Chapter 58: Snake Attack

"WHAT?!"

The word erupted from at least four throats at once, shattering whatever fragile decorum the chamber had been clinging to. Silk rustled violently as nobles surged half out of their seats. Someone’s fan clattered to the marble floor. A ripple of whispering broke out along the crescent, voices overlapping, rising, colliding into a wall of noise.

"She annulled it—"

"—the Sovereign of Shadow’s Edge, of all—"

"—do you understand what this means for the treaty with the panthers—"

"Order!" Vellworth’s voice cracked across the chamber, and the noise dropped, reluctantly, to a simmering murmur. He turned back to Karina, his composed mask slipping just enough to reveal the irritation underneath. "Your Majesty. Forgive my bluntness, but do you understand the weight of what you’ve done? There is a reason the late Emperor arranged that union personally. The panther kingdom’s military might alone was worth the alliance ten times over, to say nothing of the trade routes through the Shadow territories. You cannot simply—"

"I can, actually." Karina’s voice cut clean through his, calm, but with an edge underneath it that made the nearest nobles flinch back half an inch. "I am the Empress. Not a broodmare handed off between kingdoms to keep the borders quiet. If the late Emperor wanted a permanent alliance, he should have built one that didn’t require me to stay married to a man who bedded whores and let delusional women walk the halls of his own castle."

Silence.

Vellworth’s jaw tightened. "Your Majesty, with respect—"

"With respect," Karina echoed, "the annulment is finalized. It is not up for debate in this chamber. If the Council wishes to draft a new arrangement with Shadow’s Edge, one that doesn’t involve my marriage bed, I am happy to review it. That is the extent of what I’m offering."

A tense beat passed. Then a woman near the back, younger, sharp-eyed, dressed in deep green, spoke up before Vellworth could regroup.

"There’s another matter, Your Majesty. We’ve heard that there was an attempt made on Prince Valen’s life. While you were at Shadow’s Edge."

The murmuring surged back to life instantly, sharper this time, edged with real alarm instead of scandal.

"Is he—" someone started.

"Is the young Prince well?" another voice demanded, cutting through.

Karina raised a hand, and to her mild surprise, the room actually quieted. "The Prince is fine. Completely unharmed. The woman responsible for the attempt has already been dealt with." She left it deliberately vague what dealt with meant. Renira’s throat torn open in a locked dungeon cell wasn’t exactly audience-appropriate. "Security around my children has been doubled, both here and at Shadow’s Edge, and I have no intention of allowing anything of the sort to happen again."

"And the panther Sovereign?" Vellworth pressed. "Was he aware? Complicit?"

"No," Karina said, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she meant it. "He was not complicit. He was, in fact, the one who caught her."

That seemed to take some of the wind out of the room. A few nobles exchanged glances, recalculating.

"One more thing, Your Majesty," Vellworth said, visibly composing himself, folding his hands behind his back. "The plague reports. Word has spread that it’s worsening. Given the... complications with Shadow’s Edge, does the crown have a solution in place? Or are we simply hoping it burns itself out?"

Karina hesitated for half a second, just long enough that she hoped no one caught it.

"I trust Leonidas to handle the plague within his own borders," she said. "He has resources, healers, and every incentive in the world to solve it quickly."

"And if he can’t solve it?"

"Then we’ll cross that bridge when it collapses under us," Karina said flatly. "Not before."

Vellworth opened his mouth to press further, but Karina had already begun to rise from the throne, signaling, as clearly as she dared without outright saying it, that the audience was drawing to a close. She swallowed, throat dry from an hour of holding her ground against a room that clearly wanted more blood than she was willing to give them.

That was when the shouting started.

Not inside the chamber. Outside it.

Muffled through the heavy doors, but unmistakable, General Aldric’s deep voice, raised in a way she had rarely heard, and filled with alarm.

"—I don’t care what you think you saw, you will not enter—"

A second voice, higher, frantic, cutting him off. "You don’t understand, I have to speak to someone, anyone—"

The nobles all turned toward the doors as one, twelve heads swiveling in perfect, startled unison.

"What in the world—" Vellworth muttered.

The doors burst open.

A palace guard stumbled through first, clearly having lost an argument with Aldric about who was allowed to open them, followed by a disheveled man in traveling clothes, mud-streaked, wild-eyed, clutching his hat in white-knuckled hands. Aldric was right behind him, one hand clamped on the man’s shoulder.

"Your Imperial Majesty, forgive the intrusion," Aldric said, teeth gritted. "This citizen insisted—"

"I saw something!" the man burst out, nearly shrieking, twisting free of Aldric’s grip. "Out past the northern farmlands, Your Majesty, I swear on my life, I saw it with my own eyes, a snake, a massive snake, bigger than any beast I’ve ever seen, coiled through the trees like it was hunting something—"

The chamber erupted into fresh chaos, nobles gasping, whispering, someone actually shrieking.

Karina felt something cold settle low in her stomach.

She groaned, pressing two fingers hard against her temple.

Could it be...

Zarek.

Soren’s father.

Karina pressed her fingers harder against her temple.

Of all her husbands, Zarek had never been cruel. He hadn’t paraded mistresses through the halls or bedded half the serving staff or done anything nearly as dramatic as the others managed on a regular basis. He was simply... absent. A cold, distant presence who preferred the company of his scrolls and his solitary chambers to the company of his own wife, who had looked through her more often than at her, who had barely acknowledged Soren’s existence beyond the bare minimum required of a father.

She hadn’t heard a single word from him in years.

Now, apparently, there was a massive snake terrorizing the northern farmlands, and every instinct she had was screaming that it wasn’t a coincidence.

Why now? she thought, sighing. Why, after years of silence, does he suddenly decide to slither into my kingdom?

The answer arrived almost as quickly as the question. Word traveled fast, especially scandalous word. If the entire Council had already heard about the Shadow’s Edge annulment, there was no reason to assume Zarek’s court hadn’t heard it too. He probably wanted to beat her to it, arrive on his own terms, initiate his own annulment before she could do it to him first, wounded pride dressed up as a diplomatic visit.

Or, a much colder thought slid in, he had heard about Soren. About the attempt on Valen’s life. About assassins walking imperial halls. Maybe he had come to collect his son.

That thought made the decision for her.

"Aldric," Karina said, straightening. The nobles quieted instantly, sensing the shift in her tone.

"Your Majesty." Aldric was already moving toward her, releasing the terrified citizen, who scrambled backward gratefully into the crowd of guards near the doors.

"Have you heard about this?"

"No. It’s the first I’m hearing of this. Do you want him removed from imperial land?"

"I want him caught," Karina corrected, "before he tramples half the northern farms or terrifies an entire village into a riot. Take a unit. Find him. Do not engage him in a fight if you can avoid it. But I want him brought to the palace, quietly, before every noble in this room turns one confused farmer’s sighting into a full invasion rumor."

Aldric nodded. "Understood, Your Imperial Majesty." He turned on his heel and was gone, barking orders down the corridor before the doors had even fully swung shut behind him.

Karina turned back to face twelve very pale, very confused nobles, all of whom were clearly trying to determine whether they had just witnessed the beginning of a diplomatic incident, a family reunion, or a natural disaster.

She had no intention of explaining which.

"This audience is concluded," she said simply, and swept off the dais before anyone could summon the nerve to ask a single follow-up question.