By Alex Grosset, Arts and Entertainment

12/2/282- You might want to sit down for this one readers. Rumor has it that there’s a new power couple in town, and this time the word ‘power’ isn’t just a metaphor.

According to gossip mongers in the Djidanni capital of Teras Madai, Prince Alarasant Djida was seen personally escorting Blackwood magnate Yolanda Desantana along a private beach earlier this week. As a result, rumors about what the two may have been discussing spread like wildfire.

This wildfire was perhaps fanned by the fact that neither Desantana nor the Djidanni royal family denied the meeting. They did, however, offer a clarification.

“It was completely business related,” a Desantana rep said. “The five Royals of Monteddor have long standing relationships with Djidann, going all the way back to before the founding of the triumvirate. Prince Alarasant extended an invitation to Miss Desantana to share with her the recent developments involving the refining of oil and development of diesel engines.”

Even if what the Desantana rep claims is true, the meeting of the most powerful holder of Blackwood interests meeting with the Prince of the country developing a competing fuel source is cause for…I’m not sure exactly. Excitement? Concern? Whatever the emotion should be, one can rest assured it will have widespread economic ramifications.

Despite the statement of Desantana’s rep and a similar one given by the Djidanni royal family, the imaginations of gossip hounds around the continent have been captured. Prince Alarasant has a reputation for being quite charming, and Desantana isn’t famous for being chaste. Both are known for knowing what they want and how to get it. Whether or not they want each other is anyone’s guess, and lots of people are guessing. One needs just stroll to the nearest peddlers of Penny Dreadfuls to see that the pens of smut writers have been running hot since the rumors first started.