“The Queen requests an audience!”

Before the words could finish, the Queen walked into the sitting area that Mahnu, Betty and Donald were currently in.

Her aura was full of power, that she was on top…And everyone else was below her!

“Your…Your Majesty!?” Betty stammered and promptly followed Donald to bow.

Mahnu slightly bowed her head.

“Insolence! You must show respect to the Queen of the nation!”

Mahnu knew, they wanted any reason to get rid of her, even if she didn’t hear thoughts...

But, her respect for this Queen, this person, only was as much as lowering her head slightly. Power would not make her get onto her knees! To this, Mahnu stubbornly stayed silent.

Shocked faces looked at her, yet, she was still unmoved. This was what she had thought of ‘petty’ quite some time ago.

Remembering of making unnecessary problems for the Queen, Mahnu could not help but not regret and still deciding to have done the same again and get involved with Richard in the past.

There were no regrets in Mahnu’s eyes, if anything, her eyes showed her determination.

The problem was, she knew, her determination to stay by Richard’s side, was instead being seen as determination to make things hard for the Queen.

The Queen sat into the most comfortable chair, to further look like she had the power.

“Make her kneel to me!” Her words were angry but under control.

People started to walk towards Mahnu, but she stared at them coldly. “Do not touch me!”

They stopped at her cold words and stared at her in a daze.

No one had ever done this! In their days of service, they knew that the Queen should have everything her way…Was this person sane?

“My orders will overtake hers always, now make her kneel!” The Queen yelled at her complexed servants.

They continued, as they thought the Queen was right!

But none of them got near as William came between them. “You will not touch her!”

“Who are you to defy my orders!?” The Queen became stupefied, never anything not gone her way!

Mahnu went to stop William talking, by touching his shoulder, and then spoke herself, “You have come into my house, uninvited, yet we welcome you without complaint. You have used power to try to force me to kneel, giving no other reason behind it, and now you are yelling at my brother! If you do not want your secret to be known to others…I suggest you leave quietly.”

The Queen stared in shock at Mahnu.

Secret? How could she possibly know? It must be just luck of words! I cannot let her treat me, the Queen of this nation, like this!

Well, my dear ‘consort’, aren’t you just putting yourself into a trap?

“Forcibly take her for slandering the Queen!” The Queen stated firmly.

She watched as William took out his sword, with the look that he had the intention to kill.

How dare he do this to my people!

The Queen narrowed her eyes and decided to use one of her father’s tactics that he had taught her, “If you don’t put back your sword, you will lose your life. Good man, come to my side, where I can protect you!”

Putting out her hand, in invitation, the Queen looked righteously at William, wanting to take whomever Mahnu would have on her side. This was what her father had taught her, to take her enemies people!

Mahnu scoffed, unable to hide her anger. The Queen was acting like she was the innocent, yet, does the innocent lie and go behind others backs? Do they use other people? Kill other people? Does she even have a heart?

“…You want another guard to get you pregnant in secret? My Queen?”

The Queen gasped…So did all of the others inside of the room!

How did…How did she know!? No one had known! Even most of her close servants didn’t know about her past lover!

“Were you going to continue to lie to everyone? Are you completely unwilling to tell the truth? Is this something that you think the Queen of this nation can get away with?” Mahnu asked. “Is this the way a ‘Queen of the nation’ should act!?”

The Queen was speechlessly silent. This was not supposed to happen! No one had known and the guard had already been silenced! She looked around at her people and Mahnu saw that an inner conflict was going on inside the Queen’s head.

If people know my secret…My reputation, even my…My life was in danger! All these people who were opened to the idea, they all had to die!

“Now, she wants to kill us all!” Mahnu sneered again.

She had tried to let the Queen go, to keep this secret…The Queen had instead wanted to make things hard on her and anger had made Mahnu let out her secret, now, the Queen wanted to kill anyone that knew this truth?

Humans!

The Queen had done wrong, yet how many lives will she silence because of this wrong!

Did she not know that each person here is connected to someone! Did she know that one death can hurt at least one person in return! Did she not care for life at all!?

Each person here had a mother and father, perhaps a sibling and friends. Maybe their parents might be gone, or they had no siblings, but there would most likely be at least one person that would be heartbroken if they died!

What would she do then if the mourners of these people wanted revenge!?

Mahnu couldn’t let this happen, especially since she herself being killed would deeply upset Richard. She didn’t like the idea of him being sad and depressed…

Before Mahnu could speak though, The Queen’s voice spoke first.

“No! She is telling lies! How could I do something so terrible! Don’t listen to her!” The Queen clenched her fists, in attempt to stop trembling.

When she had gotten punched by the King, many months ago, the Queen had been truly astonished. She remembers, even now, that aggrieved wronged feeling and wanted to get justice! From that day, she got a specific servant, that was already on her side, to tell her whenever the King was drunk and kept note of it, planning to use these dates later to help her get back at him.

For days afterwards, she had stayed away from the King, in hope that he will come to apologize to her! She had wanted to demand another child in compensation…But he had never come…

It had been a strange time and the Queen had drunk so much that she could hardly remember a night so long ago.

That night, she had let a random guard be with her as she spoke, letting out all her worries and the guard had been very patient with her.

He had not punched her, he sat with her for over an hour, as she cried out all her sorrows. It had been…Nice…

In the next couple of days, the Queen remembered this guard and spoke to him again, then she finally came up with a plan to not only get back at the King, but to accomplish a wish that she had in a long time.

She wanted another child…

The guard was not willing to become intimate with her at first, because she was the Queen, but he was also inexperienced and each time she had touched him where others had never touched him before, he was amazed and unable to stop her from continuing.

From what started out as plan to get herself pregnant, ended up as an affair that went on for a couple of months.

She the Queen, made him want her and it didn’t take long for the guard to become fixated on doing just that…

The problem was, both the guard and the Queen started to share more then intimacy moments together and the Queen was forgetting her plan, getting lost in the man that was spending quality time with her. It came to a point where they did not have to do anything but cuddle and speak to each other like real lovers did, and that was something she had never dreamed about…Just simply being in that man’s arms, felt like all her troubles slipped away…

He listened to her, made her feel good, made her want him and she liked how he wanted her in return…She had felt…Special.

For the short time of their relationship, she had felt like a teenager all over again and laughed without any worry. She even felt strangely happy about keeping their secret and going behind people’s backs…It made it more pleasurable and exciting…

For the first time in her life, she felt like she was really living! She was getting swept away and didn’t bother much about the status she had…That man, had liked her for who she was…Not what she was…

It was like a dream…

Until…She was suddenly pregnant.

As soon as the Queen realized that she was getting sick by just smelling food and was extra tired, the Queen hardly needed a doctor to state that she was with a child.

After the happiness of being pregnant died down, the Queen found herself really sad when she knew she had to start realistically thinking of her situation again and finally remembered her plan from months before.

Now, she was having a wish come true, by being with a child, and she also had to pay back the King for punching her! She even come up with a date in order to state when she and the King had ‘conceived’ this child…Just, she hadn’t had to use it yet!

For her to give up on the man who held her and let her speak of her misfortunes, the Queen was adamant to fulfil her plan! The one she had now, with the so called ‘consort’ in front of her, was obviously just to get rid of her before anything else can happen. Just one reason is enough, and since she was the Queen, she should be able to accomplish this quickly, before Mahnu had completely come to the palace and become known throughout the capital of being a consort of the King!

…She had to kill the first man that she had ever loved! She can’t turn back now!

The Queen was now standing and pointing angrily at Mahnu. “You have offended me by accusing me of being and adultier, I simply came here to officially accept you into the palace, yet you already come across as a jealous woman! You state that I do not act as the Queen of the Nation, yet here you are not showing respect and speaking such lies! How could I, the Queen, let someone like you near His Majesty the King! Get her and throw her into prison! Let it be known that this woman is jealous and does not respect others!”

Mahnu looked at the Queen’s guards coming closer. There were ten of them, and there was only William and herself. “Did anyone notice the guard named ‘Thomas’ disappearing? The Queen killed him herself…With poison! You may have not realised that because the Queen had told you lies, that Thomas had said often that he was becoming weak and that he may die soon. You took her words as truth, but don’t you see that he was poisoned!” Mahnu was looking at the guards, who have halted their attacks. “She used him! Are you going to believe the words of the one who killed Thomas? One of the Loyal Royal Knights!”

Everyone was quiet and unmoving.

The Queen was so surprised, that her mouth was wide opened. The painful memories of seeing her lover poisoned came to surface in her mind and her eyes got watery.

She herself had started to give him tea with poison, after she found out that she was pregnant…After Thomas would leave her, she would cry. She would cry and then remind herself of her plan…

Each and every tea that he had, made her cry harder but at the same time made her more determined…It was…The hardest thing that she ever had to do!

And it was as this so called ‘consort’ had said, all of it! But…But…

The guards watched the Queen, at first, they did not believe it, but now, seeing the Queen so shocked and looking like she was just about to cry…They wondered if it could be true…Could it be? Really…That the Queen would do such a thing to one of their brother’s?

Thomas had still been young, having been placed to be a guard for the Queen for about two years…Had his short life already come to an end because the Queen…

Waiting for orders, the guards became astonished that nothing was said. The Queen’s face and untold orders furthered their distrust of their very own Queen!

Then they turned their heads and they saw William, still standing tall, he was ready to defend this lady till the end. They knew of William, he was loyal, he was the next in line to be the Leader of the Loyal Royal Knights! Was he blind? Was he on the wrong side? What are they supposed to do? Their loyalty to the Loyal Royal Knights or to the Queen of the nation? After all, it was an enormous difference in choice!

“If you want to solve this…One of you get the King and bring him here.” Mahnu said unhurriedly.

When seeing the Queen walking into this room, Mahnu never thought this meeting would go on like this. If they had talked properly and she had just bowed her head more, would they have been safe?

Knowing the answer to that, Mahnu sighed inside her heart. As soon as the Queen was in distance to her being able to hear thoughts from her, Mahnu knew that the Queen would have tried to do anything to get Mahnu into trouble. Even now, it wasn’t ‘prison’ that the Queen meant, it was for her head to be chopped off!