Chapter 217: Chapter-217

He took a breath to give the order.

CREAK. BOOM.

The massive, gilded doors of the throne room didn’t just open. They were shoved apart with such concussive force that they slammed against the marble walls, the sound echoing like a cannon shot.

Every head in the room snapped around.

Standing in the doorway, dressed in a simple, flowing blood-red robe that only accentuated the lethal grace of her posture, was Empress Heena.

The color was back in her face. Her eyes were sharp, bright, and utterly terrifying.

She walked forward, her footsteps echoing in the dead, breathless silence of the hall. She tilted her head, a playful, razor-sharp smile curving her lips as she looked directly at Duke Valorian and his faction.

“Oh ho…” Heena purred, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. “I hear I have some remarkably loyal subordinates stepping up to claim my throne. Tell me, when did you all grow the spine for it? And why wasn’t I invited to the birth of this newfound courage?”

If it were possible for a human being to physically resemble a ghost, the traitorous nobles achieved it in that exact moment. The blood drained entirely from their faces, leaving them ashen, trembling, and paralyzed with terror. They knew the Black Lotus’s temper. They knew they were looking at their own executioner.

But on the other side of the room, the loyalists—and Larus, who let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for twenty days—felt hot, overwhelming tears of relief fill their eyes.

The Empress had returned.

And there was going to be hell to pay.

Suddenly, everyone went to their knees.

It was like someone had pressed a giant, invisible button in the middle of the room. A second ago, they were shouting about treason and royal bloodlines; now, hundreds of silk-clad nobles slammed against the cold marble floor in perfect, terrifying synchronization. They bowed so low their foreheads scraped the stone, trying desperately to hide the sheer, panicked terror in their eyes.

“We greet Your Majesty!” the collective voices rang out, trembling and frantic.

Heena just looked at them.

She was actually quite casual about the whole thing. She wasn’t wearing her heavy ceremonial cape, and she didn’t even have her signature sword buckled at her waist. She wore a simple, flowing blood-red robe, looking completely unbothered, like she’d just stepped out of her living room to check on a minor noise complaint.

System 427, invisible and floating securely by her shoulder, covered his tiny lion face with his paws. Oh no, he thought frantically. She’s using the sweet voice.

Heena tilted her head, her dark hair cascading over her shoulder, and offered the sea of prostrating nobles a bright, perfectly cheerful smile.

“Oh my,” she said, her voice light and breezy. “Why are you all greeting me now? Didn’t you guys just say you were about to claim the throne? Go on, then. Sit on that.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. The collective mass of nobles trembled against the floorboards.

From the front of the pack, Lord Helmut raised his head a fraction of an inch, his face devoid of all color.

“N-No, Your Majesty,” Lord Helmut stammered, his voice cracking under the pressure. “It’s… it’s a misunderstanding.”

Hearing that, Heena’s smile somehow got even brighter.

“Misunderstanding?” she repeated, waving her hand dismissively. “Of course not. Don’t be so humble! After all, you guys are the elders. You guys have the ancient power of the petition. You guys even signed all those little documents, no? Go on, sit on the throne. Come on.”

Nobody moved.

Heena sighed like a disappointed teacher. Then, without a shred of hesitation, she walked right up to Lord Helmut, reached down, and directly grabbed him by the collar of his exquisitely tailored tunic.

With a single, effortless yank, she hauled the grown man to his feet and started dragging him toward the dais.

Lord Helmut let out a strangled squeak. He literally lost his footing one or two times, his expensive boots skidding uselessly across the polished marble.

Damn it! Lord Helmut thought, his mind spiraling into absolute panic as the fabric dug into his throat. Who said this woman was sick?! And how is she even a woman?! He was a heavy, well-fed noble, but she had literally drained the strength right out of him, pulling him along with the casual ease of someone dragging a misbehaving toddler through a marketplace.

Here, as they reached the massive stairs leading up to the black marble throne, Heena paused.

“Go,” she said cheerfully.

She gave him a light push. It wasn’t a brutal martial-arts strike, just a casual nudge, but it was enough to make his weak legs give out entirely, sending him stumbling awkwardly against the bottom step.

Heena looked down at him, resting her hands on her hips with an exasperated huff.

“Hey yaar, you’re stumbling right now,” she tutted, shaking her head. “Come on, be a man and just climb up. Go. Sit.”

She turned her gaze up toward the top of the dais, where Larus and the royal guards were still standing, completely frozen in shock.

“Farooq,” she called out to the lead guard, waving her hand like she was shooing away a fly. “Move out of the way.”

She then looked at her husband, offering a brief, entirely casual smile. “Honey, guys, you also move out of the way. Let the lord have his moment.”

Larus immediately stepped aside, hiding a massive sigh of relief.

Heena snapped her attention back to the groveling noble. “You. Climb up.”

Hearing that, the last remaining threads of Lord Helmut’s pride snapped. He directly went to his knees, pressing his face so hard against the marble stairs it looked like he was trying to merge with the stone. He kowtowed wildly.

“Your Majesty! This is all a misunderstanding! I never—I would never dare!”

Hearing that, Heena looked at him, her cheerful facade slipping just enough to reveal the cold, calculating Black Lotus underneath.

“Not dare?” she said softly, crossing her arms and tilting her head. “But if I am not wrong… and of course, I never will be… it is you who started this questioning down there, Lord Helmut.”

Lord Helmut trembled. It wasn’t just a slight, nervous shiver; it was a full-body, bone-rattling quake that made the expensive, heavy gold chains on his tunic clink together like cheap wind chimes in a hurricane. He had not expected Heena to wake up. None of them had. The poison was supposed to be absolute, the coma entirely irreversible, and the succession perfectly packaged for them to steal.

Yet here she was. Standing over him in a simple blood-red robe, she looked less like a fragile, dying empress and far more like a bored, apex predator trying to decide which helpless woodland creature to snack on first.

Heena looked down at him, her expression a mask of mild, almost polite disappointment. She didn’t look furious. Furious would have been manageable. Furious meant she was emotional, and emotional people made tactical errors. This breezy, nonchalant attitude? This was the stuff of absolute nightmares.

“Don’t look at other things,” Heena said, her voice dropping into a casual, conversational register as she noticed Helmut’s desperate, watery eyes darting toward the other nobles for salvation.

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