After quickly finishing her breakfast, Elara thought about all the unfinished tasks from yesterday. She didn't have the time to worry about whether that man outside had gotten up to eat or was still kneeling there.
She walked into the inner chamber of her bedroom and saw it was filled with all kinds of whips, handcuffs, even punishment chairs used in execution rooms.
Elara stood still. A perfectly good sleeping chamber had been turned into a torture room.
She clicked her tongue and stood among the mess of tools, feeling like there was no place to even step. She had no choice but to call for Uno, Dos, and Tres to help her clean the room quickly, pack up all these strange objects, and bring in a few clean desks along with writing tools.
After all that work, the room was finally turned into a barely usable study.
Elara sat down at the desk, sorting out today's tasks in her head while telling Uno to bring in everything the shadow guards had retrieved yesterday from Lianyi House and the palace.
Soon, the first stack was brought in. It was the pile of memorials Dos had taken from the palace.
Elara looked at the towering stack and thought it might be a good idea to go through them and understand the state of the world.
She was badly lacking information.
But as she opened them and flipped through several, her brows furrowed deeper and deeper. Her expression turned into one of visible irritation.
What kind of memorials were these? They were nothing more than packs of wolves eyeing the treasury. Not a single one had any serious content. They were all trying to get money, land, or power with pitiful excuses, or laced with over-the-top flattery only to beg for rewards. Elara was speechless from how ridiculous it all was.
These people actually had the nerve to beg for money and power? Ha. Plumera Kingdom was already sucked dry by them, especially by the Gregory family and their allies. The national treasury was nearly empty. They still had the face to ask for rewards? For what? To reward them for destroying the kingdom?
And these people writing in had high-ranking positions. They were supposed to be the backbone of the court. Yet not one of them cared about the people or the fate of the kingdom. Plumera's decay was their fault.
In her past life, Elara had been the head decision-maker of a massive corporation. What she hated most was reports filled with fluff, lacking focus, or wasting her time.
Now, looking at these useless documents, she suddenly felt that the people in her company had actually been excellent. At least their reports always had substance, unlike the garbage in front of her.
She took a few deep breaths to calm her rising irritation, then stopped reading the memorials carefully. Instead, she started scanning them quickly.
She wanted to see if Plumera's court had truly rotted so badly that not a single proper memorial existed.
Luckily, when she was almost done with the pile, she finally found a few decent ones.
But the dates on them were from long ago. They were also from remote towns far from the capital. These memorials described real problems the towns were facing and subtly asked the court for help.
Unfortunately, the court never responded. And those who wrote them never submitted anything again.
Elara pushed down her anger and studied those few carefully.
But just a few seconds later, she realized another issue.
These memorials had substance, yes, but the original owner of this body knew nothing about Plumera's regions. Elara herself had only just arrived yesterday and hadn't had the chance to study any information about the kingdom.
So now, with no understanding of the local situations, she had no way to respond.
The issues in these memorials were already urgent. And since no one had replied for so long, Elara felt if she ignored them any longer, Plumera would completely lose the last few honest officials who still knew how to write proper memorials.
With a headache starting, Elara rubbed her temple. She hadn't had the time to look for background information on Plumera yet. Yesterday, she had grabbed a pile of files from Lianyi House, but those were all about the powerful court officials. Just reading through those would already take a lot of time. How could she possibly spare any more energy to research each region?
She suddenly missed her two secretaries from her past life.
If they were here, they would have already organized all of Plumera's information, memorized it completely, and probably handled a bunch of the smaller decisions on her behalf. She wouldn't need to worry about any of this. But now, where was she going to find someone capable and reliable enough to help her?
Elara pressed her fingers against her brow and took a sip of the tea Uno had just poured for her. As she lifted her gaze, she suddenly saw Mathias's thin figure still kneeling quietly beside the dining table outside.
She paused.
Mathias. The eldest son of the Pei family. The top of his generation.
She remembered that before being dragged into the Princess's manor, he had been hailed as the most talented man in Marigold City. His background had allowed him to avoid exams like the commoners, but his talent had made him as famous as the unfortunate scholar Fu Xu, who had also been taken into the manor.
Honestly, Elara found it strange that this era, which lagged so far behind Han and Tang times in every way, actually already had an examination system.
Even though this exam system was crude and couldn't compare to the official ones in later dynasties, and scholars from humble origins had a much harder time becoming officials than nobles, it still offered a glimmer of hope to the common people.
But that glimmer had been completely snuffed out a few years ago when Fu Xu, the last top scholar, was dragged into the Princess's manor.
Since then, all poor students in Plumera were filled with fear. No one dared to take the exams again.
The Gregory family and other noble clans in court had long hated the exam system. They had their own ways of getting their descendants into official positions. To them, the system was nothing but an obstacle stealing their power.
After the original host did something that chilled the hearts of Plumera Kingdom's scholars, the old aristocrats led by Lord Gregory took the opportunity to abolish the imperial examination system completely. This completely blocked off the path that once allowed commoners to compete with them for power and resources.
Elara hadn't been here long and didn't know much about this. But once she took back her authority and purged those rotten parasites in the court, she definitely planned to reopen the exam system and even add more ways for talented people to rise.
For now though... Elara glanced toward Mathias, who was in the outer room.
She decided to test whether this noble young man actually had any real ability.
Elara stood up, walked out of the inner room, and returned to the dining table. "Mathias."
His kneeling body trembled slightly. It was his instinctive reaction every time the original host called him.
But he quickly suppressed that reflex, put down what he was holding, and turned to Elara.
"Princess."
He had been eating the food left on the table. Half of the dishes Elara had just eaten from were already gone. Clearly, he was being very obedient.
Elara glanced at his stomach. The slim, pale waist that used to be flat now seemed a little rounded. She frowned slightly. This guy... she didn't even know what to say. She told him to finish it, and he really did, without even caring if he was full or not. Did he just stuff himself?
Elara paused for a second. "Are you full?"
Mathias nodded, a little slowly. "Yes, Princess..."
"If you're full then stop eating. Get up. Come with me."
Mathias let go of his rolled-up sleeves and prepared to stand.
But maybe he had been kneeling too long. He was still seriously injured. As he got halfway up, his thin body wobbled and nearly collapsed.
Elara quickly caught him. Despite being much taller than her, his waist felt even slimmer than hers.
She was shocked inside but kept a calm face and quietly exhaled. This noble young man who looked like he might fall apart really might be about to fall apart. His body... seemed even worse than hers, and she was half a step into the grave already.
Cold, thin, fragile...
Mathias stiffened as she held him. He had suffered abuse in the princess's mansion for two years. This body of hers had become a nightmare carved into his memory. Now, just the touch of her hand made him instinctively shudder.
Elara noticed his trembling. It was like he had touched something terrifying and couldn't stop shaking.
She sighed softly and let go of his waist, then held his hand instead. "Alright, don't be afraid. I'm not in the mood for anything right now. Just come with me."
She switched from holding his waist to supporting him by the hand, because if she didn't help him, Elara feared he might collapse again.
Once the pressure around his waist disappeared, Mathias was finally able to breathe normally. His cold body was being led forward, and warmth started to spread through his fingertips where she held him.
His usually empty eyes flickered slightly from the warmth. He looked at the hand that was holding his.
It was the hand of a pampered noblewoman. The hand of the highest-ranking woman in the Plumera Kingdom.
It no longer clutched cruel torture tools like before. The touch wasn't sharp and piercing like he had imagined, but surprisingly warm and soft.
Still, his whole body remained tense. That hand had brought him too much pain over the years. He was always ready to be thrown back into hell at any moment.
But as he waited with his head lowered for that pain to arrive, it never came. Instead, his frozen body was gently pushed into a soft, warm chair. A thick fur robe was draped over him, wrapping him from head to toe in warmth.
Elara used the robe to warm up Mathias's freezing body. Then she called servants to bring in a brazier and a hand warmer.
Once everything was in the room, Elara pushed the brazier near him and placed the hand warmer in his hands. When she noticed his body slowly warming up under all the layers, she finally let go of his hand. She sat down beside him and asked Uno to bring in that large stack of documents from Lianyi Tower.
When she finished reading the first document, the person beside her finally seemed to show a reaction.
"Princess…"
Elara turned and saw Mathias's pale face had a little color again. His dark green eyes looked at her, the confusion and numbness in them easing a little.
"Feeling better?"
She put down the bamboo scroll and reached out to hold his hand again.
Mathias trembled slightly, but he didn't pull away.
Yes, he was definitely a bit warmer than before. Still cold, but not as icy.
That should be enough. At least... it should be enough for him to start working now. Elara was already calculating in her mind, eager to shift into her taskmaster mode.