Chapter 440 --439
Chapter 440: Chapter-439
Ken and Mahir slid into the shadows flanking the doorway, resuming their roles as invisible guards. But the air between them and the Empress Regent had changed. The invisible thread that usually tied them to her body felt frayed, stretched to a dangerous limit."The southern tax yield reports, Regent," the Ministry of Commerce head began, bowing deeply as he slid a thick, leather-bound register across the obsidian. "We have adjusted the projections as you requested, though the merchant guilds are still complaining about the winter tariffs."
Elara didn’t pick up the book. Her vacant glass-bead eyes rested on the leather cover.
"The merchant guilds’ complaints contain a twenty-two percent margin of fabricated deficit," Elara stated flatly, her voice cutting through the room like a cold blade. "They will pay the full tariff. If they refuse, suspend their shipping licenses for forty-eight hours. The financial loss will correct their logic."
"Understood, Your Highness," the minister murmured, breaking out into a light sweat as he stepped back.
Usually, this level of absolute, unyielding precision was what made Ken and Mahir feel completely secure in her shadow. She was a fortress. She was an unbreachable wall of logic that no noble could ever manipulate.
But as the meeting progressed into its second hour, the anomalies began again.
Elara was drafting a dispatch regarding the northern border supply lines—the very lines Julian had corrected the calculations for. Her quill moved across the parchment in swift, perfectly straight strokes.
’Knock. Knock.’
The double doors of the war room didn’t just crack open; they were pushed wide with a lazy, careless swing.