~RUNE
“My Queen?”
Voices echoed somewhere in the depth of my subconscious.
I stirred in my sleep, unwilling to wake up.
I just wanted to stay safe in the depth of my dreams for as long as possible.
“Wake up, please,” another urged.
I sighed and slowly pried my eyes open.
That was when I saw my three handmaidens looking down at me with concern.
“Why can’t you let me sleep longer?” I whined before burying myself deeper within the sheets.
I was lacking sleep badly.
I barely slept the night before.
Yesterday on its own had been a very long day.
So much had happened in just one day.
“I’m sorry, your Majesty but you need to wake up. The Queen’s court demands an audience with you. You need to officially meet them today,” Anna explained.
I felt a sudden jolt within me and I sat up immediately.
The Queen’s court?
That was a thing too among the Orin?
I blinked hard as I stared ahead.
I had thought all I had to face were the elders.
And now, I had to face women too?
What if they also hated me like the men?
“W— what do I need to do?” I asked as I looked up at Anna.
“Get ready,” Sofia said with a big smile.
And that was what we did.
We spent the next two hours getting ready.
Belle even managed to sneak some breakfast in for me.
By the time they were done preparing me, I was wearing an emerald green silk dress which flowed freely in layers down my body.
The girls allowed my hair to cascade down my back.
Something Sayla usually did when she was still alive.
I exhaled sharply as I started feeling emotional again.
It took a lot to blink away the tears that had started to form in my eyes.
“I’m ready,” I announced.
“And this time, I want all of you with me.”
“We are not of noble blood nor welcome in the Orin court,” Anna explained. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
I gritted my teeth realising that I was going to have to face those women alone.
I sighed heavily.
“Fine, take me there.”
With that, they began to lead me out of the room.
The entire day there, I couldn’t stop thinking about the women that I was about to meet.
They couldn’t be that bad now, could they?
If I could face Uriel— the mad king himself— then I definitely could handle a few Orin women.
Right?
I shivered at the thought just as we turned into a wider hallway.
It opened to a grand hall which had entrances from different corners and large windows bringing light into the central space.
Unlike the rest of the palace, this section actually felt alive.
There were Orin maids with smaller pointy ears scurrying around, trying their best to stay out of my way.
Up ahead laid two grand double doors.
“We have arrived,” Belle said.
“This is the part where you continue on your own.”
I stopped to look at them, trying my best to hide my anxiety behind.
“You’ll be fine, your Majesty,” Anna suddenly assured me.
“Whatever happens, remember that you are Queen and you have authority over them.”
Yeah right, the fraud Queen trying to rule over her own predators.
The legendary Orin whom I had been taught my whole life to fear.
I nodded at her.
“Thank you.”
Then I inhaled sharply and stepped toward the double doors.
The guards at the door bowed slightly before one of them pushed the doors open for me.
“Noble and respected Ladies of the Queen’s Court, Her Majesty— Queen Sayla Vorn has arrived.”
I shivered at the last name.
This was the first time someone was using Uriel’s last name on me.
I forced all my fear behind, straightened my back and lifted my head high like I had seen Sayla do countless times before stepping into the hall.
A group of women, some clad in black, deep purples or blue dresses— waited in the hall.
They were each seated on comfortable chairs, a few had large pets with them.
Wild animals who would have easily terrorized the human kingdom were being used as pets here.
From jaguars to wolves to tigers.
I expected that there would be a form of greeting to show their respect to their Queen yet nothing happened.
The ten women only scrutinized me as if trying to decide whether I was worthy of their acknowledgement or not.
I was speechless.
Was I supposed to use an iron fist, call them out for disrespecting me or allow this to happen? Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
That was when a woman arose from her seat.
She had been the one with a tiger crawling around her legs.
She was clad in black, long cornrows framing her fierce expression yet her beauty was unrivaled.
She looked polished, like someone who had been trained for politics since birth.
“Long live the Queen,” she began as she slowly walked to me.
Yet something about her tone felt like she didn’t really mean this greeting.
That was when all the other women finally chorused after her like they had been waiting for her to make the first move.
“Long live the Queen…”
“I am Lady Darya Raze,” she introduced herself.
“The first seat in the Queen’s court.”
My heart skipped when I heard that last name.
“Are you related to Lord Morrigan?” I asked.
She smirked.
“I see you know how to use your brain. Morrigan is my brother.”
I swallowed hard.
First from the fact that she had openly insulted me and because she was related to the one Lord who clearly wanted me dead.
“First seat,” I recalled her words.
“I know I am new here but… Shouldn’t the first seat belong to the Queen?”
She snorted a short laugh in disbelief, almost as if she didn’t think I’d call that out.
Then she turned to look at the other women, some of them snickered and I immediately understood that this court was divided into women who obviously supported her, and the ones I couldn’t yet place.
“You are right… The first seat should belong to the Queen,” Darya answered.
“I wonder where the anomaly came from.”
I narrowed my eyes as confusion hit me for a split second before it finally made sense.
Was she trying to say that she was supposed to be Queen, and not Sayla?
“Every woman of noble blood begins to work hard to earn a seat in the Queen’s court from the moment she is born,” Darya began to educate me.
I furrowed my brows as I remained standing in the center, watching them all.
“We undergo trials of different kinds just to prove ourselves worthy of the seat, we push ourselves to the farthest we can. We endure all sorts of pain such that we are deemed fit enough to stand by the future queen…” She stopped to look at me.
“And the woman who works the hardest ends up being crowned the next Queen of Oraena.”
I swallowed hard for the millionth time today.
Sayla had truly taken her place as the next Queen.
“So how is it fair that you— a human who’s never worked a day in her life to earn anything is allowed to walk into the Queen’s court and take the very title all of us worked so hard for?”
The White Rabbit in the Wolf Court…