Queensmen

Chapter 43

~Narita~

"So, what do you do for fun around here?" Oris asked her cellmate after counting to a thousand a dozen times. By now, she was tired of the silence.

"You will get used to it," they said.

"I might die before I do."

Knowing the conversation was heading nowhere, Oris closed her eyes and continued counting. She had nothing better to do with her time.

The results should have been announced by now. She wondered where she placed among the others and if it even meant anything.

She couldn't change hearts or move souls from inside a cell. Would one Cassidy and two guards be able to free her? What if she threw in the handful of peasants she met at the gates?

Would any official stand up for her at the risk of their own daughter's place in the harem? She didn't think so.

She could only hope that Mayree and Andrea had gotten clues about who wanted to poison her and figured out what to do with it. In truth, she wasn't really worried about that. Once Seline and Keziah caught word of what had happened, they would think of a plan and hopefully it would be better than what she had in mind. So she had no doubt that she would be rescued because they treated her life as theirs. They would rather die with her than let her die alone.

What Oris didn't know was how long it would take for the poison to take effect. She had drank a whole cup of tea infused with it so she doubted it would take as long as her assailant had planned. The symptoms needed to show soon to help speed things along but it seemed as though she needed to do something more drastic.

Once again, harming her person was the only way left to prove her innocence. Only this time she would not admit to it.

The Empress Dowager has pushed me so many times, let me show her how it feels when the favor is returned.

Arrested for rebellion? Was that a believable reason? Which bride candidate hadn't done something atrocious to gain the Emperor's attention? How many were arrested for it?

It was ridiculous, too much in fact, and that was what opened Oris' eyes to the truth. She was nothing to the Empress Dowager, so why did the woman spare so much effort to ensure her demise?

Had it been necessary to send an imperial decree? Asking a desperate servant to poison her or strangle her in her sleep would have been enough.

The crime of rebellion became the pivotal point in the her thinking process now. The accusation made it obvious that the Empress Dowager was using her to divert the attention of the court and cover something up. But what was it?

Humming a tune softly, Oris began to trace her steps back until she was in the carriage again in front of the palace gates.

The palace gates had been locked when she had arrived yet she knew very well that they were meant to be open after the hour of the first sun-dawn.

There were reasons why the gates would be locked. Seline had suggested that an assassination had occurred and Faeradaigh had claimed that the crown jewels had been stolen and the Empress Dowager's people were catching the thief.

What if there really was an assassination and the thief was the assassin? Or better still, maybe there was no thief at all and the Empress Dowager had someone killed under the guise of catching a thief.

With all the knowledge in the world, Empress Dowager Wei Wei could not have expected that Oris would arrive just as the deed was being carried out. What should have been an isolated incident had unexpectedly spread to the court because of her.