Chapter 407 One Visits The Crypt, Petra
DRAKENFELL — BELLATRIX’S PARLOR
Bellatrix Drakenfell was reading the Knotty Omega.
She would deny this under oath, under torture, and under the direct scrutiny of the Moon Goddess herself. She was reading it because Petra had “confiscated” it from a chambermaid, and Petra’s definition of confiscated was becoming suspiciously consistent across multiple issues, and Bellatrix had chosen to interrogate the content rather than the procurement.
The article was on page twenty-three, buried between a scandalous illustration of two unnamed Alphas and a recipe for something called “Knot Butter” that Bellatrix had read, reread, and would be taking to her grave.
The title was printed in bold ink:
HOW TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO LEAVE: YOUR 8-STEP FIELD GUIDE
Divorce is for quitters, and you, my darling, are a winner with better hair.
“Petra.”
“Your Grace.”
“This article was written for me.”
“It was written for a general audience, Your Grace.”
“It was written for me, Petra. The author knows. Look at this.” She held up the page. “Step one: ’Make his court believe losing you would be a tragedy.’ This is my life’s work distilled into a single sentence by a gossip columnist, and I am both offended and impressed.”
She turned the page. Read further. Her eyes narrowed with the focus of a general studying enemy fortifications and finding them structurally familiar.
“Get me a quill,” she said. “And a fresh sheet of parchment. We are making a checklist.”
STEP ONE: PUBLIC COLLAPSE (SYMPATHY IS A CURRENCY)
Faint in public. The court must see you as the wounded party. If they do not see you bleed, they will believe you cannot.
Bellatrix underlined the passage twice.
“Fainting,” she announced. “I will faint. In the great hall. During a meal. Preferably when Tiberon is present so the visual is seared into every noble’s memory.”
Petra held the inkwell steady. “Your Grace has never fainted.”
“I have never needed to faint, Petra. Fainting is a tool I have kept in reserve for thirty years, and the reserve has matured, and the maturity will make the performance more convincing.”
“Will there be crying?”
“Before the faint. The crying establishes the emotional context. The faint delivers the climax. The sequence is critical.” She tapped the article. “Tears first. Public tears, witnessed by at least four nobles and one servant with a reputation for gossip. The tears frame the narrative: the queen is distraught. The queen is suffering. Then, mid-meal, I go down.”
“What if Alaric examines you?”
Bellatrix paused. The pause was the pause of a woman who had forgotten that the castle’s Master Healer was a man whose diagnostic capability was exceeded only by his intolerance for deception and whose bedside manner was a war crime.
“We time it when he is elsewhere. He cannot diagnose what he does not witness. Get me his schedule.”
“I will obtain it.”
Petra wrote: Step 1: Faint. Avoid Alaric. Obtain schedule.
The word obtain was doing considerable work given that Petra was going to have to stalk the Master Healer’s movements without alerting a man whose professional training included detecting precisely that kind of surveillance.
✦✦✦
STEP TWO: BEFRIEND HIS MOTHER
Win over his mother. A mother’s approval is a chain no man can break, and a mother’s disapproval of the divorce is a weapon that fires indefinitely.
Bellatrix set the publication down. Looked at Petra.
“His mother is dead.”
“She is, Your Grace.”
“Very dead.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Bellatrix picked the publication back up. Read the step again. Set it down again.
“We improvise.”
“How does one improvise a dead mother, Your Grace?”
“One visits the crypt, Petra. One brings flowers. One is seen weeping at the tomb of a woman one never particularly liked but whose memory now serves a strategic purpose. You spread it. Make sure servants are there too. They will talk.”
Petra wrote: Step 2: Crypt. Flowers. Crying. Servant with loose lips.
“White roses,” Bellatrix added. “She hated white roses. I hated her. Fitting.”
“How long should the weeping last, Your Grace?”
“Seven minutes. Long enough to be witnessed. Short enough to be dignified. I am a queen, Petra. Queens weep with restraint. Restrained weeping is more devastating than hysterics because it implies depth. Hysterics say ’I am falling apart.’ Restrained weeping says ’I am holding myself together, barely, beautifully, and everyone should be concerned.’”
✦✦✦
STEP THREE: MAKE YOURSELF ESSENTIAL TO HIS INNER CIRCLE
Befriend the people he trusts most. If removing you means disrupting every relationship he relies on, the cost of leaving becomes prohibitive.
Bellatrix had sent two invitations before the ink on Step Two’s parchment was dry.
The first was to Hyran Thornfell. The invitation was written on cream card stock, sealed with the Drakenfell crest. It requested his presence for wine and conversation in her private parlor at his earliest convenience, and the phrase “earliest convenience” was a polite fiction that meant “tonight, or I will find you.”
The second was to Elara Vaelor. Same card stock. Same seal. Same unprecedented warmth directed at a woman Bellatrix had historically treated as staff.
Both arrived simultaneously because Bellatrix understood that separate invitations allowed for separate refusals, and simultaneous invitations created a social obligation that was harder to decline because each recipient would assume the other had already accepted.
Hyran arrived first. He stood in the doorway of Bellatrix’s parlor with the expression of a man who had received an invitation he did not trust and had accepted it because refusing a queen’s invitation was politically inadvisable regardless of how transparent the queen’s motives were.
“Your Grace.”
“Hyran. Sit.”
Hyran sat because standing in Bellatrix’s parlor while she poured wine was worse than sitting, and worse was a relative concept that Hyran navigated with the precision of a man who had survived years in this castle by choosing the least dangerous option in every room.
Elara arrived four minutes later. She stopped in the doorway. She looked at Hyran, who was sitting in a velvet chair holding a glass of wine with the posture of a hostage who had been given refreshments. She looked at Bellatrix, who was smiling.
Bellatrix never smiled at Elara. Bellatrix smiled at Elara the way predators smile at prey: as a precursor to something the prey would not enjoy.
“Elara. Come in. Sit. I was telling Hyran that I have always admired his taste in mage-wear. The embroidery on his current robes is exquisite.”
Hyran looked at his robes. The embroidery was standard. He had worn these robes in Bellatrix’s presence forty times and she had never once commented on them.
Elara sat bewildered.
“Wine?” Bellatrix extended a glass.
“Thank you,” Elara said, because refusing a queen’s wine was a statement and accepting it was survival.