Chapter 70 FINDING THE QUEENS MAN
“Lock the door.”
Mara hesitated only a fraction before sliding the bolt. Celine did not turn and stood at the window, fingers resting on the stone as she watched the courtyard below empty itself of afternoon noise.
When she was certain they were alone, she spoke again.
“Repeat what you told me. Slowly.”
Mara was with another servant. His name was Ivo. He had soft hands for a palace boy for someone who claimed to have delivered medicines to a dying king. Sweat darkened the collar of his tunic.
“I…only carried the herbs,” he said. “From the apothecary wing. I never touched the contents, I swear.”
Celine turned at last, her eyes were calm. That frightened him more than shouting ever could.
“Who told you where to take them?” she asked.
Ivo’s gaze flicked to the floor. “A man. He was the Queen’s man.”
“Which queen,” Celine asked gently, “is a question you should answer carefully.”
Ivo’s throat bobbed. “Queen Elizabeth.”
Somewhere outside, a bell rang, signaling the change of watch. Celine let the sound fade before she spoke again.
“Where is he now.”
“I don’t know but I never saw him again”.
“Leave,” she said.
Ivo looked up, disbelief warring with relief. “You’re not…”
“I said go…”
He went.
Mara unlocked the door herself and waited until his footsteps disappeared. But Celine allowed her shoulders to sink a fraction.
She crossed to the table and unrolled the map she had been studying for days. The palace grounds spread beneath her fingers, marked with small ink dots.
The Queen mother thought herself careful. That was her flaw. Careful people left trails because they believed they were invisible.
Celine moved a dot from the apothecary wing to the outer gate. Then another, tracing the route Ivo had described. It intersected with a third path she had marked earlier which was a route taken by a courier who had vanished the week the king fell ill.
Her jaw tightened. She forced herself not to look at the sealed box beneath the table. Inside it lay copies of medical notes, rewritten in different hands, altered just enough to pass unnoticed. She had memorized them anyway.
“You should not dig,” Adrain had warned her.
“Did he know his mother might have had a hand in his father’s death? What if there’s more to it?” She thought.
Celine smiled thinly at the memory and digging was what she did best.
She left the study through a servants’ passage and blended into the palace’s pulse. She had learned quickly how to move unseen not by hiding, but by belonging everywhere.
She paused to exchange pleasantries with a lady-in-waiting, listened to a gossip about a broken engagement, laughed at a joke from a guard. Every word was a coin spent to buy invisibility.
By dusk, she reached the lower city.
The man Queen Elizabeth had hired did not live there anymore. But somehow someone told her where he now lived.
“I see him outside the city.” A woman said
Celine took a horse and left. The man lived near the tannery, where the air stung the eyes and the river ran darker than it should. Celine changed her cloak before she went further, trading silk for wool, jewelry for plain gloves. She had left her guards behind.
The tavern door creaked as she pushed it open. Heat and noise spilled out with dice clattering, voices raised, the smell of ale and old smoke. Conversations dipped when she entered, then resumed. She took a seat at the bar and waited.
Patience was another blade she carried. Rylan arrived an hour later.
She recognized him instantly not by face, but by posture. Old soldiers carried themselves a certain way even after they stopped wearing armor. His left shoulder sat lower than his right showing an old injury. He ordered cheap liquor and drank like someone who did not intend to savor the taste.
Celine watched his reflection in the bar’s polished wood. When he stood to leave, she followed.
The alley was narrow and wet, lit by a single guttering lantern. He turned at the sound of her steps, hand already moving toward his belt.
“You’re late,” she said before he could speak.
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I know you.”
“But you know who pays you,” Celine said. “And you’ll know if you’re being paid twice.”
His fingers stilled.
“That’s dangerous talk, darling,” he said.
“So was poisoning a king, Rylan,” Celine replied.
The word king struck harder than a blade. He lunged.
Celine stepped back, quick, her hand already bringing a dagger free. His steel flashed and he stumbled, surprised by resistance where he expected fear.
“You don’t want this,” he snarled.
“No,” she said, “you don’t.”
They circled. The lantern flickered, with shadows leaping. He swung, she ducked and her dagger kissed his forearm, shallow but enough. He hissed.
“You didn’t kill him,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “You just delivered the poison. I guess you told yourself that made you innocent.”
He laughed, breath ragged. “He was already dying..”
“And alive,” Celine said.
He hesitated just long enough.
Her dagger pressed under his chin.
“Tell me, who ordered it?” she asked.
He thought in hesitation as he thought of defense.
“One more move and I’ll have your head.” She continued.
She was too skilled in combat.
He swallowed. “It was the Queen.”
“Which one,” she said again, softly.
His eyes slid away. “Queen Elizabeth.”
Celine did not move the blade. “Who do you think mixed the dose?”
“A physician, Ofcourse” he said. “She must have paid him well.”
“Name.”
He gave it.
“Why kill him slowly?” she asked. “Why not kill him outright?”
His mouth twisted. “Death makes martyrs but silence makes ghosts.”
Celine’s grip tightened. The alley seemed to lean in around them.
“You’ll testify for me,” she said.
“ No.” He snapped
“You will.”
He laughed, sudden and sharp. “To whom? Her court?”
Celine’s eyes met his. “To everyone .”
Footsteps sounded at the mouth of the alley with too many voices.
The man smiled, blood on his teeth. “Guess you are stayed too long.”
Celine cursed silently and struck him hard with the pommel of her dagger. He collapsed. She dragged him deeper into shadow and slipped away just as guards flooded the alley.
She did not run back to the palace immediately but sent someone.
She went instead to the old chapel by the river, abandoned since the last flood cracked its foundations. Inside, candles burned and a figure knelt at the altar.
“Take care of him till I’m back.” She said
“Arrange everything necessary too.”
The figure nodded.