In orderly succession, everyone had long dismissed themselves from the imperial dining space, save for the person of His Majesty the king, Briceus and the woman he'd invited to dine specially with him.
By this time of the morning, the cool wind which kept thrusting into the dining space now portrayed an element of being seemingly humid; not a fault on nature's part since the downpour ought to be setting in, in about a week or two. This was welcome news for Elizabeth who always looks forward to staring at those little droplets she refers to as heaven's gift to striving vegetation.
Currently, a discomforting and eerie silence now enveloped the air within the dining space. This aura of awkward chillness was the kind that seemed brutally coldish and targeted at crumbling to nought, Elizabeth's willpower; the predator being Briceus. No one spoke. Briceus was very much invested in his reading as though he had no one nearby to bother his thirst for privacy.