Chapter 83 CONSORT OR DIE
The first move was small.
A rumor reached Mariel’s ears—quietly, carefully—that Ysanne had spoken ill of her to the council, questioning her fitness as queen. The source was untraceable. The words were plausible.
Mariel confronted Ysanne in tears.
Ysanne laughed in her face.
The second move followed swiftly.
A servant loyal to Ysanne was caught stealing from the treasury. Under questioning, he claimed he was following orders. The name he gave was not Ysanne’s—but close enough to plant doubt.
The council murmured. Adrian listened, patience thinning.
Celine watched it unfold like a game of stones, each piece nudged just enough to tip the balance without revealing the hand behind it.
\---
“You are quiet these days,” Adrian remarked one evening as they passed into her chambers.
“Silence is safer,” Celine replied.
He studied her, as if seeing her clearly for the first time in months. “You always wanted power, but you go too far.”
“I wanted purpose,” she said. “There is a difference.”
“I was lenient in my judgment toward you because I chose you, because you mirror Athalia’s traits,” he said. “I hope you won’t make a mistake again.”
He said nothing more, but the exchange lingered.
By spring, tension coiled tightly around the palace. Mariel grew pale and withdrawn. Ysanne sharper and bolder. Servants whispered of curses, poison, and the last queen’s fate. Athalia’s name returned like a forbidden prayer.
Celine lit another candle and folded her latest letter. The ink was dry, the seal unmarked.
Soon, she thought. Very soon.
\---
That night, Adrian woke to shouting.
He threw on a robe and followed the noise to Mariel’s chambers, where servants clustered in panic. Mariel lay on the bed, breath shallow, skin clammy.
“Poison,” the physician said grimly.
Adrian’s gaze snapped to Ysanne, standing rigid near the doorway, eyes wide.
“This is not my doing,” she said quickly. “You know that.”
Adrian did not respond. His jaw tightened as he looked down at Mariel, then back at Ysanne.
Celine arrived last, her expression carefully schooled into concern.
“What happened?” she murmured.
Adrian turned sharply. “Enough.”
The room fell silent.
As guards moved to secure the chamber, Adrian felt a shift—not relief, not sorrow, but a deep, unsettling certainty.
Someone was playing him.
Later, alone in his study, Adrian found a folded parchment slipped beneath his door. He opened it slowly.
One line, in a hand he recognized:
She is not as lost as you believe. Neither are you.
His breath caught.
Outside, thunder rolled across the sky, distant but approaching, as if the kingdom itself sensed what was about to break.
\---
Night settled over the palace like a held breath.
The moon hung low, pale and indistinct behind drifting clouds, its light fractured by the high windows of the western wing. Torches burned along the corridors, their flames steady, their shadows long. Somewhere deep within the stone, something moved—softly, patiently—listening.
Celine sat alone in her chamber, hands folded neatly in her lap, posture immaculate. The mirror before her reflected a woman composed and untroubled: dark hair pinned with care, expression serene. Only her eyes betrayed her, flickering faintly, as if counting seconds.
It had not been the first attempt.
Nor the second.
Nor even the third.
Each failure had sharpened her rather than discouraged her. Poison had been discovered before it touched lips. Traps had been avoided by chance—or warning. Whispers had turned into accusations too quickly to act upon.
The new consort—Lady Ysanne—had proven frustratingly resilient, protected by luck or by something else Celine could not yet name.
But tonight was different.
Celine rose and crossed the room, lifting a small carved box from beneath her bed. Inside lay a thin silver ring etched with unfamiliar runes, dull and lifeless to the eye. She slid it onto her finger and closed her hand around it, pressing until the metal bit into her skin.
“Now,” she murmured.
\---
Across the palace, Lady Ysanne stood at the balcony doors of her chamber, hands resting on the railing as she gazed into the gardens below. The air was unnaturally still. No insects sang. Even the fountain had fallen silent, its water frozen mid-fall like glass.
She frowned and turned.
“Who’s there?”
The candles flickered violently. Shadows stretched the wrong way, crawling up the walls instead of clinging to the floor. A pressure filled the room—heavy, unseen—forcing the air from her lungs.
Ysanne staggered back as frost bloomed across the marble tiles, creeping toward her feet. She reached for the bell rope, but it disintegrated in her hand.
Then a sound filled the chamber—not a scream, not a roar, but a low vibration that resonated in bone and blood. The walls shimmered, their surfaces rippling like water disturbed by a thrown stone.
Ysanne opened her mouth to shout. Nothing came out.
Her reflection in the mirror twisted, lagging half a breath behind her movements. In it, her eyes were black, her mouth stretched wide in a silent plea. Hands pressed outward from the glass, as though the mirror were skin.
“No,” she mouthed.
The room folded inward.
From the outside, there was no sound.
No cry. No crash. No alarm.
The guards pacing the corridor passed her door without pause, unaware that the chamber beyond it no longer existed as it once had.
By morning, Lady Ysanne was gone.
Her room stood pristine—bed made, candles untouched. No blood. No sign of struggle.
\---
King Adrian stood in the doorway, fists clenched, staring at emptiness.
“She was here,” he said quietly.
The captain of the guard shifted uneasily. “We searched the entire wing, Your Majesty. No hidden passages. No trace.”
Adrian’s gaze swept the room, lingering on the mirror. For a fleeting instant, he thought he saw movement beneath the glass. When he blinked, it was gone.
“Seal the palace,” he ordered. “No one leaves.”
Whispers exploded by noon.
Some claimed Ysanne had fled, fearing scandal over accusations of poisoning Mariel. Others whispered of Athalia’s ghost, returned to claim vengeance. A few spoke of darker things—of old magic stirring beneath the stones.
Celine listened from her seat in the solar, sipping tea she did not taste. Her hand throbbed faintly where the ring had burned her skin.
One consort was gone.
But the problem did not end there.
\---
Two weeks later, Lady Mariel collapsed during morning routines.
She had been radiant only days before—cheeks flushed, laughter ringing through the halls as she spoke freely of the life growing inside her. The king will be pleased, she had said, fingers resting over her belly. He will finally have an heir.
Now she lay on the cold marble floor, eyes wide and unseeing, a thin line of frost tracing her lips.
“No poison,” the physician said later, baffled. “No wound. Her heart simply… stopped. And yet—she was with child.”
"What?"