Chapter 558.5 - Interlude Yolanda 1

Her silk sheets were a tangled ruin, bunched against the velvet headboard of the canopy bed and spilling off the mattress. Sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows, showing the mana-vein flooring in all its glory.

Princess Yolanda shifted, letting out a drawn-out, theatrical groan. She buried her face in a pillow, the image of a spoiled royal enduring the profound indignity of a late-morning wake-up.

Beneath the curtain of her hair, her silver eyes were open, sharp, and perfectly clear.

She reached out with her mana, keeping the flow so thin and diffuse that it couldn’t be detected against the background hum. Such was the value of having requested that her palace be built from marble extracted from a mana vein. The price couldn’t even be calculated, but that mattered little to the Royals.

She connected to the network of wards woven into the very mortar of her personal palace. To the court arcanists who had set up her quarters, the magic was classified as a manifestation of her [Blessed Princess] class—a passive, low-tier healing field capable of little more than promoting restful sleep.

In reality, it was a meticulously crafted snare. Every doorframe, every window latch, and every suit of armor in the corridor bore a microscopic imprint of her intent.

Yolanda felt a subtle vibration near the eastern threshold of her bedchamber. Ser Navos stood there. He was one of her two sworn protectors, a man who could have been hailed a Hero anywhere else, and had taken oaths to put her life ahead of his own.

Her wards, however, could sense the twitch of his mana whenever a missive arrived from a particular maid, one she had recently discovered was taking orders from the Second Prince. That meant Navos belonged to her brother. He also belonged to the King, reporting her daily routines to the Royal Spymasters, but that was to be expected.

At the western threshold stood Ser Quintus. Stoic, unflinching, and loyal to the King, the Prime Minister, and the Sixth Princess, to whom he owed a debt for saving his family’s life when their town was threatened by Wyrms.

Still, she deemed him the least likely to kill her on the spot if the order were given. Quintus liked to think of himself as honorable above all, and the stain of killing his charge would compel him to take his own life. He would still do it, of course, but the hesitation might be enough for her to act.

And up in the vaulted rafters, clinging to the shadows where sunlight failed to reach, was the Shadow. The King’s personal operative, assigned to monitor the seventeenth daughter of the bloodline, beyond reproach.

That one, she didn’t doubt, would kill her without hesitation, if only because watching her made him so bored.

Yolanda stretched her arms above her head, letting a languid yawn slip from her lips. She tossed the pillow aside and sat up, sweeping her cascade of gold hair over one shoulder.

"Lysa!" she called, infusing her voice with the petulant whine expected of her station. "My throat is parched.”

Given that I ordered them not to wake me and that they are all Battle Maids of the highest order, I’d have to be an idiot to treat them badly. But it’s expected of me to be annoying.

The doors parted, revealing three maids rushing in. Lysa, her personal maid, carried a silver tray with a steaming porcelain pot. It was a beautiful piece, but she wouldn't see it again after today, as a new one would be made.

Yolanda watched them approach with a vaguely bored expression. Lysa reported to the Queen’s faction. Elin, carrying the day’s silks, was a creature of the exchequer. The third, a girl her own age named Mya, was a wild card whom Yolanda had recently identified as feeding information to her father, a viscount with dealings in the merchant quarter, who then reported to three other high nobles.

She didn't begrudge any of them. Trust was a fairy tale for commoners. In the capital, paranoia was the only reliable currency.

"Set it down," Yolanda ordered, waving a hand dismissively. She slid out of bed, letting the maids strip off her nightgown and wrap her in a dressing robe of spun gold and pale cloudsilk, then paused to look at her reflection in a diamond mirror.

She possessed a natural, striking beauty, a genetic gift from the royal bloodline. Her gold hair caught the sunlight, and her silver eyes held a mirror-like sheen. She had cultivated a look of vacant prettiness all her life, so it didn’t surprise her. Yet she still inspected herself to ensure her expression never betrayed the constant calculations behind it.

She was seventeen. Her status screen read level eighty.

In the provinces, a seventeen-year-old reaching level eighty would be hailed as a generational prodigy. In the royal palace of Siderea, that was the baseline for survival. The Fourth Prince had achieved his Prestige rank in alchemy at fifteen and was rightly hailed as a genius. The Sixth Princess, barely twenty, was a Prestige fire mage who could battle a flock of Wyrms on her own, without a single injury to show for it.

And that was to say nothing of the first two. But she was better off not thinking about them; it’d only sour her mood.

Yolanda was the seventeenth daughter, far down the line of succession, and a political afterthought.

Her power lay in her perceived uselessness. She publicly developed only her healing, while her defensive magics were kept in absolute secrecy, fine-tuned until she could craft wards that granted her omniscience within her walls.

It was the only way she could feel safe after that day.

A quiet fact: the text here was taken without consent from the official page where the author publishes, and reading there supports the writer.

Elin brushed out her hair, pulling the golden strands into a complex, looping braid that followed the current court fashion after the Queen’s return from her voyage among elves. Yolanda hated the style. It tugged at her scalp and restricted her neck. She wore it anyway, knowing that any deviation from the norm might attract scrutiny.

"What is the schedule for today, Lysa?" Yolanda asked, inspecting the mother-of-pearl paint on her nails.

"A fitting for the third autumn gala, Your Highness," Lysa recited, pouring the tea. "Followed by a review of the household accounts and a garden reception with your ladies-in-waiting.”

"Cancel the accounts," Yolanda sighed, taking the teacup. "Numbers give me a headache. Let the steward handle it. I will take the tea party in the glass pavilion.”

It’s not like they are the right ones anyway.

She took a sip of the tea, forcing herself not to grimace at the excessive rumbling honey Lysa always added. She’d asked for it, of course, but she regretted it now. The health benefits weren’t worth the tingling it left on her lips, even if it did make them pleasantly plump.

An hour later, a remarkably fast time by her standards, Yolanda walked through the manicured hedges of her private estate. The glass pavilion sat at the center of a blooming rose garden, catching the midday sun. Ser Navos trailed five paces behind her right shoulder. Ser Quintus trailed five paces behind her left. She felt the Shadow moving across the pavilion's roof, a cold, empty void in her sensory web.

Inside the pavilion, four young women rose from their silver chairs and bowed deeply.

"Your Highness," they chimed in unison.

"Please, sit," Yolanda said, offering a bright, empty smile as she took her place at the head of the table and took a moment to take in her people.

Lady Vanya of House Torrent, Lady Elara of the Southern Vale, Lady Cassia Stanberg, and Lady Laurella Mantarys. They were daughters of prominent nobles, sent to the capital to serve the princess and to glean whatever political advantage they could. They were also gossips, spies, and pawns whom Yolanda cultivated like a gardener tending poisonous plants.

The servants poured fresh tea and set out tiered plates of dawn lemon cakes and frosted pastries. Yolanda gestured for a slice, took a small bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

It was delightful, as always.

"The capital is dreadfully dull this week," she complained, leaning back in her chair. "All the tailors are complaining about silk shortages, and the jewelers say the trade routes are still sluggish. Tell me something is being done about this, Vanya. You always know about these things first.”

Lady Vanya leaned forward, her dark eyes flashing with excitement at the compliment. “The north is still reopening, but the real trouble is on the eastern coast, Your Highness. My father wrote that three deep-water ports have been closed to merchant traffic for a fortnight. Some trouble with the royal quartermasters is requisitioning grain shipments straight off the docks and making sailors nervous about their wealth being impounded.”

Yolanda projected mild annoyance. Internally, a piece of the puzzle snapped into place. Closed ports and requisitioned grain on the eastern seaboard. The King was truly mobilizing. She already knew about the army, but hoarding grain on the coast meant a naval operation or preparation to supply an overseas beachhead. Her father was preparing for a new war of conquest, not just skirmishes.

“Grain troubles?" Yolanda sighed. "How utterly tedious. I suppose that explains why almond flour is becoming so scarce. Are they stockpiling for a famine?”

"Some say it is to set up a search for Lord Darkius’ expedition," Lady Elara chimed in, as always eager to offer information if she wasn’t called upon first. The poor dear. "My cousin sailed with the fleet toward the Frozen Seas six months ago. They are weeks overdue, and there are whispers that something may have happened to them.”

"They are alive," Lady Cassia countered softly. That one was the most dangerous of the lot, but also the most useful. "My uncle serves in the Divination Spire, and I heard from him that the fleet captains’ life-tokens still burn brightly. It is merely a delay. Such things happen at sea.”

Yolanda took another sip of tea. The fleet in the Frozen Seas was a supposedly passion project of the Crown Prince, an attempt to locate ancient artifacts buried beneath the ice sheets that had once been home to an Empire. She didn’t believe that for a moment, but hadn’t managed to learn its true purpose.

If they were alive but delayed, they had likely found something. Or they were pinned down by monsters. Either way, the King would not divert grain to the east to support a fleet he had not commissioned. The war preparations were a separate endeavor.

"Well, I hope they bring back some decent furs," Yolanda said, waving a hand. "My winter cloaks are looking positively ragged. Speaking of ragged, I saw my brothers, the Ninth and Eleventh, walking through the outer courtyard yesterday. They looked like they had not slept in days.”

A tense silence fell over the table. The ladies exchanged quick, nervous glances. This was, as always, the most dangerous part of her gambit. Being a lazy princess was one thing, but if she truly looked like she paid no mind to what was happening at court, people would grow suspicious.

Even an idiot like the girl she presented as would have noticed her brothers’ actions. Not asking would have hurt her image even more.

"The Princes have been seen spending a great deal of time at the Prime Minister's estate," Vanya whispered, her voice dropping an octave.

Yolanda felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. The Prime Minister was a man of sharp angles and sharper intellect, a master of statecraft who wielded political leverage with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. He terrified her. He was the only person in the Royal Court who looked at Yolanda and seemed to see the calculating mind beneath the vacant smile.

Her brothers were fools. The Ninth and Eleventh Princes were arrogant, barely acceptable mages who thought of themselves as geniuses because they’d surpassed their peers in the Tower in speed and believed their royal blood made them immune to consequences. If they were plotting with the Prime Minister, they were pawns in a much larger game.

"How strange," Yolanda remarked, selecting a second lemon cake. "The Prime Minister is so... dreary. Why would they spend their evenings there?”

"There are rumors of a new push in the Council," Elara said, her eyes darting toward the pavilion entrance, where the guards stood. “Something about wanting to restructure the provincial overseers. The Princes may be seeking appointments.”

Yolanda nodded slowly. She doubted that was the full extent of the plot, but princes could get away with plotting and ambitious overreach. The King allowed his sons to sharpen their claws on the lower nobility, weeding out the weak. Daughters were afforded no such leniency, unless they proved themselves in battle.

“How boring," Yolanda groaned, rolling her eyes.

"You may have to worry about your own province soon, Your Highness," Vanya said, a sly, feline smile pulling at her lips.

Yolanda paused, the teacup halfway to her mouth. “Explain."

If her tone came out sharper than she’d intended, no one mentioned it.

"My father's steward overheard a conversation in the exchequer," the girl offered, eager to share the day's prize gossip. "The Second Prince has been reviewing land grants in the far western territories, specifically the border marches near the Sunlands. He is even asking about drafts of ancient marriage alliances.”

Yolanda set the teacup down on the saucer. The porcelain clinked sharply.

Her older brother was a ruthless pragmatist locked in a brutal shadow war with the Crown Prince over the line of succession. He’d always seen Yolanda as a loose thread because her mother was a distant cousin of the Crown Prince’s.

Marrying her off to a border lord in the untamed West would achieve two goals: remove her from the capital, eliminating any remote possibility of her becoming a political focal point, and secure a loyal vassal on the frontier.

"The west," Yolanda said, letting a note of genuine horror seep into her voice. "That is practically wilderness. Mud roads, uncouth lords, and monster incursions. He cannot be serious.”

A direct confrontation with the Second Prince was suicide. He commanded legions and held the loyalty of a significant portion of the High Council. Pleading with the King was equally futile; her father viewed his children as assets on a ledger. If the marriage brought stability to the western border, he would sign the decree without a second thought.

If she wanted to get out of this, she needed to use his true ruler: his paranoia.

He was fiercely protective of the royal bloodline and regarded the dynasty's blood as a divine mandate, a source of innate superiority. That was why he rarely allowed his daughters to marry outside the tightly controlled circles of the central nobility, even though doing so would have given him even more influence.

"I feel faint," Yolanda declared, standing up abruptly.

As her servants and ladies scrambled to help her and led her back to her rooms, her mind worked furiously.