To Lilianna’s great surprise and confusion, the woman started laughing. Rather hysterically. The sound was loud and genuine, bouncing off the walls of the cabin. Several knights outside providing escort looked through the carriage window, confusion and surprise obvious on their faces.

“Goodness, child, you can’t do that to an old woman! If you make me laugh that hard, I might keel over!” The woman visibly mastered herself, though not without some additional chuckling.

“No dear, we are not related by blood, though I’m probably the closest thing he has to family. He used to call me that when I was being particularly overbearing to him in an attempt to mock me. Clearly, it backfired.”

She leaned close to both girls, almost conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I think he secretly wishes I really were his grandmother.”

“As if,” the professor muttered irritably. It floored Lilianna to see him actually blushing. The brazen, reckless, and shameless professor was actually blushing?

“We know nothing about our professor’s family,” Nadrina continued, the filter to her flood of questions already long gone. “Did you raise him? Where is he from? Who was his real grandmother? How does he know you?”

“I’m right here, you know?” the professor commented dryly.

“Oh hush, you,” the woman snapped. “She was asking me. Besides, she’s an adorable little thing, so filled to the brim with curiosity. Much like a certain someone I used to know.”

He didn’t respond, instead kicking his feet up on the opposite bench, folding his arms across his chest, and staring firmly out the window again. He looked remarkably like a sulking child in that moment.

“Now, I suppose I should stop being rude and introduce myself, shouldn’t I?” the woman continued. Lilianna felt herself tense up again, her breath catching in her throat. “I am Minerva Rhagia, Empress of the Rhagian Empire.”

Nadrina’s eager face locked up entirely. Lilianna had been correct, it seemed. The woman who was the single longest reigning monarch in the world was a hard person to forget. Lilianna had only doubted her identity because she couldn’t fathom what someone like this was doing out in the wilderness.

“I-I-I am so s-s-sorry, your majesty!” Nadrina stammered out, doing to her best to bow formally while sitting in a cramped carriage. She failed.

“Now, now, none of that, dear,” the empress said, patting Nadrina affectionately on the head and startling her. “Just ma’am will suffice to be polite, or you can just call me Gran. Now, did you say this churlish young man is actually a professor?”

“It was Kedrin and Zasia’s idea,” the professor commented, still refusing to look at them.