To Love, Once Again

Chapter 54

"Where is my wife and daughter?"

The cold words reverberate off the cold stone walls of an underground private dungeon, where an older nobleman, hair greyed at the temples and eyes bloodshot with fury, sends spit flying into the solemn messenger's face.

The messenger's eyes dart away from the man before him in the dark room, surrounded by shadows that line the walls around him. Lord Norwood was a skeletal, tall man, with deep set eyes that belied his cunning, sharp and darting about like a fox. One would be able see he'd been handsome in the past, though it was worn away with time spent indulging in pleasure as a river would wear the edges off of a rock.

It was the meeting place of the formerly Anti-Queen faction, the nobles who publicly and secretly detested the interference of an outsider Queen being summoned. Who wouldn't when they'd had their own daughters available to choose from. These were the nobles who coveted the power the King held for themselves. Most, if not all, had enjoyed their time under Lucien's father's reign, where they were left to their own devices, complete control over their own fiefs.

Hurriedly walking back to his desk, Lord Norwood takes an angry drag off the cigar that had been smoking there on the table.

"My Lord, our spies are working to find them, as we speak-" not meeting his eyes, the messenger responds.

From the shadows, a higher pitched voice speaks up, interrupting the messenger and revealing the Finance Minister, Lord Arledge's mouse-like features quivering in disgust.

"How much does your wife and daughter know!? I knew it was strange when the two started going around as if they were already royal!" The Finance Minister's grey wig shakes as he grows increasingly anxious, shaking his head back and forth as he speaks.

"Shut up, Arledge. I didn't hear you complaining at the last ball when you were congratulating Amelia's engagement to that King."

Flicking the ashes off his cigar onto the shorter man's grey wig, Lord Norwood snorts with sarcastic laughter as he spits out each word, emphasizing the last bit.

"Well the King never attended any balls, never said anything about who he was marrying except for the announcement, what else was I supposed to think!?"

Lord Arledge huffs as he pats the grey ashes off, responding with indignation as though he was the victim, though the words Lord Norwood spoke were true.

Taking off the dark hood that all the noblemen in the room wore, Records Minister Cromwell, a gaunt elderly man with white hands stained black with ink, reveals himself, shining ghostly white in the dark room with his pale skin spotted with age.

He speaks up, ignoring the glare that Lord Norwood shoots him. Records Minister Cromwell was the oldest man in the room. He was also the voice of reason behind Lord Norwood's many schemes.

"This is a concern, Lord Norwood. We got ahead of ourselves, revealed our hand too early. Now you have no daughter to make a Queen, no Dame Gertrude to control the noblewomen." Each word carried a heavy weight to them, creating a pressure that made Lord Arledge close his eyes in fear while other wiped the cold sweat off their brows.

Lord Norwood is the only one who seems nonplussed at his words, still radiating the angry energy from knowing that his plan had been thrown off track, again. Each time, when the nation of Thornmere was at the brink of collapse, the world at his fingertips, it had been brought to an abrupt halt, and back to recovery through the efforts of the new King and Queen, Lucien and Sera.