Samuel watched her, a soft, protective smile touching his lips beneath his guard’s helt. "Make sure you don’t drink any water right after eating those, wife. If you do, you’ll get a terrible stomach ache."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Heena mumbled around a mouthful of green grams, not even looking up.
It was surprisingly therapeutic. For the next half hour, the only sound inside the carriage was the rhythmic snapping of vegetable pods. But the second the thirty-minute mark hit, the peaceful atmosphere shattered.
Heena suddenly froze. She dropped the remaining grams onto the tray, pulled out a silk handkerchief, and ticulously wiped her hands and mouth. Her sleepy, bored gaze instantly sharpened into a lethal, predatory focus.
She was ready to fight.
Through the blinds, she had just spotted a magnificent, vibrant red carriage rolling majestically toward the Marquis’s grand gates. Normally, a solid red carriage in the capital belonged strictly to high-ranking couples celebrating a marriage or a grand auspicious event. But this specific carriage was different—it had a massive, glittering golden phoenix ticulously carved onto its side panels, flanked by an imperial eagle.
With a crest like that, you didn’t need to be a scholar to guess its occupant. It belonged to the royal family.
The arrival of royalty ant the celebration was officially hitting its absolute, chaotic peak. The guards at the gate would be thoroughly distracted trying to manage the imperial entourage, the hosts would be completely preoccupied groveling before royalty, and the heavy influx of lower-tier nobles would be rushing through the checkpoints simultaneously.
This was her only flawless mont to enter.
Heena reached out and sharply knocked on the front wood of the carriage. "Move out," she commanded.
The luxury carriage imdiately rolled forward, blending smoothly into the queue of aristocratic vehicles.
Now, when you are a master of infiltration, securing a high-society invitation to a crowded banquet isn’t actually hard work. You don’t need a formal forgery; you just need to exploit a weak link. In Heena’s case, she had simply stolen one.
A few hours prior, Samuel’s personal guards had perfectly tid a little ’accident,’ subtly breaking the wheel axle of a minor, arrogant noble’s carriage while they were en route to the upper district. While the minor noble was busy screaming at his servants in a blind rage, Samuel’s n had casually slipped into the carriage and retrieved the formal invitation card. It was incredibly easy. Right now, that poor, miserable noble was probably still standing on a dusty roadside trying to jack up his carriage wheel.
When their vehicle finally pulled up to the outer checkpoint, Heena rolled down the velvet curtain just an inch. Samuel, standing tall and imposing in his guard uniform beside the door, casually flashed the stolen invitation to the estate’s gatekeepers. The Marquis’s guards, overwheld by the sudden arrival of the royal phoenix carriage just ahead of them, barely glanced at the na before bowing and waving them right through the iron gates.
They were inside.
Before stepping out into the bustling outer courtyard, Heena picked up a delicate, sheer black silk cloth, tying it securely across the lower half of her face. It was ant to look like an aristocratic fashion statent to shield her skin from the courtyard dust, but beneath the fabric, Heena was actually laughing her head off at the sheer absurdity of the situation.
Samuel stood by the carriage step, offering his arm to help her down. He looked at the stark black cloth covering her features and frowned slightly beneath his visor.
"You know, right... that wearing solid black to a celebratory birthday banquet is considered incredibly ominous in high society?" Samuel murmured, his voice a low, private rumble ant only for her.
Heena placed her gloved hand on his forearm, stepping down onto the cobblestones with flawless, imperial grace. She tilted her head up, her dark eyes crinkling with absolute mischief above the black silk. "You didn’t seem to have a single objection to it until now, guard."
Samuel’s gaze darkened with imdiate, intense heat as he looked down at her striking figure. He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. "Well... you look absolutely gorgeous and terrifying in it. So I kept my mouth shut."
Heena let out a low, breathless laugh, her fingers tightening playfully against his armored arm as she looked toward the glittering, crowded main hall of the Marquis’s estate.
"Good answer," she whispered, her eyes flashing with a cold, vengeful fire. "Co on, hubby. Let’s go crash this party
And goddamn it, this place was decorated so beautifully that it was almost sickening; you could tell at a single glance that this family simply had far too much money.
But the truly hilarious, twisted part of it all was what greeted Heena the mont she stepped across the threshold. Set up in three entirely different, highly prominent areas of the main courtyard were massive, ornately frad portraits of Seera.
Heena stared at them, completely stunned by the sheer spectacle. She didn’t know whether to applaud these people for being brilliant, cold-blooded opportunists, masterful business minds, or just utter, unmitigated bastards. To brutally murder your own daughter in cold blood, and then turn right around to aggressively advertise your profound grief to the entire capital? It was a cody.
A line of elegant estate servants was ticulously leading the arriving guests toward the central courtyard, and naturally, they guided Heena straight into the heart of the crowd where everyone else was gathering.
The mont Heena entered the main viewing area, she had to bite the inside of her cheek fiercely to control herself from laughing out loud.
Right there in front of the massive crowd, the Marquis and the Marchioness were dramatically burning expensive incense in front of Seera’s portrait. The Marchioness was weeping softly into a silk handkerchief, while the Marquis stood tall, his voice projecting a perfect, sorrowful quiver across the quiet courtyard.
"Oh, my dearest daughter," the Marquis choked out, wiping at a non-existent tear. "Today is our wedding anniversary... We still rember how you used to run around this very courtyard when you were young, ticulously making every single preparation yourself. We miss you terribly. If only the heavens had been lenient and you were still standing here with us today..."
Blah, blah, blah.
Heena stood in the crowd, listening to the suffocating flow of their prepared script, utterly unable to comprehend the sheer audacity of these people. ’At least have the decency to find my actual corpse before staging an entire theatrical production about my death,’ she thought, her eyes flashing with a cold, mocking amusent behind her black veil.
But while Heena found the absolute shalessness of the display funny, the man standing directly behind her did not.
Samuel was vibrating with a silent, terrifying rage. He stared at the massive portraits, the burning incense, and the fresh white mourning flowers piled beneath them, his large fists clenching so hard against his guard’s uniform that his leather gloves creaked under the strain. If looks could kill, the Marquis and Marchioness would have burst into flas on the spot.
Sensing the overwhelming waves of murderous intent radiating from her personal guard, Heena subtly tilted her head back, keeping her eyes fixed on the stage.
’What happened to you now?’ she asked him through their a whisper, her tone light and amused.
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