The morning test had barely begun.
The remaining princesses were assembled in their line, the queen on the high table, the three princes seated to the side of the hall.
Denyro straight-backed and still, Vaemond watching everything with that particular brightness of his, Zyran with his arms folded and his eyes moving quietly around the room.
The doors burst open.
Not the careful controlled open, the both handles swinging wide, a palace official stumbling through the hall.
Every head in the hall turned.
The official dropped to one knee before the queen.
His breathing was audible in the sudden silence.
”Your Majesty.” His voice came out uneven.
“Princess Moriah Evercrest of Nymeria…” He stopped.
Swallowed.
“She has been found in her chamber,”
The hall went completely still.
Then it broke open all at once.
Gasps, a cry from somewhere down the line, voices layering over voices, chairs shifting, someone’s teacup set down too hard against the table.
The princesses moved in their seats, turning to each other, hands pressed to mouths, eyes wide.
At the high table, Queen Desdemona did not move.
Denyro, seated to her left, had gone very still.
Vaemond, beside him, had stopped mid-sentence and was watching the official with an expression that had lost all its earlier ease.
Zyran sat upright.
His eyes went immediately.
Not to the official, not to the Queen, to Elyndra.
She sat exactly as she had been sitting before the doors opened.
Hands folded in her lap.
Back straight.
Her face composed in the same careful arrangement it always wore, her breathing, slow and even.
The queen raised one hand.
Silence returned immediately.
Her expression had not changed.
Her posture had not changed.
She looked at the official, “How.” she asked.
”The physicians believe she had been poisoned, Your Majesty.”
”When.”
”Sometime this morning, Your Majesty.
Her maidservant was absent and she was not found until…”
”Her maidservant is no where to be found???,” the queen asked.
A pause.
”Yes, Your Majesty.
She cannot be located.”
The queen’s eyes moved slowly across the assembled princesses.
Moving from face to face.
Lythia rose slowly from her seat.
Not quickly, not dramatically, one hand came to rest against her chest.
Her brows pulling together, her lips parting slightly.
”How horrible,” she breathed.
“Who would dare?”
Her eyes moved to Elyndra.
They didn’t rush there.
They arrived slowly.
She looked at the queen.
“Your Majesty…everyone in this palace knows princess Moriah and princess Elyndra were close.”
Murmurs moved through the hall.
The murmuring shifted.
Heads turned.
Eyes followed Lythia’s gaze, not because anyone had decided anything yet, just because accusation pointed and people looked where it pointed.
”She was closest to her,” someone said.
Low.
Uncertain. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
”I heard they spent time together always in each other’s courtyard,” another voice said.
”I saw her always going to Moriah’s courtyard…”
”I heard there was tension between them recently…”
Elyndra looked at Lythia.
Then she looked at the murmuring princesses.
Then at the queen.
”I do not wish to cast suspicion…especially not at a time like this.” lythia’s eyes glistened.
“But we all saw how often they were together. And there were… but there were tensions. Days ago. I witnessed them myself. They argued. Princess Elyndra was…”
”I did not argue with Princess Moriah.”
Elyndra’s voice came low and careful.
Without urgency.
It entered the room calmly and sat there.
Every head turned.
She had not risen.
She remained seated, her hands still folded in her lap, her gaze steady on the middle distance.
She looked not indifferent.
Not cold.
Simply present but unbothered.
”Princess Lythia is mistaken,” she said.
“Moriah and I had no argument.” She paused.
“I am sorry that she is gone.”
”Your Majesty…She was the only person that had been inside princess Moriah’s chamber.
She had access.
She had opportunity.
And she had…” She turned back to Elyndra, and her expression had shifted, shed some of its grief and revealed something colder beneath.
“She had reason.”
”What reason?” Elyndra asked.
”Competition.” The word fell flat and clean.
“We are all in competition here. Nymeria is… Nymeria is a luxurious kingdom, way more bigger and richer than Velmora. Everyone knew it. Anyone from a low and poor kingdom would felt threatened by that…”
”I did not feel threatened by princess Moriah or her kingdom.”
Elyndra stood in her place.
Her breathing was even.
She looked at Lythia steadily.
The queen’s voice cut through the hall.
”Enough.”
Silence fell immediately.
Queen Desdemona looked at Elyndra.
“Explain.”
Elyndra opened her mouth.
”May I ask a question first?”
The voice came from the side of the hall.
Everyone turned.
The crown prince had sat forward in his seat.
He was looking at the official.
The queen looked at him.
”General Pierre, when was the poison administered?” he asked, directing the question at the general.
“Approximately.”
”We are not sure, Your Highness.
Sometime this morning, based on…”
”Call the physicians,” the crown prince said.
He looked at the queen.
“With your permission, Your Majesty. I want to hear from them directly.”
A pause.
It took several minutes.
The hall waited in tense quiet, the princesses standing in their line, nobody speaking.
Elyndra watched the crown prince from her place in the line.
He was sitting leaning slightly forward, his eyes on the floor in front of him.
The physicians arrived.
Two of them, looking like they had been pulled away from something urgent.
The crown prince looked up.
”The symptoms,” he said.
“Describe them.”
The head physician looked uncertain for a moment, then he answered.
The hall was very quiet.
The crown prince sat back slowly.
”The early presentation is consistent with poisoning,” he said.
“Specifically, the physical indicators suggest, tightening of the chest. Difficulty breathing. A strong failure of the limbs beginning with the legs. The face at time of death showed…”
Zyran had gone very still.
He was not looking at the physician anymore.
His gaze had moved, slightly and unintentionally, to the middle distance, to somewhere behind it.
He remembered the forest.
The cold.
The way his chest had tightened.
The particular way it has.
Not sharp, not sudden, but nonstop, strong, moving inward from the edges of the body.
The way his legs had…
He looked up.
He looked at Elyndra.
She was watching the physician, her face pure and innocent.
He watched her quietly for long without meaning to and said nothing.
The hall became chaotic again.
Voices rose and fell.
Lythia presented her account again.
Measured, sorrowful, threaded with implications.
She looked at the queen.
”Your Majesty.” She bowed her head slightly.”I am deeply grieved by what has happened.
Moriah was kind to me when others were not.
For Moriah’s sake I ask that you declare a full search.
Every chamber.
Every courtyard.
Every belonging of every princess in this residence.” She paused.
“If someone here had the means and the materials to poison Princess Moriah, those things exist somewhere. They should be found.” Another pause.
“I will submit to the search first, willingly, so that there is no question about my cooperation.”
The hall was silent.
Lythia stared at her.
The queen looked at Elyndra for a long moment.
Then at Lythia.
Then across the assembled faces.
The princesses, the officials, the three princes.
”A search,” the Queen said.
”A complete one, Your Majesty.
Like I said, I would welcome it.” Elyndra folded her hands in her lap.
“I have nothing to hide.”
Lythia held her gaze across the hall, steadily and without blinking, and hold it there until Elyndra looked away first.
Zyran was watching Elyndra with an expression he could not fully read from where she was standing.
His eyes had not left her since General Pierre had come through the doors.
”A search will be declared,” the queen said.
“All princesses will return to their courtyards and remain confined until further notice. The tests are suspended.” She rose from her seat.
“No one leaves the residence.”