Epilogue

Some time had passed since the dreary princess and her companions had left the kingdom to defeat the Demon Lord.

The princess was able to indefinitely push back her coronation with her mother’s return. At the end of the day she simply wasn’t ready to lead a kingdom, and with her mother’s support diligently returned to her princess lessons. This time around they didn’t seem so bad.

The queen needed support as well, and together her and the princess worked on regulating themselves when they got negative feelings. Milly’s spell helped quite a bit, and hopefully someday they’ll no longer need it to keep their sad feelings at bay. For now when the queen gets misty eyed, literally and figuratively, the princess is able to help with her magic and a hug.

Aside from helping each other cope, they bonded quite quickly over their shared love of magic and books, and spent the first few weeks of their reunion getting to know each other in the library. Queen Noita was particularly insistent that the princess read her favourite story, from which she took the name Judy. The princess read the book, but still argued that Judy was an ill-fitting name for a princess. Queen Noita didn’t understand, but hoped this was a teenage phase the princess would someday grow out of.

Milly now goes by Seraphina, but she’ll probably change it again soon.

Nao remained as personal attendant to the princess, and went on to become head maid of the castle within a few short years. Her training regimen was feared throughout the lands, though no one dared speak of her methods.

With all the extra responsibility, and her secret out with Milly, she did use her dirt magic to clean the castle faster, but Milly could never quite figure out how her spell to control the dirt worked. She also still had frenzied episodes when she became too dirty, though Zen did eventually stop shoving soap in her mouth at the princess’s demand.

Zen and Milly both tried to work out what had happened to her in the past as a child, but Nao remained a closed book on the matter. Zen swears that once he heard her talking to someone in the garden, but when he approached there was just his sister standing near a puddle of mud. To this day the mystery persists.

Now that the girls had verbally declared their friendship, despite their busy schedules as head maid and princess, whenever they had down time they would meet for tea and chat about all sorts of things, though the princess would hastily change the subject anytime the topic changed to romance.

After nurturing their friendship for many years, the princess will allow Nao to give her a cuddle on rare occasions.

On the topic of romance, the queen became particularly invested in Zen and Milly’s budding relationship, and assigned him a tutor to teach him royal duties of a future king. With great resistance and denial at first, eventually he quietly attended his lessons without a fight.

Outside of his studies, Zen reignited the initiative to have maintained and regularly attended training camps. Captain Issa happily commands hundreds of promising young heroes, knights, and all other manner of people willing to take up arms to defend the kingdom, and Zen would go on to become a captain too, but of the royal guard itself. Milly was very attracted to him in his new uniform.

After the princess reclaimed her body, Zen was still extremely bashful anytime they accidentally made contact, and she eventually found out about him respawning near her and took that as a sign of her returned affections. Nao loved to tease the both of them about when they would confess, and Milly internally resigned that it would definitely be her.

In spite of how shy and awkward she was, her curiosity always got the better of her and she turned out to be quite the forward young lady.

One day while he was escorting her to Velho’s conservatory for the new magic lessons she was taking, a mob of people rushed down the road, heading for the market square and some big sale. Zen pulled the princess into an alley for safety, and used his body to shield her from view against a wall. Having read about the fabled ‘wall slam’ many times before in her books, she couldn’t help herself and wondered if he would hold true to his promise about their kiss.

She puckered her lips expectantly, and he did.

Immediately after the kiss, she saw a new side of Zen and he led her the rest of the way to the conservatory with a strange boisterousness, talking unnaturally loudly and puffing his chest out.

Having the world’s greatest mage be your uncle would be a dream for any magic user, but unfortunately for Milly, Velho was still a bit of a vagrant, so oftentimes her lessons came from Oppi. No matter how much time had passed he continued to apologize to the princess for his actions and was overly remorseful toward her.

The other students rumoured that he had been scolded by Velho himself and feared for his expulsion, but Milly knew he was just a good intentioned young man that clung to his regret.

Velho would still pop into the castle from time to time for tea with his sister and niece.

Overall, everyone was working hard and trying their best to lead happy lives.

Elsewhere, far away in another world, a new life began.

A woman and her husband rested in a white and warm hospital room after a long and tiring night. A nurse approached the bed and passed the woman a small bundle, wished her congratulations, and excused herself leaving the new family alone. The woman looked down at her baby and smiled.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Of course she is, you’re her mama!”

“She’s so sleepy.”

“Can I hold her?”

“Of course. Mind her head.”

The woman passed her husband the baby, and he cooed over his daughter, but soon exclaimed with a whispered voice.

“Hey!”

“What happened, darling?”

“I think she tried to bite me!”

The woman giggled.

“It’s a good thing she doesn’t have any teeth.”