The remaining four ladies were not just unsettled, they were furious. Incensed. For years, they had served their queen faithfully, enduring her temperantal moods and sharp reprimands, yet never had she crossed such a brutal line without cause.
Sothing had clearly upset her deeply, that much was obvious. One did not simply wake up and accuse the closest mbers of one’s household— won who had tended her since her coronation— of theft without reason.
Nheera might have been temperantal, even ruthless on her worst days, but she was not typically reckless. Underneath all her cruelty, she possessed a calculating mind. She strategized. She planned. She moved like a queen who never struck without first deciding precisely where the blow would land.
But this ti had been nothing like the others.
Nheera had torn through her chambers in a storm of fury, rage twisting her elegant features into sothing feral as she flung cushions, overturned tables, and hurled priceless ornants to the floor in her frenzied search. She had demanded answers, demanded confessions, demanded explanations for the one thing she could not find, the ring she always wore on her finger.
Her ladies-in-waiting had known she was deeply attached to it. They had thought that it must be a family heirloom, a relic from her lineage like the crown jewels. It was the only explanation they could conjure for her obsession with the piece. They had never known the truth, the power the ring held, or the ways Nheera had quietly used it on those within the castle walls.
But in witnessing her unhinged desperation, her fear disguised as fury, one fact beca terrifyingly clear, this was not about a simple theft and sothing far more dangerous was at play.
The ladies-in-waiting had long endured her tyranny in silence. They had stood back while she manipulated, sched, and tornted Ragnar in front of the court. They had held their tongues through her fits of malice, excusing her behavior as the burden of a crown too heavy for any one person to bear. But watching two of their own dragged out in chains without evidence of any wrongdoing, without a hearing, had made them rethink their complacency to the queen’s actions.
If Nheera could turn on them so suddenly, who was to say any one of them wouldn’t be her next victim?
Now none of them dared et her gaze. They moved with stiff, chanical precision, each trying to shrink away, to beco more invisibility. Being a lady-in-waiting to the queen was a prestigious appointnt coveted by noble families across Lamora, one of the highest honors a woman could achieve. But that prestige ant nothing now. Their rank felt less like privilege and more like a battlefield, one where they could be struck down at any mont by the very woman they served.
After the incident, ard guards were stationed outside Nheera’s chambers day and night. Every person who entered or exited her rooms was noted by na and thoroughly searched to ensure nothing else vanished. These new asures, however, felt useless when the queen’s most valuable possession was already gone.
A soft knock disturbed the oppressive quiet of her chambers.
One of the guards stepped inside, his posture rigid as a drawn bowstring, his eyes locked firmly on the floor. It wasn’t only the ladies who feared provoking her wrath, everyone did.
"Your Majesty," he said cautiously, "the king’s advisor is outside your chambers. He requests an audience. Shall I tell him you are indisposed, or should I send him in?"
The shift in Nheera’s expression was imdiate and chilling. Her scowl darkened, and for a heartbeat the guard seed to stop breathing. She was in no mood to entertain anyone, not while her ring remained missing, not while the culprit still walked free under her nose.
A dismissal balanced on the edge of her tongue.
But she hesitated.
"Let him in," she said finally, each word clipped. Laheir had proven useful in the past, despite his grating presence. If he ca at such a ti, he must have sothing worth hearing.
"As you wish, Your Majesty." The guard bowed again, deeper this ti, before retreating. Monts later, Laheir stepped inside, his footsteps echoing in the silence that greeted him.
Nheera regarded him with cool disdain as she lounged lazily across her luxurious settee, feigning boredom.
"Why have you chosen to darken my mood even further by coming here?" she asked, her tone flat and dripping with disinterest.
Laheir’s face was more austere than she had ever seen it. Stern lines cut sharply into his features, his lips pressed into a thin, unforgiving line. His eyes, usually steady and unreadable, now shone with sothing colder.
"While you have been busy sowing fear in the hearts of those who serve you," he said, voice dangerously calm, "I have been doing sothing far more valuable, trying to save us both from complete ruination."
Sensing that this was a conversation best held in private, Nheera turned to the ladies-in-waiting hovering nearby
"Out," she commanded.
They scattered at once, skirts swishing as they fled to avoid the queen’s temper, leaving her alone with Laheir.
His expression didn’t waver. "You busy yourself chasing a ridiculous ring while everything around us is collapsing. The king has all but nad Ragnar his successor in front of the entire court, and you’ve done nothing. You are content to watch Hairan lose his birthright if it ans being allowed to continue searching for aningless things that have only ever benefited you."
Nheera’s fury rose swift and sharp. "You forget yourself. I am your queen."
"Then act like it." Laheir shot back, his voice carrying a bitter edge. "Because while you were distracted, the king has ordered an inquiry into Yannick’s ties to the rebellion. And if they uncover anything leading back to my family, you know exactly what will follow. And you also know," he added, stepping in just close enough to test her nerve, "that I am not the kind of man who goes down quietly."
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