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“Chill, Lily,” the regent calms her. “We’re just here as emotional support pets, yeah? Let the boys do all the thinking and absorb the stress from this. We don’t want to need preventative Botox before hitting thirty.”

“Don’t you already have that?”

“Nope. In contrast to what most might think, I’ve actually never gotten any. Well, except for maybe some lip fillers from time to time, girl.” Her full lips curve into a smile. “I’m a natural beauty.”

“No, I am.” The pick-me girl argues.

“We both are, alright.”

“Then why are they doing this to us?” Lily whines pathetically, still not over the dull topic.

Her boyfriend answers her this time. “Honestly, they’re just bored. And Fernando makes a pretty good villain. Actually, he’s built his whole career and personality on that. It’s just his thing, you know.”

“You sound rather familiar with him.”

“Well, as a mafia gang member, a spy, and a professional stalker, our paths sure cross from time to time.”

He smiles—lips curving, cheeks dimpling, bright white teeth glinting in the gumdrop chandelier light, looking so proud of himself, as if being a weirdo with many part-time jobs is the greatest achievement in life.

That sure depends on the person.

His joyful beam brings a small smile onto Lily’s lips, though she quickly reverts back to frowning and whining and slumping into her oversized seat when she remembers her state. She’s a sad girl, after all. No way she’s gonna get caught all gleeful. “Fairyland is so cooked. We don’t even have a fucking army, do we?”

The sugar plum fairy frowns as she takes the matter to thought, an action that would just accelerate her need for Botox.

Shouldn’t have done that.

“Actually, we do. We’ve got Glucose, Fructose, Galactose, Sucrose, Lactose, and Maltose. But they’re too busy playing Candy Crush at the moment. I know I shouldn’t have introduced this ancient town to dopamine-spiking technology. My bad.”

Lily frowns, unsatisfied with her answer. “And apart from those guards with names that made me fail Mrs. Savvy’s high school biochemistry?”

“Technically, we’ve also got Every, our dumbass first knight who doesn’t even know how to sword fight, and Gilly-boy here. That’s all, though, I guess. The dancing fairies aren't exactly back from their paid leave yet. And I wouldn’t want them to, anyway. I mean, no shade to them good-hearted folks, but we don’t exactly get along.”

Lily’s lovely green eyes glisten with unshed tears, a very main character thing.

Queeny’s darker violet ones also flash with sadness—though looking nowhere near as emotional as hers—an act of solidarity to support the main character.

“We’re so fucked,” the sugar plum fairy says.

Her bodyguard, sensing an eventual river of joint tears that has the potential to flood the whole palace into an ocean along with the town above, tries to calm them down. “Look, girls, we may be out of troops at the moment, but we sure do have a whole lot of alliances. And they’re just a text and a teleport away from us.”

Every the CEO, standing over the table with maps laid out, a serious expression on his handsome face, brightens up at once. “Oh, yeah, man. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Lily-girl guesses he is starting to open up to the big man, at last.

“Because your rich ass mind is too full of silk robes and golden dildos,” the bodyguard grumbles out in a low voice.

One that unfortunately, the rich man’s sharp ears pick up.

And just like that, any possibility of him being Every’s trusted sidekick instantly vanishes.

Oh, well.

“Anyway,” the male lead, Every, says, trying to be emotionally mature like what his papa had taught him, “we could call in all those alliances and form one hell of an army. I’d call my army of gym bros, for starters. They all could bench twelve sets of two hundred fifty pounds, you know. And thirty repetitions each. And with their combined toxicity level alone, I’m sure all the mice would die from arsenic poisoning.”

“And apart from that?” Lily raises a suspicious eyebrow.

“Three hundred sit-ups per minute, seventy-five pushups, and a hundred ten pull-ups.” He answers his girl proudly. “And I’m part of them.”