Chapter 186: Chapter-186

“That office,” the butler said, nodding toward the connecting door, “is not simply Her Majesty’s workspace. It is imperial heritage — passed from emperor to emperor, generation to generation, for as long as this throne has stood. Every ruler of this empire has sat at that desk.” He paused. “Perhaps it is their integrity. Perhaps it is the nature of those who have held this throne. But most of our emperors, even those with multiple consorts, loved deeply. Differently than most people love.”

Larus listened.

The butler continued, his voice quieter now.

“Empress Celeste’s grandfather built a connecting room for his wife — smaller, modest, because he was a man of principle who followed proportion. He wanted her close when he worked late. He didn’t want her to be far.” A small smile. “And then Her Majesty’s father — the previous emperor — he was a different sort entirely.”

“Different how?” Larus asked.

“Devoted,” the butler said simply. “Completely. Her Majesty the Empress — our current Majesty — her mother was a remarkable woman. Strict, principled, deeply dedicated to the empire. And her father—” the butler’s smile became something private and fond, “—he was what you might call *clingy*. But only for her. Only ever for her.”

Larus looked around the room again, seeing it differently now.

“This was two rooms,” the butler continued. “He broke the wall between them. Then broke another wall for the bathroom. Made it larger than was perhaps proper, because he wanted her to have everything she needed, so she would never feel she was sacrificing comfort by being near him.” A beat. “Her Majesty’s mother spent more time in this room than in the empress’s chambers. Because this is where he was.”

The room was quiet.

Larus stood in it and felt the particular weight of a place that had been loved in.

“And then—” he started.

“They are both gone now,” the butler said, simply. “Yes.”

A small silence.

Larus looked at the wall they had broken. At the connecting door, already fitted with its golden frame, the maroon designs worked into the border — not the masterwork of the south wall’s original craftsman, but honest work, careful work.

“Should we not have done this?” he asked quietly, and his voice carried something genuine in it — not guilt exactly, but the care of a man who was new to a house and didn’t want to damage things whose meaning he didn’t yet fully understand. “If this room was theirs — if it meant something — should we have left it alone?”

The butler looked at him for a long moment.

Then he shook his head.

“Your Highness,” he said, “if Her Majesty — the previous empress, her mother — were alive today and she saw what you’ve done—”

He paused.

A tear tracked quietly down his left cheek, the second one of the morning, and this time he didn’t seem to notice.

“She would have loved you,” he said. “The way Her Majesty cares for you — she would have recognized it. She would have been proud of you as a son. Because—” he looked at the connecting door, at the broken wall, at the careful work of a man who had listened to what his wife needed and acted on it without being asked, “—this is exactly what *he* would have done.”

Larus stood very still.

The morning light came through the open balcony door, soft and unhurried, and lay across the purple and blue walls of a room that had been built out of love once before and was now, quietly, being made into something again.

He looked at the connecting door.

On the other side of it, Heena’s desk sat waiting. Her documents, neatly returned. Her tea tray, probably cold by now.

She was somewhere in the palace right now, dismantling four ducal houses in a golden dress, running on one hour of sleep and sheer force of will.

*She’ll come back,* he thought, *and she won’t even look at it properly. She’ll walk through and go straight to the desk.*

He smiled.

He turned to the butler.

“Have them set a small table on the balcony,” he said. “Two chairs. And fresh tea — not the cold one on the desk.” He looked at the view — the garden below, the window of Heena’s office visible from here, the sky properly blue now that morning had fully arrived. “When she comes back, she should see it from here first. Not from inside.”

The butler straightened.

“Of course, Your Highness,” he said.

And if his voice was slightly unsteady, he was professional enough that neither of them acknowledged it.

After twenty minutes of tense negotiation, the old patriarchs said their goodbyes to Heena and left the office.

The Duchess didn’t even stand to see them out. She just waved her hand dismissively and said, “Get out.”

As soon as the door closed behind them, she snapped her fingers.

In a swift motion—with a flash of magical light—Heena’s ridiculous golden dress transformed back into her normal elegant suit.

The Duchess looked at her and said with disgust, “That dress was ’hideous’.”

Heena burst out laughing. “It served its purpose perfectly!”

She stood up, clearly preparing to leave.

The Duchess looked at her suspiciously. “Where the hell are you going now?”

Heena turned back with a mischievous smile. “Of course, to cause more trouble.”

The Duchess just shooed her away with both hands. “Get lost then. Go stir up whatever chaos you’re planning.”

—

As soon as Heena left the room, instead of following the same direction the patriarchs had gone, she rushed in the ’opposite’ direction.

She literally jumped from a window into the garden, sprinted across the grounds like an athlete, leaped onto a rooftop, ran along the tiles, jumped down to another garden path, and then ’launched’ herself through a window of the main hall.

Secretary Chen, who witnessed this athletic display from a distance, just sighed and made a note: ’Empress continues to refuse using doors like a normal person.’

Heena landed gracefully in a corridor and then slowed down, approaching a particular room quietly.

She stopped just outside, concealing herself behind a decorative screen, and observed the six women gathered inside.

Who were these six women?

Well, four of them were the ’legal wives’ of the four dukes—the patriarchs who’d just left Heena’s office.

And the other two? They were the ’white moonlights’—the mistresses, the other women, the romantic rivals that had made these wives’ lives absolutely miserable for years.

Because the male leads didn’t get their terrible romantic habits from nowhere. Their fathers had taught them well.

Six women.

Four wives, two moonlights. All of them in the same room because Heena had written six very specific letters three days ago and timed them to arrive this morning, while the patriarchs were still being rattled and the sons had absolutely no warning and the window between the old order and whatever came next was sitting open.

’If you want to control a man,’ she had thought at three in the morning, hunched over her documents with a coffee that had gone cold two hours ago, ’find what controls him first.’

She’d spent months treating the five consorts like problems that existed in isolation. Managing them directly. Pushing here, applying pressure there, the way you manage symptoms without touching the root.

The root was older than any of them.

The root was standing in that room right now in five different configurations.

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