Chapter 107: Chapter 102: Idle Minds Wander

Maven quickly came to realize why the road repair was such an unpopular request; it was boring. Even with Tess being able to near-instantly detect any potholes or irregularities with her tremorsense, the job ended up being mostly just walking along the roads and occasionally fixing an issue.

Watching the tool they had been given work was interesting the first couple of times, but the novelty quickly wore off. The tool just scanned whatever portion of road it was pointed at, conjured some concrete to fill any holes or other irregularities that it detected, then aged the new concrete to be roughly on par with the surroundings while reinforcing the rest of the road within a hundred or so meters.

As they had been warned, the process was noisy and did occasionally draw the attention of monsters, but that had only happened once or twice in the few hours they had been out. So, much to Maven’s displeasure, she had a lot of time to think. It wasn’t that she was being purposefully ignored by the other two or anything, but that she had withdrawn from them.

She felt guilty about it, but being around them was making her feel weird at the moment, and she didn’t want to ruin their moods. It perplexed her, really; it was fine when they were actively working on something, but when they started to unwind and relax more, she got…uncomfortable feelings.

It was probably indirectly Alice’s fault; she had put the idea into Maven’s head that what she was feeling might be some sort of romantic affection, but that was simply impossible. The thought was driving her up the wall, but no matter how she tried she couldn’t seem to fully put it away.

Perhaps her father was right and she should have worked harder at controlling herself instead of doing the bare minimum her tutors required, but if he was right, it was only by accident. If he had actually foreseen those lessons coming in handy in a situation like this, then he would have had to foresee her escaping from her role as heir to the throne, and Maven knew he had harbored no intentions of letting her do so.

Still, until this very moment, she had always been perfectly capable of staying calm, no matter the situation. Even becoming an Appointed hadn’t shaken her up as much as this, and –

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