Chapter 19: Chapter 18: Handing Over the Reins

Rose stared at her Queen, heart pounding in her chest. Why had things come to this?! All she had done was mention having wanted Analysis and her theories on why she hadn’t received it yet, and now her Queen was asking Rose to command her! The very notion felt…ridiculous, as against common sense as thinking that two plus two was equal to five!

Yet, it had also been a direct command. And so it was that every fiber of her being was screaming at her to both obey and disobey the command. She could not put herself above the Queen, even temporarily, but she also couldn’t disobey the Queen, even if that meant putting herself above the Queen.

Rose shook her head and took a deep breath. She was better than this. She had been granted a soul by the Queen, and it was time to put that to use. She could ignore the instincts that told her not to put herself above the Queen, she just had to get herself back into the habit of dealing with conflicting overpowering urges.

How did it go again…? Right, she had to focus on one of the urges, and then use it to defeat the other. This…didn’t work if the two urges were of different strengths, unless she was focusing on the stronger one, but fortunately these urges were from the same source, and she knew how to play around that.

She focused on the urge to obey the Queen. That was her primary purpose, above everything else. And, if she thought about it, massaging her thought pattern into just the right shape, she wasn’t actually putting herself above the Queen by ordering her around, was she?

No, she wasn’t. The Queen had ordered Rose to order her around, thus Rose was still obeying the Queen’s direct orders. That meant that she was putting herself below the Queen, and there was no way that someone putting herself below the Queen could be putting herself above the Queen.

At the end of the day, the Queen was still in control. The moment the Queen said the word, she would resume her rightful place at the top of the pyramid, she was just…taking a vacation. She didn’t want to do the thinking, so, as any good servant would, Rose would do the thinking for her.

And, finally, the urge to not command the Queen died away, leaving Rose completely in control of herself once again. Well, she was still subject to the desire to obey the Q – Lia, but that was fine. She was confident that that was something she didn’t have to worry about. She didn’t care if the desire was something that she hadn’t had before being reincarnated, it was still hers. And Lia had yet to do anything that would make Rose even consider wanting to disobey her, she had been the picture of a good, understanding boss.

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