother refuses to be seen to condone it. Please, Ishaza? I'm desperate."

Ishaza casts her mind back to the distant days of one month ago, when a kitsune noblewoman first came to Villarosa's High Academy. 

"You said that about Bitter, too, and you only had her once and then the spark was gone for you."

"That was one time! How was I supposed to know she had a penis?" 

"...Which is why, perhaps, you should take more time about your courting rather than simply hopping into bed with everything you see."

Ishaza crosses her arms. "Honestly."

"Look, if you want to refuse you can refuse. But it's dereliction of your duty as a subject of my realm and I don't appreciate it much either."

... Gloria's always impossible when she gets like this. She simply must have her shiny new toy, and if she isn't helped along she'll grab for it clumsily and then there will be a scandal, which is always good for the conservative faction. 

"Alright," Ishaza relents. "I'll do my best to help you out. But you must remember that you don't just get everything you want because you're the princess."

Gloria smiles the private little smile that she has when she's very pleased. 

"Thank you, darling. Was that so hard?"

"Should I go arrange that now, Your Highness?" Ishaza puts as much sarcasm as she can muster into the title.

Gloria tosses her hair back and leans back on the bed, her thighs parting. 

"No," she says. "Marie, leave us." She looks over at her mother's maid, standing unobtrusively to the side of the room.

"Yes, milady."

Marie vanishes through the chamber's secret door.

... She's pretty damn sure she knows what her next order will be. 

She sinks to her knees in front of Gloria, and rests her head against her thigh.

"Good girl," Gloria purrs. Her hand slips out to rest in Ishaza's hair. "Now eat me out."

It's a familiar order, but not one she dislikes.

She presses in and gets to work.

Some hours later, Ishaza convenes a clandestine meeting in the High Academy greenhouse, which is full of orchids, ferns and exotic trees from the jungles far to the south. 

At the laced metalwork table sits a certain cat-eared noble scion, known as a prodigy at magic and the inventor of many magical devices and weapons - none other than the famous Black Cocoa. 

"It's lovely to see the night sky now and then," he says, looking up through the glass dome of the conservatory. "It's been a while since we've had a late meeting like this."

By which, of course, he means what on earth are you doing, calling me out here at this hour?

Ishaza inclines her head slightly. "It's been almost a month since I last saw the stars," she says. "Don't you think their beauty deserves to be savoured?"

Beauty deserves to be savoured, huh. A month ago. 

So we're talking about the princess' whims. 

"They flicker so," Cocoa says. "Such inconstant things. But I must admit they have their beauty."

What the princess wants, the princess gets. 

"Has any constellation in particular come to your attention tonight?"

Who is it this time, in other words. 

"The morning star, Venus," she replies. "Rising in the east and setting in the west. It dances among all the other stars, but they never quite touch. Don't you think that's a kind of magic?"

It just so happens to be summer, so Venus is visible, which is a pleasant happenstance.

Surely she can't mean her. 

"A hot star and a lively one, Venus. With deep and potent uses in alchemy and astrologia. But I would think it's somewhat unseasonable to view at this time of year."