A/N: I have to reread the previous Chapters about Helga, Rueben, and Mira to ensure continuity in the plot. Sotis we authors get carried away. I realized I had inserted quite a few plot twists not in the original outline. Even so of the characters were inserted along the way, and I forgot to note them. I haven’t anticipated that reading from a reader’s perspective and not as an author or editor is quite an enjoyable experience. I got hooked, so I spent more ti than I had originally intended. Bwa ha ha ha.
Please drop a review for this book if you like it. I will really appreciate it.
BTW, don’t worry about these long notes. I will make this Chapter up to 1.2k words to make up, and you get value for 10 coins.
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King’s Palace, Savadra
Preparations for the banquet had begun in earnest. The palace kitchens roared with activity, their heat spilling into the corridors. The scent of spiced wine and roasting ats mingled with the sharper sll of freshly polished armor—Dakota’s knights, their presence a constant reminder that the queen’s hospitality was edged in steel.
In her boudoir, Queen Helga stood before a towering mirror, the afternoon glow of the sun gilding her figure as maids fussed with the folds of her gown. Crimson silk clung to her shoulders like poured wine, the hue chosen to command the room without declaring war outright. She studied her reflection not as a woman, but as a weapon being sharpened.
The door creaked. Reuben entered without ceremony, his jaw tight, his youth already lined with the weight of doubts he dared not voice.
"Mother," he began, voice low, "are you certain this is wise? The enemy could—"
"They will co," Helga interrupted, her voice like the ring of a blade. "And when they do, we are ready to strike them." She turned to face him fully. "Your father doubts . Let him. But you and I—we will see Northem stands victorious."
Reuben’s head dipped in reluctant assent, though unease gnawed at him. In the stillness between their words, the echo of King Heimdal’s warning returned, a ghost he could not silence:
Did you consider that when Estalis marches deeper into Fereya, Zura would storm the capital and you would be caught off guard? Turik is very cunning and do not play by the rule. He fears no one except Odin, but you had driven Northem’s pillar away. What would you do when the capital falls under Turik? Offer tribute? Will you kneel before them as a vassal king?
The words clung like frost. Was Northem already crumbling? His father had told him: beware the knives in your own court, sharper than any foreign blade. Yet Reuben had dismissed it. His Uncle Duval—his mother’s cousin—was blood, loyal beyond question. And his Uncle Malik, no less so. Surely his father’s illness clouded his judgnt, turning bitterness into suspicion.
Then who in the court could it be? Solanio?
He rembered his father’s instructions, but heeded none of them. And that letter, he threw it in the fire.
From his mother’s balcony, his eyes strayed to the far side of the palace grounds, where the late Queen Astrid’s residence was. To protect, Queen Astrid’s forr residence, his father built walls around it. He spared no expense and used the finest white marble from Roca.
He then crowned it with a dod roof, flanked by four tapering spires. The structure was so exquisite that the workmanship was praised when it was first unveiled during the late queen’s second death anniversary.
At dawn, the structure caught fire with gold; by midday, it glead like a polished jewel. But it was sunset that transford it—bathed in orange and different hues of crimson, it beca sothing otherworldly, as though Astrid’s mory itself burned within the structure.
Helga’s footsteps broke his reverie. She joined him at the railing, her gaze following his. For a mont, the sun bathed Astrid’s shrine in a glow so radiant that even Helga could not deny its beauty.
"You should change," she murmured, her hand brushing his shoulder. "The guests will arrive soon. Worry not. Every knight is stationed, every guard doubled. Let the arrogant Zurans co—we are ready." Her confidence was ironclad, spoken with the certainty of a queen who could bend fate itself.
Reuben left her then, bowing his head, though doubt weighed every step.
Helga lingered, eyes shifted to the balcony beside hers—the king’s own—facing directly toward Astrid’s shining residence. Heimdal had nad it Balai Hamili, and every sunset found him seated there on a rocking chair, watching as though Astrid herself might appear within the glow.
Beyond Balai Hamili was a pathway flanked by roses and gardenias that led to a gazebo with marble pillars. It was Astrid’s favorite spot, and Heimdal erected a gazebo in her mory.
How it infuriated her. Once, she had demanded that the house be torn down, its stones scattered. Heimdal’s response had been swift and rciless: "Astrid is already dead, Helga. Must you compete against a ghost?"
Punishnt followed—a house arrest in the cold, distant Tower of Halden.
Helga changed tactics. She had bent, softened outwardly. She had ordered flowers planted in Astrid’s garden, spoken kindly of her late half-sister, and even honored her mory in ceremonies.
Her calculations worked. Slowly, Heimdal’s frost thawed. He treated her as a partner, a mother to his son, even as he let Astrid’s son, Alaric, wither in neglect.
Helga had believed that with ti, Astrid would fade from Heimdal’s heart. But she had been wrong. Each birthday, each death anniversary, he still disappeared into Balai Hamili, keeping vigil with the mory of a woman long buried.
And of course, Helga would be very furious, but she always reminded herself to act graciously and not be jealous of a person long dead!
And that was what gnawed at Helga most.
Astrid had been gone for years, yet the palace whispered her na as though she still walked its halls. Servants spoke of her kindness, courtiers recalled her laughter, even the common folk carried her mory like a talisman. Astrid, the gentle, Astrid, the beloved. Astrid, the queen who had embodied everything Helga was not.
Her fingers tightened on the wooden balustrade until her ring bit into her skin. How can a ghost still command loyalty? She had bled, sched, and sacrificed to wear the crown, yet she remained an intruder in her own palace—asured always against a woman who no longer breathed.
Now, as she looked at Astrid’s residence and the gazebo beyond, surrounded by blooming flowers which she herself had asked to be taken care of, anger bubbled inside her heart like a volcano about to erupt. Even when Heimdal was sick, he did not let her destroy that garden.
Her lips pressed thin. Astrid’s house, glowing in the sunset, seed to mock her, its radiance whispering that though she wore the crown, she was not the queen he loved. Never the queen he wanted.
"No matter what, Astrid," she whispered into the burning sky. "You lost to long ago. And your son—your precious heir—is nothing. He will never wear the crown."
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