Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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When the clinking of the fallen crown died out, the throne room went still. Even the servants lining the walls froze in fear, staying silent. Only Queen Ghallia's moth fluttered to the ground beside her sorcerer, so softly that only Esmera could hear her wings beat. Only King Ruagu's viper coiled and uncoiled at his feet, his scales scraping against each other as he eyed the moth the way a predator would his prey.
Esmera was grateful that she and her friends were invisible for now, but she didn't know how long that would protect her.
Where Princess Kerani stood behind Ruagu with her blue bird on her shoulder, tears rose in her eyes as they fixed on the crown, deformed and distorted as her family and her life had been. Beside Esmera, Tauram drew a shaky breath.
To see an heirloom of their family tossed aside like worthless junk couldn't have been easy. It was an item that must've graced their beloved mother's head once, perhaps even her mother and grandmother before her. It must've been an item of pride once, standing for dignity and strength, but now it was just forlorn and hopeless where it lay on the tiles.
"What I want to know is why you would do such a thing." Ruagu jerked Ghallia's face up to his, sending her luxuriant hair rippling as it fell down her back. "Did I not give you everything you wished for when you left Tauram for me? A throne, all these jewels and garments?"
She made no reply. Her silence stretched until it became uncomfortable, like an itchy shawl covering Esmera's arms. Ruagu's viper rustled, while the king merely pressed his mouth into a line as he gazed down at his wife.
"Did I not?" Ruagu grabbed Ghallia's face, and she let out a whimper as his talons pressed into her skin, still warm with life and youth that Esmera feared wouldn't last.
"No." Ghallia's whisper resounded through the silent room as a cry would've.
It was just a single word, but it froze Esmera's blood, tightened Tauram's hand around her arm, trapped Belaren's breath in his chest because Ghallia had chosen the wrong answer. Maybe it was the truth, but it wasn't what her husband wanted to hear.
Ruagu's face hardened as Esmera expected it would. "Then tell me what you so severely lacked in my opulent palace that you would resort to plotting against me."
Again, she didn't budge, and to Esmera, it felt like she was signing the death warrant Ruagu had placed in front of her. She may be jealous of the queen for what she had been to Tauram ten years ago. She may have even hated her for the hold it seemed she still had on him, but it pained her to see her now, on her knees in front of the man she loved, who was dressed in black like the Grim Reaper. Esmera wanted to do something to help her, to keep her and Tauram's plan intact, but she could do nothing without exposing herself.
"I want you to tell my entire court why you betrayed us all." Ruagu tilted Ghallia's head up so that their gazes were in line and there was no escaping him. "Tell me before I show you the bad side I protected you from for all these years."
