The dizziness caused by the severe pain is more violent than imagined.
Serafina fell on the red carpet on the high platform of Buckingham Palace, poking her throat with her hands, as if she was about to pull out the disgusting black fog gushing out of her body. Her delicate face, which was originally nourished with countless rare medicinal materials, was distorted by extreme fear at this moment, and her snot and tears were covered with exquisite makeup.
"Don't look! You are not allowed to watch! Serafina roared sharply. She tried to condense the holy light again to prove her purity, but as soon as her fingertips glowed and touched the black stain on the skirt, the glim light was instantly annihilated as if she had met a natural enemy, emitting a more unpleasant smell of sulphur.
The panic of the crowd has evolved from the initial screams to crowded escapes. Those nobles who once regarded themselves highly in the royal capital and even had to be supported by servants to walk, are now like a group of rats scalded by boiling water, pushing each other, precious silks are trampled under their feet, and pearly jewellery scattered on the ground.
"Quiet."
The sound was not high, but extremely cold, like a piece of ten thousand years of cold ice smashed into a boiling oil pan.
No amplification magic was used, but the sound accurately overcassed the noise of most of the banquet hall.
Vera leaned half behind the load-bearing column in the dark corner of the second floor, and her eyes passed through the gap of the thick velvet curtain. She saw a team of knights dressed in black iron armour and without any extra decorations stride in from the main entrance of the hall.
The leading man was wearing dark silver armour, which was completely different from other guards. He did not wear any gorgeous badges symbolising the patronage of the holy light, and hung a long sword with a sheath around his waist. He was not wearing a helmet, and his dark brown short hair was slightly messy. The outline of his facial features was deep as if they were carved by a knife and axe. There was a very faint old scar under his left eye. As he opened his mouth expressionlessly, the scar looked particularly cold.
Rain Astor. Commander of the Imperial Defence Force.
Vera has consulted his information in the black market. Born as a civilian, he climbed to this position step by step with military merits in the meat grinder on the northern border. The queen tried to attract him, but he refused, only claiming loyalty to the king. In this empire that regards the "holy bloodline" as more important than life, he is like a complete alien.
"Block all exits. Third, the seventh team went to the inner court to protect His Majesty. Team 5, please return those nobles who are still screaming to their seats. As Rain walked, he quickly gave instructions. He speaks very fast, without any ups and downs, but with an unquestionable sense of oppression.
The originally chaotic venue was forced to pause under the strong intervention of dozens of black armoured guards.
"Reaman, Commander Lane!" Queen Isabella finally regained her voice. She stood on the edge of the high platform, holding the gold-plated sceptre symbolising the king's power in her hands, and her knuckles were sickly pale because of excessive force. Although she tried her best to maintain her dignity, Vera could clearly see the ups and downs of her chest, which was a manifestation of extreme anger and panic.
"A shadow mage sneaked into the palace and plotted Serafina with an extremely vicious curse!" The queen didn't give Ren a chance to open her mouth, and her voice was raised high, as if she was talking to Ren, and more like brainwashing the hundreds of frightened nobles under the stage, "Consey my order to block the royal capital immediately! Dig out those dirty, mouse-like black magicians for me! At this engagement banquet, one must not be let go!"
Vera smiled silently in the dark. The half-sided silver mask was attached to the cold skin, and she bit her lower lip tightly so as not to let herself sneer mockingly.
The queen's trick is very good. She instantly turned a scandal of royal blood into an attack by a foreign hostile empire. As long as the crime of "Shadow Mage" is confirmed, Serafina's holy light is still pure, but it is "cursed".
Rain stopped under the steps and raised his head slightly. His gray-blue eyes looked at the queen calmly and did not immediately bow down to her.
"Your Majesty, an unproven curse will cause panic among the people if the whole city is blocked." Rain's voice was very steady, and the logic was clear as if he was reading the military rules. "If he were a shadow mage, he would definitely leave the residue of magic. Please allow my mage to confirm the scene first. If it's just that the royal magic array itself made a mistake--"
"Are you questioning my judgement?! Commander Rain!" The queen interrupted him sharply, and her face, which had maintained the mask of "compassion and love" all the year round, finally cracked a crack, and a trace of vicious haze flashed in her eyes. "You know, what is the sin of harbouring black magic?"
Rain did not retreat. He just lowered his eyelids slightly and put his hand on the handle of the sword: "My duty is to protect the empire. Therefore, I must find out the truth. If it's a shadow mage, my sword will cut off his head; if it's something else..."
He didn't finish, but the meaning was obvious. Vera looked at Lane's back and narrowed her eyes slightly. This man is more difficult to deal with than she thought. He did not accept the queen's money, nor was he greedy for beauty. He was only loyal to his duty. In this rotten empire, this kind of person is like a rusty but still deadly iron nail, which not only stabs the hand, but also easily destroys other people's plans.
"Your Excellency! There is no magic fluctuation around! Only... only the shadow elements emitted by the princess.
The mage under Lane quickly came to a conclusion. The atmosphere in the air instantly became extremely subtle.
When Serafina heard this sentence, she, who was still sobbing, suddenly bounced up like a cat whose tail was stepped on: "Nonsense! I'm a saint! How can I have a shadow element! It's that glass of wine! There is poison in the wine! It's the waiter! It was the man who served the wine who wanted to harm me!"
Rain turned his head slightly, and the two guards immediately dragged the waiter, who was paralysed in the corner and had wet his pants, like a chicken.
"It's him! It must be him!" Serafina pointed at the waiter and screamed hysterically, "Kill him! Hang him immediately!"
"Your Highness." Rain turned around, and his tall body stood in front of the waiter, with an unquestionable warning in his voice, "No one can die until the truth is found out. Even if it's a criminal."
Vera was secretly observing all this. Although the waiter was afraid, he was just a bottom-level person who took money to do things. He didn't even know what he was doing. His eyes were extremely flustered, and he was frantically looking for something in the crowd.
When his eyes swept to the dark corner of the second floor, Vera gently raised her hand, stretched out her index finger, and made a muffled gesture on her lips.
The waiter's pupils shrank suddenly, and he immediately withdrew his gaze. He lay on the ground and began to kowtow: "I don't know! I don't know anything! It's the vice president! He asked me to take that glass of wine!"
"Vice President?" Rain keenly grasped the clue, "The one that was dragged down just now?"
The situation began to become interesting. The queen wanted a death without proof, Lane wanted to find out the truth, and all the clues were flowing accurately to the vice chairman who had signed the family order in Vera's arrangement. She not only wants to destroy the reputation of Serafina, but also tears the nepotism of the enemy camp from the inside.
"Take the couple down to have a rest." Rain pointed to Prince Cassian and Serafina in an unquestionable tone, "No one is allowed to leave the palace until it is found out."
Prince Cassian had long been frightened. Even if he saw Serafina's begging eyes on him, he just subconsciously took a step back, bowed in a hurry, and left the hall as if he was escorted by the attendant. He looked at Serafina's eyes, and there was no longer his former obsession, replaced by deep fear and doubt. Seeing the prince's eyes avoiding, Serafina let out a desperate cry, and then was half-dragged to the inner court by the maids.
The queen gritted her teeth and looked like a poisoned knife. She took a fierce look at Lane's back, but she was helpless. She must maintain her image of "deep and righteous", so she can only turn around stiffly and follow the direction of Serafina.
Outside a safe room in the inner court, Roland still kept guarding outside the door. He probably didn't know what was going on inside. He was just like a soulless sculpture, fulfilling the duties of a "hound" conscientiously.
Evila looked at Roland's face. That kind of familiar, extremely indifferent and numb eyes. Five years ago in the fire, the boy who held her hand and let her run quickly is now just like a string puppet, wagging his tail and begging for mercy for the little leftovers in the queen's hand.
The scar on the right half of the face burned by the holy flame seems to be beginning to hurt again. It was a kind of dull pain unique to rainy days, reminding her who she was now and what she was carrying.
She doesn't need anyone's sympathy or redemption. She only needs to achieve the goal.
There was the sound of hurried footsteps in the corridor, and the searching guards were investigating floor by floor.
Vera took out a small, non-shiny black coin from the cuff. With a few fingers, the coin rolled out a few circles on the gorgeous carpet in the corridor. After hitting the pillar, it made a very slight crisp sound.
"What's the sound?" Rain turned his head sharply and locked his eyes on the second floor like a falcon.
Vera is no longer there. She had turned around, like a silent bat, and slipped into a ventilated secret door on the side of the palace that was sealed by the years.
In the dark, she didn't look back.
She walked all the way down, walked through the damp steps, bypassed several patrolling sewer guards, and finally stopped in front of a rusty iron door covered with green vines.
After the Iron Gate, there is an underground wrest league full of sweat, blood and inferior barley wine. This is the darkest place of the royal capital, and it is also the territory where Vera has climbed from a chased exile to the position of chess player step by step in the past five years.
"Boss." A man with an iron tower-like figure and a ferocious scar across half of his face greeted him. He bowed his head and handed over a clean gray towel. "There is a big noise in the palace, and it is rumoured that the princess has become a black wizard everywhere in the city."
"Hmm. Let the brothers in the periphery get ready." Vera took the towel, wiped the sweat from the edge of the mask, and walked down the narrow corridor to her office.
"Do you want to intercept that vice president? After he was taken away by the guards tonight, he heard that he had been shouting for injustice.
"Don't stop." Vera pushed open the door of the office, took off her gray cloak, and hung it on the hanger. "Let him be judged by Ren. That's a smart man. In order to survive, he will spit out all the rotten accounts in the queen's private account book. Take advantage of the time when Ren is investigating the case, swallow all the underground routes of the vice chairman.
"Then if he confesses..."
"He can't offer me." Vera sat down behind the desk and gently tapped a stack of secret letters on the table, "He doesn't even know what I look like."
She took off her hood and half of the silver mask. The mirror reflected the left half of her face - pale, but amazingly beautiful, like a carved work of art; and the right half of her face was a horrible scar distorted by fire, like dry bark. The skin at the corners of the eyes turned out because of the burn and could never be completely closed.
This is the mark left on her by the fire.
That night five years ago, the queen broke into the Sinclair family with the Knights of the Holy Light on the charge of "colluding with the enemy and colluding with the shadow". Her father was hanged on the wall, and her mother was burned alive in the fire to protect her brother. And she crawled out of the dead, hid under the rotting corpse, and escaped the search and arrest for three days and three nights, and then picked up a life in a stinky ditch.
At that time, she had nothing but this half-disfigured face. She even had to snatch a piece of black bread with a wild dog. She watched with her own eyes, those nobles who usually flattered her, spit foam on her face at the gate of the city.
It was greed that kept her alive. It was anger that made her learn poison, learn to change her face, and learn to distinguish who is lying and who is plotting in the black market.
"Then tonight's action..." Scarman hesitated for a moment and asked in a low voice, "Do you want to stop first?"
Vera put the mask on her face again, and the cold metal touch made her sober in an instant. She raised her head, and her eyes were as cold as ever.
"Stop? Why should we stop?" She smiled softly, without the slightest warmth, "Rane thought he was investigating the case, but in fact, he was just helping me clean up the battlefield. Let Lane investigate and let him fight with the queen. The queen must urgently need to find a scapegoat to calm her anger. Guess who she will launch?"
"Do you mean... let Ren and the queen bite each other?"
"No," Vera stood up and put on her cloak again. "They are vines growing from the same tree. It's really urgent. The queen can use marriage to appease Lane. What I want to do is to sow the seeds of suspicion between them.
She turned around and walked to the window, looking at the Wangdu outside shrouded in night. In the dark corner, the mice were gnawing at the residue, but soon, these mice would become her sharp blades to stab the crown.
"Tomorrow, help me deliver the forged financial statement anonymously to Commander Lane." Vera said softly, with a sharp light flashed in her eyes, "Let's think of it as a meeting gift from me."
This revenge has just begun the first act. The blood debt that belongs to Avila will eventually be repaid with the heads of all enemies.