Chapter 73: Badass Entry (1)
Lady Lucy’s face remained unreadable, her calm gaze locked on Thutmose. The air in the hall grew still again, the tension thickening like a storm about to break.
"I was in my office," she said evenly, her voice cutting through the silence like a knife. "Filling out paperwork for our expansion on the Thunder Domain. The usual burdens of influence."
She shifted slightly in her seat, the torchlight catching the gleam of the purple fabric around her shoulder.
"That was when I received the message. Just a single line..." She paused, her gaze drifting upward for a moment, recalling it with perfect clarity. "’One of your daughters will be assassinated very soon.’"
A ripple passed through the elders, like a breeze brushing through a field of dry grass. Lucy didn’t flinch.
"At first," she continued, "I assumed it was some stupid prank." A small, humorless smile flicked across her lips. "But then I remembered—no ordinary person should even have access to my direct line, much less the nerve to send something like that."
Her fingers tapped gently on the armrest of her chair. "That’s when I realized this might not be a joke. It was a warning."
She leaned forward slightly, her voice low but heavy with restrained fury. "I used a portal to return the moment I felt something was off. I arrived barely an hour ago—just in time to find out my daughter was dead and you all here wasting time instead of finding the culprit."
Her eyes narrowed, not at Thutmose, but toward the space where her daughter should have sat.
"So forgive me," she said, her voice dipping into something darker, "if I seem impatient with questions about why I’m here. I wasn’t summoned. I was warned."
Her gaze slid back to Thutmose, sharper now.