The Round Table Conference, where everyone was supposedly free to speak their mind, ended without accomplishing anything.
Samael and Morgan immediately declined Camelot's invitation to another palace banquet, boarded their carriage, and headed straight back to their residence, intending to make something fit for human consumption themselves.
"About what happened today..."
On the way, the Ancient Serpent turned toward Morgan with some concern. He hesitated, trying to find the right words to comfort her.
"What's surprising about it? Isn't this perfectly normal?"
To his surprise, the witch was remarkably calm.
Her expression remained unchanged, and she even had the leisure to sip tea while admiring the scenery outside. Beneath her veil, the corner of her lips curved upward in a faint, cold smile.
"How could a witch possibly make a well-intentioned proposal?"
Samael froze briefly.
Then realization dawned, and he gave a self-mocking smile.
He had thought Morgan did not understand politics.
Apparently, he was the one who did not understand the Round Table.
Prejudice was like a mountain lodged in the human heart. No matter how hard one tried, it could not easily be moved.
Just as Samael had seen for himself in Cornwall, it seemed only knights were allowed to draw their swords for justice, punish evil, and create the heroic tales sung by minstrels.
A witch, meanwhile, was naturally expected to resent the country and curse her own fate.
The Ancient Serpent looked at Morgan sitting alone beside the carriage curtain and suddenly felt the loneliness surrounding her.
After a while, Morgan casually asked.
"What do you think of those people?"
"Forget about it. How are you supposed to run a country with a bunch of vermin like that?"
The Ancient Serpent immediately adopted an expression of righteous indignation as he denounced them.
Morgan could not help smiling at her "husband's" ridiculous answer.
Some of the gloom in her chest faded.
It was merely a joke meant to lighten the mood, but it was also largely true.
After getting to know Morgan more deeply over this period, Samael had realized that even though she was no longer struggling simply to survive, had finally established a home, and had even helped bring about the unification of Britannia, her political position remained extremely awkward.
By blood and birth, Morgan should have belonged to the Southern Realm.
Yet when she repeatedly sought help there in the past, the southern lords had shut their doors in her face.
To escape pursuit, Morgan had taken advantage of the fact that the most obvious place was sometimes the safest and fled into exile in Orkney.
Orkney, the Land of Terminus, certainly sounded impressive.
In reality, it was a remote backwater where even birds seemed reluctant to stop, and it lay within the Northern Realm.
The only reason Morgan had been able to establish herself there was because the Saxons had already reduced the city to ruins.
Even the local lord's skull had been turned into a drinking cup by a barbarian chieftain.
Through her own talents and methods, Morgan gathered refugees displaced by war, rallied the remaining locals, drove away the Saxons in the surrounding region, and carved out a place to survive between hostile powers.
Yet even then, she remained an outsider from the south.
And to the northern lords, almost all of whom had sided with the Usurper King Vortigern, she was equally foreign.
So whether in the north or south, Morgan had no natural political allies.
"They don't hate you. They're afraid of you because they know what they did was wrong."
After joking around, Samael sighed and directly exposed the real reason those lords rejected Morgan so strongly.
When King Uther died, he had thrown his publicly acknowledged daughter Morgan out as bait.
The southern lords who had been instructed to cooperate were all accomplices.
As for the northern lords loyal to Vortigern, some had sent troops to join the pursuit while others supplied intelligence.
In short, nearly every prominent figure in Britannia had played an unsavory role in that hunt.
No one had expected the discarded pawn to survive.
Much less that she would inherit such terrifying power.
They had offended Morgan to the point where death would have been preferable, so naturally they did not believe the witch would simply forget everything.
Forget Morgan being crowned Queen.
Even if she merely gained enough political power, plenty of people would start losing sleep at night.
That was why these people would never allow the Witch of Britannia to rise.
Otherwise, once she began settling old scores, not one of them would escape.
And the Knights of the Round Table were hardly impartial representatives either.
They were just as wary of Morgan.
Even though all sorts of evidence, along with the differences between Kay and Gawain's descriptions of Morgan before and after the attempted political upheaval, suggested that Morgan had not originally intended to seize power through violence.
She had spent enormous effort raising Gawain, Agravain, Gareth, and Gahoris, then sending the four of them into the Round Table.
Part of that was certainly to secure influence for herself.
But part of it had also been an attempt to promote unity because she genuinely cared about Britannia.
Most people, however, saw only the conspiracy.
Perhaps, in their eyes, a witch was not supposed to possess anything admirable.
The Knights of the Round Table also came from different families.
Compared with their godmother, their family interests and the King's commands naturally came first.
And so all of Morgan's effort had gone to waste.
Misunderstood.
Unrecognized.
Unaccepted.
No matter what she did, people interpreted it as some hidden scheme.
That was Morgan's present situation.
Even those who understood the truth pretended otherwise and allowed the princess to endure rejection from Britannia's entire noble class.
Barely a month had passed, yet the story of Aesc the Savior and the Fairy Knights suppressing the calamities had already faded from public conversation.
Hardly anyone mentioned it anymore.
All the celebration and glory now belonged to the Lion King's coronation and the Round Table's triumph across the Northern Realm.
That old knight Ector of Cornwall knew perfectly well who "Aesc" really was.
Yet at the banquet, he had said nothing about Morgan's accomplishments.
Instead, he had encouraged Artoria to poach support away from her own elder sister.
At its core, was that not simply because he feared Morgan's influence becoming strong enough to threaten Artoria?
Even if Morgan had not done certain things yet, that did not mean she would never do them...
If she lacked the ability today, that did not mean she would refrain once she gained it...
If she lacked the opportunity today, that did not mean she would refuse once the opportunity appeared...
That was probably how those people thought.
There was a kind of crime where the crime lay in the future.
As the carriage passed through the streets, Samael's wandering thoughts were interrupted by the voices of drunken men talking in the shadows nearby.
He listened for a moment, and his brow gradually tightened.
"Have you heard? The King apparently plans to send troops against the fairies."
"Isn't that because those little creatures have started causing trouble again? I heard quite a few people have already been killed."
"I told you long ago those things were no good. Remember the insect plague and beast plague? Maybe the fairies caused those too!"
"That doesn't sound right. Didn't Fairy Knights help us suppress the disasters in the Southern Realm?"
"Fairy Knights? You actually believe that nonsense? Maybe those little creatures were the criminals all along and just pretended to be the heroes!"
...
A gust of wind stirred the curtain beside the carriage.
Cold air slipped through the gap and washed over them.
Morgan raised her head toward the gloomy sky and shifting clouds.
Her lips moved softly.
"The wind is rising..."
Just as the sudden chill enveloped the witch, warmth spread across both of her hands.
"Hang on a little longer. We're almost home."
Samael gathered Morgan's hands into his own and smiled as he breathed warm air over the delicate fingers resting in his palms.
"The Queen of Winter from the Land of Terminus, afraid of a little cold? How childish."
Morgan raised an eyebrow and gave a cold snort.
Yet she did not pull her hands away.
Instead, she spoke with disdain.
"I want shaved ice."
"Uh... It's the middle of winter."
"I want it."
"Fine. I'll make some for you..."
Under "Her Majesty the Queen's" command, Samael surrendered and reluctantly agreed.
He muttered silently to himself.
Which one of us is supposed to be childish?