"DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAMN IT!" Fuming in rage, Margarette stomped her dark emerald heels on the castle hall tiles. "WHERE ARE THOSE BLOODY NECROMANCERS?! WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY?!"
To the extent of her knowledge, those necromancers were the best-known assassins in all of Daria, and yet for some obscure reason, Snow had safely made it to her duchy without so much as a scratch.
'How did he escape the grasp of those monsters, they promised me?' The aggressive grinding of her teeth echoed like pieces of glass being scratched against each other. 'I never thought he'd make it to the castle!'
The moment Snow and his convoy had climbed out of their wagons, Margarette's whole plan had turned into shambles. With a gasping mouth, she had glared at him, wondering if her eyes were mistaken and were conjuring up ghosts. But with the duke now resting in a room of his own, her fear had turned into an absolute nightmare.
"DAMN YOU, ATLAS!" To her, with every step Snow took in the castle, it felt as though he was trampling on her dreams.
Trying to get the rage out of her heart, she stomped her feet against the stairs to the throne, however, as her feet hit the ground, the dark emerald heels crumbled under the pressure. Crashing head first against the stairs, Margarette could feel herself bleeding from the temples.
"Rejuvenation!" Healing the wound, she still couldn't quench the anger seeping through her heart. "Where the hell, ARE THOSE IDIO-"
"Margarette! Shut up!" Seemingly out of thin air, a voice yelled out to her. "They ran off after someone in his party defeated their Dullahan."
Springing into existence, Riley undid his invisibility to show himself to his crazed mother. Much like Margarette, he too was fuming in rage, but keeping it internal with the help of his experience handling frustrating situations, he was able to remain much calmer.
"I had a couple of mercenaries spying on them," Moving closer, he offered her an opened envelope with a message from his spies. "Best in Daria my ass, they couldn't even sense the spies riding on their tails!"
Standing motionless as her son blabbered complaints, she stared at him with a heavy heart. The last she saw of him was on the day of their argument about Snow's stay at the castle, and thus her heart was overflowing with her motherly instinct and love.
"Where have you been?!" Ignoring the letter, she held him like a treasure. "I've been...so worried."
Overcome with emotions, her tears showered down Riley's armored shoulder blades. Despite her attempts to feel but an inch of his body, Margarette couldn't find a way into his armor.
"Get off, I wasn't gonna die just because you lost sight of me for a week!" Forcefully pulling himself off, Riley, held the letter right next to her face.
Hunched over with her hands still in place where his shoulders had been, Margarette peered up at him with tears strolling down her fair skin. Reaching with her nervous jittery fingers, she took the envelope off of his hands.
"What is this?" She asked, trying to correct her posture, but the broken heel almost made her fall once again. Steadying herself by grabbing onto Riley's arm, she quickly took the heels off of her legs.
"It's the report, I got from those mercenaries," stepping back, Riley's face was strained with frustration. "Those bastards you hired, they sent a total of two monsters after the duke before running off like cowards."
Taking a moment to read through exactly what had happened, Margarette crumpled the paper and then threw it off to the side.
"Do you know where they are?" Running his fingers along his neck like a knife, Riley gave Margarette the only answer she needed. "What about the mercenaries?"
His answer to the latter question remained the same as the one before it. Moving his hand over his fencing sword, he drew it out to show dried blood having seeped along its length. Blessed with the abilities of a spy as well as the skill to turn invisible, Riley may not have been the most physically apt, but when it came to swift and silent assassinations nobody came close to matching his level.
"I would've finished the job myself, but since I didn't know who killed that Dullahan, risking it would've been a death sentence," Saying that, Riley hid the proof of murder back into the green cloak around his armor. "What now? The duke is here, along with his convoy of adventurers, if we so much as touch them, the emperor will off it with our heads."
"That damned emperor, the day I meet him, I'll make sure to give him a piece of my mind," having her plans failing one after the other had left Margarette with nothing but complaints against the emperor.
If only he wasn't so perceptive, if only he wasn't such a coward, if only he could see the value in handing Laria to her, if only he could do that, then only would he have been a competent leader in her eyes. And yet knowing full well that that day would never come, she still held in her heart a deep-rooted resentment against the ruler of all Atlas.
"What about your farsightedness? Have you not seen or sensed something from the future that we can use?" Throwing out that idea, Riley didn't seem that confident in the idea himself.
"It happened so impulsively that I don't know what triggers those visions," casted in shadows from the light through the window fleeing with the sun, Margarette huffed out a tired sigh before beginning to walk towards the corridor.
"We'll figure something out, in the meantime..." standing right by the hall's door, she turned around to get a final look at her stepson. "I've heard he's quite fond of that maid of his, so why don't you try and break that bond?"
Riley knew what his mother meant, and yet he couldn't bring himself to be as sexually emboldened as her.
"What about you? What are you gonna do?" He asked, unsure whether she even had a plan in mind.
"I'll handle the duke, so keep that maid off of him, won't you?" There it was in her eyes, the same lecherous look of a slut who once seduced Riley's father.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om