Horace grabbed Godwyn and dragged him outside.
Marika stood where she was, watching helplessly as Horace disappeared through the doorway.
After a long while, she looked down at the stack of draft abdication decrees on the desk that she had not yet had time to send out, then at the empty doorway.
"...If you weren't going to take the throne, you shouldn't have come. You got me excited for nothing..."
Then she gradually remembered the mountains of paperwork in the next room, and her expression slowly twisted.
"No, wait! Come back! These things need you!"
Her wails pierced through the study and echoed down the corridor.
In the next room, Serosh the lion, buried beneath piles of paperwork, suddenly thrust his head out of the mountain of files, his mane bristling into a ball.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
Tears filled the lion's eyes, and his tail slapped the floor frantically. "That's exactly it! If he won't do it, who will? You can't leave, Horace! What am I supposed to do if you leave?!"
He swore this was the first time in his life that he had agreed one hundred percent with something Marika said.
But Horace was already long gone.
Marika tried to chase after him, but a gentle voice sounded behind her at just the right moment:
"Queen Marika. You have not finished today's lessons."
At some point, Turtle Miriel had settled in the study doorway, his world-weary eyes gazing calmly at her.
Marika froze.
"But Horace, he..."
"Lord Horace has his own affairs to attend to."
Miriel's tone remained perfectly even. "And you have your own coursework."
"...Just for a little while?"
"No."
Marika's shoulders slumped, and she trudged back to the desk.
She sat down, picked up her pen, and stared at the blot of ink she had