Irene finally raised her eyes from the table and looked directly at the Dragon Emperor.
There was this annoyance in them.
"It is not the food that displeases me, Emperor," she replied.
She gave him an answer but not because his anger frightened her.
Of all the dragons who lived under the Dragon Emperor's rule, Irene was perhaps the only one who truly did not fear him.
Where others bowed their heads at the slightest change in his expression, she had always possessed a defiance toward him that even more than a decade of imprisonment had failed to erase.
This time, however, Irene was choosing to be smarter about it.
She had spent way too many years imprisoned to be eager to provoke him into sending her straight back there.
Silence settled over the table for several seconds as the Emperor studied her. "What, then, displeases you?"
"The point of all this." Irene replied, gesturing vaguely around the table.
