Chapter 538: Inquiry

Eris sat propped against a small mountain of pillows, her expression one of weary, royal sufferance. Someone, likely Mira, given the aggressive fluffing she’d witnessed earlier, had arranged them with a level of precision usually reserved for military fortifications.

There were far too many of them, a soft, velvet barricade that pinned her upright, but she lacked the immediate energy to throw them across the room.

Aldric stood near the heavy oak door, his posture a study in stiff-necked presence. He wasn’t talking. He wasn’t even moving. He was simply there, an anchor in the room.

Near the window, Ryse stood with his arms crossed, his silhouette framed by the pale light of a city struggling to breathe. After days of having no one to guard but a sleeping body, he looked almost relieved to have a breathing target to protect, though his stance suggested a professional adjustment to the new, fragile reality of the room.

Mira, of course, was the epicenter of the fussing. She adjusted the hem of the heavy silk blanket for the third time in ten minutes, checked the temperature of the cup in Eris’s hand, and then adjusted the angle of the saucer. It was undignified, Eris thought privately. She was a woman who had clawed her way through the political filth of Solmire, yet here she was, being handled like a piece of delicate porcelain.

But Mira’s hands were warm. And every time Eris caught Aldric’s eye, she saw a flicker of something that looked dangerously like terror, as if he expected her to turn into smoke if he blinked. It was so unlike the man that she found she couldn’t bring herself to be annoyed by it.

Aldwin sat in his chair, watching the domestic choreography with the quiet, unhurried entertainment of a man watching a play he’s already seen a dozen times and still finds charming. He looked thoroughly pleased with himself, as if he had nowhere else in the world to be.

The door opened suddenly, cutting through the quiet hum of the room. Kristina entered, still wearing her heavy outer coat, a fine dusting of gray stone and debris clinging to the hem.

The guards must have intercepted her mid-work in the ruined districts. Her face was a map of exhaustion, but the moment her eyes found Eris, upright, awake, and holding a cup, the relief hit her like a physical blow.

“Your Majesty,” Kristina breathed, moving toward the bed. “I came as quickly as, you have no idea how worried, when I heard you had wolen up—I—”

“Kristina,” Eris said, the name cutting through the younger woman’s frantic energy like a chilled blade.

Kristina stopped mid-stride. She read the tone instantly, her posture shifting from relieved friend to alert subordinate.

“Leave us,” Eris said, her gaze sweeping over the others.

Aldric didn’t hesitate; he knew that tone. Ryse followed, his boots heavy on the stone floor. Mira hesitated for a heartbeat, her hand hovering near Eris’s pillow, before she bowed her head and retreated. Only Aldwin remained, settled into his chair like a permanent fixture of the architecture.

Eris leveled a questioning look at him.

“You might need a witness,” Aldwin said mildly, “for whatever is about to happen.”

Eris held his gaze for a beat. “Fine. Stay.”

The door clicked shut. The silence that followed was different, private, sharp, and stripped of the performative gentleness of the last hour. Eris set the cup aside on the nightstand, the pleasant surface of her expression falling away like a discarded coat. What remained was the direct, unfiltered Eris, the woman who had ruled Solmire through sheer force of will, the one who didn’t bother with lace when iron was required.

She focused entirely on Kristina.

“The potion,” Eris said, her voice flat. “The one you have been procuring for me. Why did you lie to me about its effectiveness?”

Kristina blinked, the question clearly catching her off guard. “Your Majesty? I’m not sure what you, ”

“The potion.”

“You mean the kind you specifically requested for the night of your wedding, Your Majesty?” Kristina’s eyes darted toward Aldwin, her face heating with the embarrassment of discussing such intimate logistics in front of a stranger. She hesitated, her loyalty warring with her discomfort.

“Don’t worry about him,” Eris dismissed the concern with a flick of her hand.

“If so, Your Majesty,” Kristina said, her voice dropping an octave, careful and precise. “Is there something you were unsatisfied with? Something specific about the preparation?”

“Yes,” Eris said. She paused, the silence stretching until it became a weight. “I am unsatisfied with the fact that it didn’t work.”

The words landed one by one. Kristina’s expression shifted through a rapid-fire sequence: confusion, the slow dawn of understanding, a brief moment of denial, and then, finally, the horrifying realization of what Eris was implying.

“It couldn’t… be,” Kristina whispered, her voice failing her.

“Triplets,” Aldwin added helpfully, his voice vibrating with a small, suppressed sound of amusement.

Kristina’s eyes went wide, her hand flying to her mouth. She looked like she had just been told the sun was going to rise in the west tomorrow.

Eris looked at the ceiling for a brief moment, her jaw tight. “Am I being punished?” she asked the empty air. “Is this for my sins? Is the universe truly this lacking in subtlety?”

Kristina recovered quickly; she was too practical a woman to remain in shock for long. “Your Majesty, I researched extensively! I found the most qualified practitioner in the capital. Many women have used this potion with complete effectiveness. The testimonies were consistent. I verified the preparation multiple times myself.”

“And yet,” Eris noted drily, “mine is not.”

“I cannot explain it,” Kristina said, genuine distress coloring her voice. “I followed every instruction. I verified the sources of the ingredients.”

“I even increased the dosage,” Eris said, her voice carrying the flat, hollow quality of someone recounting their own meticulous, catastrophic failure. “Just because of that…” She stopped. A beat of silence passed. “Damn greedy bastard.”

The words were delivered without inflection, as if she were describing the weather, but the sentiment was clear. Aldwin let out a sound that was definitely a laugh, though he managed to swallow most of it.

Kristina wasn’t laughing. Her distress was palpable. “I am so sorry, Your Majesty. If I had known… if there was any indication that the batch was flawed, ”

Eris watched her. She saw the sincerity in Kristina’s eyes, the way she searched for the lie. She read her the way she read everything else, and she found the truth. Kristina hadn’t failed her. The world had.

“It’s fine,” Eris said, her exhale small and weary. The anger, or the shield she was using as anger, released its grip. “I was not prepared for this. That’s all.”

Kristina’s relief was a visible thing, a softening of her shoulders.

“But I want you to find the man who made it,” Eris ordered. “Bring him to me.”

Kristina hesitated, a familiar, uncomfortable shadow crossing her face. “He is… currently attending to the wounded, Your Majesty. In the palace and the medical tents outside. He’s with the other healers. The aftermath of the—” She trailed off, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.

The word aftermath hit Eris like a stone dropped into a still pool.

The ruins. The Syvrak attack. The people she was supposed to be leading. Days had passed while she was wandering through a silver field talking to a dragon god.

While she was unconscious, the capital had been trying to stitch itself back together without a queen. Soren was in the provinces, likely riding himself into the ground to maintain order, and she was lying here in a pile of velvet pillows.

Every piece of chaos since she arrived in Nevareth had her name attached to it in the minds of the commoners. She was the Fire Queen who brought the dark. The only way to counter that narrative was presence. Not absence.

“Get me prepared,” Eris told Kristina. “A bath. Clothing. I need to see the city.”

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