Selius’ face smashed into the bowl before him with a crash, although Rucille wasn’t sure if the sickening sound from the impact came from his nose of the tableware breaking. Maybe it was both, but she didn’t particularly care either way as she eyed the remaining stew that had splashed across the table with a look of contempt.

“Did you think I was going to just lay back and take it?” she asked Selius, fully aware that he was incapable of replying. A guttural moan of sorts escaped from his lips, although his nose was still buried in what remained of the stew at the bottom of the shattered bowl. “What made you think that I was going to do nothing while you treated them like servants, and me like a whore?”

She paused to look up for a moment, her gaze returned by the horrified looks from the paralysed members of the Royal Guard around her. It would have been easier if she could have left them out of this, but Selius was slippery and she didn’t want to give them a chance to interfere. The toxin would eventually wear off, and hopefully by then they had decided that following her wasn’t the worst idea after all. All she had to do was treat them a lot better than Selius did and she would hopefully be able to earn their loyalty.

In the end they would realise that it was better to have the monster on your side of the fence.

“The rest of you will be fine. It will wear off soon enough and we’ll continue as we were like nothing happened,” she said to console the group with a dismissive wave before her attention turned back down to Selius. “With one less person, that is.”

Selius was completely incapable of resisting as Rucille tightened her grip on his skull before yanking his head upwards. Stew which mingled together with the blood from his nose dripped down his face, while small pieces of vegetable dangled from his fringe and brows. It was a sorry sight considering who he had once been, and now that Rucille thought about it, she was getting excited. Selius Zaffre, the second prince, was now completely at her mercy and there was nothing that anybody could do about it.

The king was powerless here, and her father could keel over dead tomorrow for all she cared after how he had thrown her to the wolves during the investigation. Her sister could easily find a new husband, and she should probably even thank her while she was at it for ensuring that she didn’t have to marry such a poor excuse for a man. It would be perfect, now that she thought about it. After completing her mission she would return triumphantly to the fanfare of the nobility, and Rucille Inin would soon become a legendary figure in Zaffre’s history.

The only unfortunate side to the tale would be that each and every one of her team sadly died along the way to protect their way of life, and Selius’ sacrifice had been the most valiant of all.

“Being a prince left you naïve, Selius,” she said coldly. “You’re not used to games with real consequences, to politics where your father can’t just bail you out when you screw it up. The castle coddled you into thinking that you were so damn good that nobody could outsmart you in the long run, and it also hid from you the fact that sometimes there aren’t second chances.”

She smirked as she tightened her grasp, feeling the thick strands of hair strain against her fingers. Selius had thought that the world would bend for him, but a title wouldn’t earn you respect while money couldn’t bring you back from the dead. It wasn’t about the world bending for you, it was about bending the world yourself.

Her research would achieve that.

“I have an entire plate of people to test my virus on right beneath our feet, and you wanted to turn me into a housewife?” she spat as she slammed his head back into the table. A pained grunt escaped once more as his face smashed into the broken remnants of ceramic, but Rucille didn’t care as she ripped his head back again to leave him stiffly leaning back in his chair.

“But why aren’t you like this Rucille?” she asked with a mocking tone as she guessed the question that was in his head. “Why, why, why… it was the same food, right?”

Selius’ movement was limited to his eyes and a twinge in his neck, his chin now sinking down towards his chest. He watched on helplessly as Rucille strolled out of the room, although he certainly wasn’t optimistic enough to believe that this was over. Rucille wouldn’t let him live, not after this, and even if he could get on his knees and beg right now he didn’t think it would do him any favours.

“It’s because of this,” Rucille said as she returned with a sleek white briefcase in her hands. Placing it on the table before Selius, she popped it open to reveal a line of syringes nestled in foam packing, the liquids inside them a variety of colours. Two slots in the foam, however, were empty.

Leaning through the serving window to the kitchen, Rucille opened one of the few draws she could reach before withdrawing the two missing syringes. One was empty besides a few drops of a clear purple liquid, while the other still contained a reasonable amount of a milky golden substance. After placing the pair back into their vacant housings, Rucille lightly tapped her finger on the empty syringe.

“This is what’s in the stew,” she said with a smile as she bent her knees so that she could look into Selius’ eyes, trying hard not to laugh at the chip of ceramic that was now embedded in his forehead. “Fast-acting paralysis after a brief delay, my own recipe as a matter of fact.”

While Selius had been careful, he hadn’t been careful enough. If he had instead decided to wait for five minutes while the rest of the table ate, maybe he would have discovered what she was planning before it was too late. It was true that he had pushed Rucille into a corner where she had been forced to act before he attacked her in the bedroom, but his plan to crush her attempt at resistance when it came had spectacularly backfired when he had let her slip under his guard. Selius had known it as well as she did, that only one of them could survive as the person that they currently were. The difference between them, however, was that while he simply wanted to crush her into submission, she was willing to completely wipe him from the equation.

The fact that he’d tried to swap their bowls told her that he had been expecting this. The problem was that while he thought he was being clever to catch her out, he had instead ended up playing straight into her hand.

Rucille chuckled softly as her finger slowly moved over to the other syringe that she had replaced before lightly running her finger along it, the milky golden liquid within slightly rippling. “This is what’s in me, added before I sat down of course. Naturally, it counters what I added to the pot.”

The room was silent as Rucille stood back up and stretched her back, the gentle sigh from the breeze that drifted in the only sound to accompany the tired yawn that escaped from her lips. She still had work to do though, so while ignoring the frightened eyes that looked on from around the table, she clicked her briefcase closed before taking another look at Selius’ sorry state with a thin smile on her lips.

“Well, I guess it’s about time for me to wrap this up,” she said as her eyes quickly scanned the table. “The toxin is probably going to wear off soon, and I don’t think I ever want to hear another word from your pathetic mouth again.”

Picking up one of the larger shards of broken ceramic from the table, she inspected the sharp edge with her finger before testing it for flexibility. Seemingly satisfied, she turned back to Selius and gripped him by the top of the head before dragging it back.

“I would have liked to run some tests on you, but I don’t have the time,” she said with a slight tinge of regret as she tightly gripped the piece of ceramic with her free hand. “It wasn’t fun Selius. Not at all.”

With a small cry, Rucille stabbed the shard of ceramic high into Selius’ exposed throat.

“Guess that’s that,” she sighed as she removed the shard of ceramic, pausing for a moment to admire her handiwork. He would die well before he could move again if the unpleasant gurgling sounds emerging from the bloody hole in his throat were anything to go by, so she finished up by pushing his head forward so that he flopped down on the table. Stepping back with a smile on her face, she paused as she thought about what was next.

“Now…. where was I?”

Rucille’s thoughts clicked together before she turned and disappeared from the room, leaving the rest of the witnesses at the table paralysed by not only the toxin, but also fear. The cheerful tune that she had been humming in the kitchen earlier drifted back through the halls of the house, and soon it gradually became louder once more as she reappeared in the doorway.

“Nobility is worth nothing here,” she reminded them as she casually stepped around the blood which was beginning to pool on the floor. Ignoring Selius who was slumped over and making sounds that she’d probably rather not listen to, she placed a shimmering card in the centre of the table along with an empty glass vial. “There’s money on here, and it’s quite a bit too considering that the king issued it. The toxin should wear off in around fifteen minutes, so once you’re mobile you can spend what’s here as you wish.”

After making sure that at least a few of them had heard what she said, she turned for the door. “I’m in charge now, but I don’t care what you do in your own time. Whores, booze, fighting, whatever, as long as it doesn’t happen in this house. Try not to spend it all at once, and don’t kill each other.”

Selius had finally been taken out of the picture, so now she could finally breathe a sigh of relief. She was the boss now, and if anyone from the Royal Guard didn’t like it she didn’t mind sending them in Selius’ direction.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said over her shoulder as she stepped out of the dining room. “Make sure this mess is cleaned up by the time I get back and fill up the vial with his blood too. I might need it later.”

A grin appeared on Rucille’s face as she walked up the hallway before stepping out of the house, her finger running over the second shimmering card she had found which was now in her pocket. She was out of the cage, her leash had been cut, and she had also managed to secure a bankroll that was larger than what a small company would have. Life had never been better, and now that the distractions were out of the way she could begin to plan a new strategy to find Nina.

After she spent a couple of days putting her feet up, that was. She had earned it.