Pherenike - Chapter 134

She strode over to the window and gazed outside, nerves fraying. Then, as if unable to contain her anger, she seized a vase from the windowsill and hurled it onto the stone floor. The sharp sound of shattering porcelain echoed through the room. Behind her, the adjutant spoke quietly:

“Clean it up.”

“Yes.”

The men—too startled to think of calling for the maids—immediately stooped to gather the shards, their broad backs bent to the task. While they busied themselves, Pherenike stood ramrod straight, drawing sharp breaths, eyes locked on the adjutant.

He obediently lowered his gaze in response.

“Kybellaune, please take care of yourself until His Majesty returns.”

“Have I slapped my own face, or something? All I want is to look for the princess myself.”

“His Majesty’s hands and feet are yours to command, Kybellaune.”

Pherenike let out a bitter laugh.

“Are there servants who tie their master’s neck up like a dog’s?”

“There are many who are suspicious. Until His Majesty comes back, even the smallest step you take must be considered carefully.”

There was not a trace of suspicion in his tone—of all the things Actor’s men had said to her, this was the most genuine advice she’d heard.

He was known for being the gentlest of Actor’s aides. It made it hard to even enjoy antagonizing him. With an irritable gesture, Pherenike waved him away.

“Get out.”

“Sometimes waiting is wiser than wandering.”

“Don’t show yourself to me again until the princess is found.”

He bowed his head and quietly left. Pherenike also dismissed the trembling maid hovering near the door with a single wave of her hand.

Still, she stood there for a while, trembling with frustration, glaring at the door as if her anger had nowhere else to go.

Finally, she turned sharply, her face transforming as if putting on a mask. As soon as her back was to the guards at the door, all expression vanished, replaced by a cold, distant stare aimed out the window.

All her rage seemed to fade into a dry, indifferent gaze, watching the sky.

She stood there for a long time, until the sun had risen much higher.

On the city walls, flames split and spread—one fire lighting another, a never-ending procession racing down the length of the battlements. Before long, flaming arrows soared into the air again.

The screams that followed from beyond the walls sounded distant and faint. The road leading to the palace was relatively broad, but for the attacking army, it was terribly narrow—at first, this worked entirely to Paetusa’s disadvantage.

But the city was surrounded by homes on all sides. It wasn’t long before Paetusa’s troops, instead of waiting foolishly to be crushed by boulders hurled by catapults in the bottleneck, began slipping out of the main thoroughfare.

They tunneled between houses, spreading around the palace on every side.

The king’s soldiers, like warriors with a hand cut off, had to abandon their great engines of war. The palace was certainly a fortress, but there wasn’t much they could do to actively defend it. If they weren’t careful, they’d end up slaughtering their own people with their own hands.

The king’s trusted retainers, trapped in the crossroads, blamed the Paetusa army for cowardice—hiding behind innocent townsfolk as human shields and using their suffering as cover.

At that very moment, the king’s advisors, their families in tow, had retreated to what they believed to be a safe haven, and were fiercely debating in a hall near the underground sanctuary of Heliodora—a meeting place for the daemons.

Many argued that the princess must be found and kept close, while others already saw the child as little more than a bastard. If that wasn’t true, it was the ultimate insult to Pelagon’s bloodline. Arguments raged on and on—meaningless words, repeated as if their very lives depended on it, with their fate hanging in the balance.

Above ground, the guards took turns keeping watch, while decisions were made by vote in the underground chamber. But they struggled to get any real news from outside—almost as if someone was deliberately controlling the flow of information.

And, naturally, those outside the council found it just as hard to hear what was being decided below. Everything slowed down, like sand piling up in the tide.

“The houses nearest the palace—all of them are empty?”

The news that Duke Paetusa had evacuated the nearby townsfolk and stationed soldiers in the empty houses only reached the underground council far too late. The daemons, furious at so many mortals crowding into forbidden places, played trick after trick on the messengers.

“If they’re all empty, what a foolish waste of time! If only we’d just crushed those filthy Paetusa bastards with stones and burned them all from the start…”

“Some people simply can’t bring themselves to leave their homes. No matter how much the prince’s soldiers threatened them, surely not everyone left. As long as we bar the gates and stall for time until the king returns with the Nikandros army, it’s enough—we shouldn’t stir up the people…”

“And what if we die before His Majesty reaches Lykke? What’s the point, then?”

“In times of war, you must know what’s truly important and what isn’t. The invaders are the ones with swords and spears—what do we have to be ashamed of before our own people?”

“…In the king’s absence, isn’t it the queen who holds legal authority as his deputy?”

A young blond man standing at the edge of the gathering spoke up—a statement that cast sudden silence over the room.

Someone asked back, sounding almost disgusted.