The carriage rocked gently over the uneven road as it made its way deeper into the southern reaches of the kingdom. Seraphine sat with her hands folded in her lap and her gaze turned toward the window, watching the landscape shift from the flat, open stretches of farmland into rolling hills studded with clusters of oak and pine. She did not truly pay attention to any of it. Her mind was elsewhere.
Two days. It had been only two days since the king’s body had been buried, and Nheera had wasted no ti in dismissing Seraphine from her duties as lady in waiting.
The words had been politely spoken, as Nheera always did when she was about to bury a knife in soone’s back. "I will not be needing your services during this mourning period. Please, take this ti for yourself," were Nheera’s exact words that day. Said with a small, tired smile, as though she were doing Seraphine a kindness.
Seraphine had stood very still while she heard it, had smiled and dipped her head and said she understood. She left the very next mont and she did not allow herself to think too deeply on it until she was alone.
Even now, sitting in the quiet carriage, she still wasn’t sure what to make of her current situation.
The dismissal itself was not entirely unusual. Many Lamorian queens in the past had retreated from their ladies while mourning, preferring silence and solitude while they grieved the loss of their husbands. But Nheera had never been that sort of queen to do such a thing. She surrounded herself with people, kept her allies close and she almost never went anywhere without a lady in waiting at her side. Now to suddenly send away her chief lady had to be because of sothing else.
Seraphine had turned the mont over in her mind many tis in the hours that followed, searching it for sothing she might have missed. But she found nothing.
The question that kept returning to her was the obvious one. Had Nheera found out?
It wasn’t impossible. Seraphine had been careful, but being careful had its limits, and Nheera was not a woman who missed much. If she had sohow learned that her chief lady in waiting had been carrying information quietly out of the palace, feeding it directly to a man who was very much not the queen’s ally, then the dismissal made a certain kind of sense.
A temporary removal before sothing more permanent was decided. Nheera would want ti to think, to plan a suitable punishnt for Seraphine. After all, Nheera rarely moved on impulse.
But then again, if she knew the full truth of it, a gentle dismissal seed too mild a response. Nheera did not do things halfway. A betrayal of that kind would be t with harsh repercussions. A kind of tornt that would leave anyone broken at the end of it. Seraphine had known the queen long enough to know what she was capable of.
She could not be certain, and that uncertainty was the most uncomfortable thing of all. It was driving her mad just thinking about it.
In the end, there was nothing to do but accept it and move on. She had quietly arranged for her things to be packed, told the handful of people who might ask that she intended to visit relatives in the south. It wasn’t entirely untrue—she did have family in the south. She simply would not be going to them directly as she planned to make a short stop at Ragnar’s manor first to inform him of all that she recently learned from spying on the queen.
The carriage slowed as it approached the gates of Ragnar’s estate. Seraphine straightened in her seat and looked through the small carriage window. When a guard approached her, she gave her na and stated her purpose for coming there.
The guard recognized her and nodded to the others stationed at the gates. The gates opened without further preamble and she was allowed inside.
The carriage drew to a stop in front of the manor steps. Seraphine waited as her footman ca around and opened the door, holding it for her as she stepped down.
The housekeeper was already at the entrance, welcoming Seraphine warmly as she offered to take her directly to the guest parlour where Ragnar would et her. Seraphine followed behind her without delay.
The interior of the manor was grand, a place fit for a prince. It was her first ti there yet Seraphine paid little mind to any of it, keeping her attention on the distance ahead. Nieah walked at a brisk, even pace and she matched it.
But as they turned a corner, Seraphine’s steps began to slow.
A woman was coming toward them, most likely erging from one of the rooms along the wing. She carried herself with a particular kind of ease to her gait that made her seem familiar to Seraphine even before the woman ca into full view.
She halted entirely when she caught sight of the woman’s face. A face she never thought she would see again.
She stood completely still, gawking like she had seen a ghost.
Nieah did not notice at first. She continued for a few paces before the absence of footsteps behind her registered and she turned, looking back at Seraphine with an expression caught sowhere between concern and confusion.
Seraphine didn’t acknowledge her. Her eyes were fixed on the woman who had co to a stop a few feet away. She looked the sa as Seraphine rembered, like gazing at a fragnt from her past.
Morana’s expression gave nothing away. She simply observed Seraphine with a blank but polite stare.
"You." The word was out of Seraphine before she’d fully decided to speak. "What are you doing here?"
"I’m afraid I don’t know what you an, ma’am," Morana said. Her tone was mild.
"Don’t play dumb with ." Seraphine retorted. "How did you even get here?"
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