The throne room had not fully recovered from the news when the doors opened again.
The King had been speaking — quietly, to his Inner Council, the particular murmur of people processing sothing significant and deciding collectively what it ant —
when the second interruption of the
morning arrived.
A guard. Stepping through the main doors with the posture of soone who had been sent to deliver sothing unpleasant and had accepted that responsibility.
"Your Majesty." He bowed. "There is a matter requiring imdiate attention. Lady Bailey of House Sylex — the last confird pure bloodline witch of the Sylex family — has been found dead in her mansion this morning."
The Inner Council went very still.
Celestia stood exactly where she had been standing since the first attendant delivered the news. She had not moved, had not spoken, had simply — remained.
The fan in her hand was closed. She was touching the ring on her finger, in deep thought, not knowing what to do or say.
"This is not ordinary," a councillor said — the grey haired precise one, the one who had questioned her about the fan.
He was looking at the King with the expression of soone connecting things rapidly. "The Sylex bloodline has been one of the most protected magical lineages in the kingdom for generations. For the last surviving pure bloodline mber to simply — die — without warning—"
"Without warning," another councillor said, "or without being found to have died of anything in particular. The report says natural causes. But a woman of Lady Bailey’s power does not simply—"
"It is suspicious," the King said.
The word landing with the weight of soone who had been thinking it since the first report arrived and had now decided to say it out loud.
His eyes moved — briefly, carefully — to Celestia, she t them steadily and turned her gaze down.
The doors opened again.
Lady Tiana entered the way she did everything — with precision, with arrangent. With the particular composure of a woman who had decided exactly what this mont was going to look like before she walked into it.
She was dressed appropriately for grief. Dark fabric. Hair carefully composed. Eyes that were — Celestia noticed imdiately, — slightly red at the edges. Not from crying. From the careful application of sothing that produced the appearance of crying.
Lady Tiana’s eyes did not look like eyes that had been weeping. They looked like eyes that had been prepared.
Behind her — and this was the part that made sothing tighten briefly in Celestia’s chest before she controlled it — Belle and Sophia.
Belle looked genuinely pale. Her hands were folded in front of her and her eyes were moving across the room with the particular unfocused quality of soone who was present physically and sowhere else entirely in every other way that mattered. She had loved her Grandmother, that much was real.
Sophia was — watching. As she always was. Those sharp eyes moving across the room, cataloguing, landing briefly on Celestia and staying there a mont before moving on.
Lord Callinis Alwyn entered last, steady, unreadable. The particular blankness of soone who had already processed what had happened and decided what to do next.
Lady Tiana stopped at the appropriate distance from the throne and bowed.
"Your Majesty." Her voice was — controlled. Carefully modulated to carry grief without tipping into performance. A careful balance. "I ca as soon as I received word. My mother—" A pause. Precisely placed.
"My mother is gone."
"We are deeply sorry for your loss, Lady Tiana," the King said.
"Thank you, Your Majesty." She straightened. And then — as though it had just occurred to her, as though her eyes had only just found Celestia standing across the room — she looked at her stepdaughter.
Celestia looked back.
"My mother," Lady Tiana said, and her voice carried the particular quality of soone choosing each word with the care of soone laying tiles on a floor they had already designed, "was perfectly fine when I last checked on her."
"When I last checked on her", that line was suspicious. Celestia heard it. Not the last ti I saw her. Not the last ti we spoke.
When I last checked on her.
Checked. Like monitoring. Like surveillance. Like soone keeping track of a condition rather than visiting a person they loved.
"It was only after Celestia’s visit," Lady Tiana continued, still in that careful asured voice, "that she deteriorated so quickly."
The room shifted. The particular shift of people who have been given a direction to look in and have decided, collectively and without discussion, to look there.
Celestia did not move.
"My mother." Lady Tiana’s voice softened — just slightly — and for a mont sothing almost real moved through it. "My sister." The softness hardened back into sothing cooler. "Both taken from . And sohow Celestia is always nearby when loss finds this family."
The silence that followed was the kind that asked questions.
Celestia felt it pressing against her from every direction — the eyes, the waiting, the particular weight of a room that had been given a narrative and was deciding whether to adopt it.
She breathed. She pulled back the emotions that were threatening to surface.
"Lady Celestia." The King’s voice was careful. Neutral. The voice of soone who had not decided yet. "Do you have anything to say?"
"Yes, Your Majesty." Her voice ca out — she was quietly relieved to note — exactly as she intended.
Composed. Unhurried. Giving nothing away.
"I visited my grandmother yesterday at her invitation. She was unwell when I arrived — had been unwell, I would suggest, for considerably longer than yesterday." She paused. "Her illness was not new. And it was not caused by my visit."
"You would say that," a councillor said.
"I would say it because it is true," Celestia said pleasantly.
Lady Tiana’s expression did not change. But sothing in her eyes did — brief, cold, the specific calculation of soone reassessing that her plan was not going as she imagined.
"There is also the matter," Lord Callinis said — quietly, from where he stood slightly behind his wife, his voice carrying that particular flatness that made everything he said sound like sothing being stated rather than felt — "of the inheritance."
A councillor produced a sealed docunt. Celestia looked at it.
She had not known. She had not known about any letter, any docunt, any legal arrangent.
The docunt unfolded.
The councillor read the relevant portion aloud — property, assets, the mansion in its entirety, the contents, the legal standing — and every word landed in the room with the particular weight of sothing that could not be taken back.
Left. To Celestia. Everything.
"Charms," Lady Tiana said. The word arriving with the quiet precision of sothing that had been waiting for exactly the right mont to be deployed. "My mother was an old woman. Unwell. Vulnerable to manipulation by soone with the right abilities—"
"I have no magic," Celestia said.
"Magic is not the only source of Manipulation."
The room was very quiet.
Celestia looked at Lady Tiana. At the carefully arranged grief. At the eyes that were not grieving. At the woman who had shared a womb with her mother and was now standing in a throne room trying to fra for apparently what she had no hand in.
"Such a bitch"
The doors opened for the third ti.
This ti, nobody spoke.
Because Drazeil had entered.
Dark fabric shifted behind him as he walked into the throne room with the unhurried ease of soone who belonged everywhere simply because nobody would dare tell him otherwise.
The room changed around him. It always did.
His gaze swept across the court once — the King, the councillors, Lady Tiana—
And then landed on Celestia.
Briefly, but the eye contact they made was filled with tension.
Before moving away again.
"Your Majesty," he said calmly.
The King frowned slightly. "Drazeil?"
Drazeil’s expression did not change.
"Lady Bailey’s body is missing."
Silence.
Absolute silence...
Across the room, Celestia’s attention shifted.
And this ti, she froze.
She recognized the young woman imdiately.
It took a second for the mory to surface — blurred at first, then sharpening into place.
Where had she seen her?
Ah.
The Royal Court gathering yesterday.
Angelina had been standing in the center of attention, when her father slapped her face hard and accused her of putting ideas in her head.
The kind of public humiliation most people pretended not to watch... yet never forgot.
And that girl had been there.
Looking at her, the sa way she was watching now and she even said she was not qualified to be at the Grand Coven Assembly.
"Just who was she, to decide that"
Dark-haired, striking in a quiet, almost restrained way, she stood near the edge of the throne room.
Her stillness wasn’t natural.
It was practiced.
The kind of stillness learned in places where being noticed could be dangerous. But what unsettled Celestia was not her presence.
It was her focus.
The girl was not looking at the King, not at the councillors. Not even at the chaos unfolding in the room, her eyes were fixed on Drazeil.
Celestia’s gaze sharpened slightly.
Drazeil stood at the center of the court like silence obeyed him.
Then, Celestia and this girl made eye contact and the glare she got from this girl suggested sothing dangerous.
Then she mouthed,
"Stay away from Drazeil, he is mine"
WHAT THE HECK!
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