Ch. 64: Changes in Gryvus

Adrian had vastly overestimated himself. He'd believed that, since he had a portion of Rosy's enhanced healing factor now, he was invincible. Now, fate was playing a cruel prank on him in response to his overconfidence.

"Open up wiide!" Rosy told him, bringing a spoonful of applesauce toward Adrian's face.

"I can feed myself, you know. I do have one working arm, Rosy. You don't have to baby me." He told her for not-the-first time. This conversation had happened quite a few times over the last week that Adrian had been on forced bedrest. After the first day, Rosy had stopped using her own magic to heal his wounds. According to her, 'We have time. You need to feel the full extent of your injury in order to drill it into your skull how stupid you were to drop your guard during that fight.'

She hadn't even been mad at Adrian for accepting the duel in the first place, no... she'd been mad at him for dropping his guard after taking out Hal Evans, taking a bullet in the process. Apparently, he should have known better than that. Maybe she was right, but Adrian felt like the initial bullet wound and maybe a week of bedrest would normally have been enough punishment for him.

"I can make a hole in your throat and shove the food down that instead, but I don't have to..." Rosy argued with him. Honestly, this girl was an enigma. Even with the ability to literally read her thoughts, Adrian could never tell what she was going to do next. She loved kids, and was loved by kids, but she hated taking care of Adrian's wounded self. Honestly, if breakfast wasn't the only time Adrian'd been able to see her recently, it would have felt like torture to him.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the luxury of spending time with Rosy and complaining about her babyish treatment of him. Lately, the Archgryphon, Maximus Chase, had been doing a bunch of serious reforms around Gryvus.

Apparently, Adrian managing to defeat his two trusted military aides by himself and extracting a promise from the old gryphon to help the Resistance in any way that he can had really rattled Reese Chase's old man. As a direct result of that, the Archgryphon was looking seriously into reforming every single part of Gryvus, from the distribution and upkeep systems to the military. Since Rosy was an outsider with a unique viewpoint, she'd been run ragged in meetings and the like, giving her input on various changes that the gryphons were intending on implementing. Adrian's input was also taken into consideration, but when they asked for it, Rosy always just used their telepathic connection to ask him, rather than do it in person, since their telepathy didn't have any limits to distance or the like.

As a result of all of the running around she'd been doing, the only time that Adrian and Rosy really were able to see each other face-to-face was in the mornings, when they ate breakfast together. As some sort of punishment, Rosy insisted on babying him every single time that they did, threatening (maybe jokingly? Maybe not?) to eviscerate him if he resisted in any way.

So, even though he was fully capable of cooking, walking around, and doing anything that he needed to do with his one currently working arm, he was lying in bed late every morning, being fed like a baby. If Rosy wasn't so incredibly cute when she let her guard down and actually acted like a girl, Adrian would have revolted quite a while ago, possible evisceration be damned.

"RIING!!" Their mansion's doorbell rang while the two were arguing about Rosy's babying of Adrian.

"I'll get it. I probably forgot some sort of meeting with Maximus this morning. There've been so many of them that I've started to lose track." Rosy said, standing to leave the room, "Oh, and if you leave this room, I'll track you down and strangle the life out of you."

"You know, if I die, so do you." Adrian reminded her.

"Willing to risk it!" She shouted through the door, having already closed it. Adrian suddenly had an impulse to jump out the window and run away, even if it meant falling right off the mountain, but he managed to hold it in. A few moments later, Rosy re-entered the room, followed by a young guy with a black eye. Surprisingly, Adrian recognized him as Johnny Tyler... with a black eye.

"What's up with your eye?" Adrian asked. Surely, the gryphon noble hadn't had that during the conference a few days ago. Adrian would've remembered that.

"Umm..."

...

Johnny's mind went back to a few moments ago. He had just rung the bell, and Rosy answered the door.

"Wow..."

"Why are you here? Did I miss a meeting or something?" Rosy asked him.

"Wow..." He repeated.

"Spit it out." Rosy told him, annoyed already. 

"Sorry. Never thought I'd see the infamous Rose Princess... playing house. I'm actually here to see Adrian."

"BAM!" She punched him in the face.

...

"Oh... it's nothing." Johnny said after a moment, looking at Rosy, whose face was already a mask of boredom that not even Adrian could read. She'd already put the incident from her mind, since Johnny didn't mean anything to her.

"You're the youngest noble, right? Johnny, I think?" Adrian remembered.

"Yeah. I came here on behalf of Merle. He wanted to thank you personally, Prince, but he won't be able to until the new reforms finish taking place."

"Merle? The sleepy guy?" Adrian asked.

Johnny laughed at that, "Yeah, the sleepy guy. He's in charge of the public works projects in Gryvus. All of them, or at least, he will be up until they finish with these reforms. They're going to completely dismantle his office, separating his duties into three other offices."

"And he's happy about that? Isn't that kind of a demotion?" Adrian wondered.

"Technically, but it's Merle. He's always clashed with his musclebrained father, Hal. He's a brainy type, like me. As a result, he got put in charge of way too much for one person to deal with, and he's been managing it since he was about my age. Now that they're giving other people some of his duties, the guy's ecstatic."