CHAPTER 457: ALL HAIL THE QUEEN

The heavy oak doors closed with a final, echoing thud, and the iron bolts slid into place. Helga of Northem was queen no longer.

The guards shifted uneasily in the corridor. From behind the sealed chamber, the muffled sound of her laughter bled through—a sound not loud now, but low, broken, gnawing like rats in the dark. Some averted their eyes; others whispered prayers. The younger among them could not hide their trembling.

Within, Helga stood alone.

The candle flames had guttered, drowning the room in pools of shadow. Her reflection wavered in the cracked porcelain of the teacup shards, distorted, fragmented—a face she barely recognized. Her chest rose and fell, breath shallow, uneven. The silence pressed heavy on her head, louder than any scream.

She staggered to the portrait again. Reuben’s painted eyes gazed down upon her—bright, unbroken, proud. She reached up, touched the canvas, her fingers trembling against the frozen smile of a son who no longer existed as he used to.

"My boy," she whispered. Her voice cracked. "They will not remember you like this. They will not."

Her body shook with a sob that never fully formed. She pressed her forehead to the frame until the wood bit into her skin.

But another voice slithered through her thoughts—Heimdal’s, ringing still. Greed. Hunger. Treachery. The words clung to her like burrs.

"No..." she muttered, swaying. "No, I wanted only what was ours. Ours."

She stumbled to the mirror on her vanity. The woman who stared back was not a queen. Her crown had already been stripped, though no hand had touched it. Her hair, once regal, hung wild. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen, shining with fury. She studied her own reflection as though it were a rival—another queen mocking her from the glass.

"Would you take it from me, too?" she hissed at her own image.

Her fingers tightened around the mirror’s edge until her nails scraped the wood. For an instant, she imagined the reflection leaning forward, lips curving into Astrid’s smile. That same smile—gentle, knowing, mocking.

Her hand grasped something hard, and she struck the mirror with it. The glass shattered into hundreds of pieces, and a shard hit her face, a thin line of crimson streaked down her cheek.

"Madam are you alright?" The sound jolted her. Reality reasserted itself with cruel clarity.

She straightened, wiped her face with both hands, smearing tears into streaks across her cheeks. Her voice, when she spoke, was calm—almost regal again.

"They think this room is my prison," she murmured to herself. "But stone cannot cage a queen. They will see. Heimdal will see."

Her gaze drifted back to the portrait, to Reuben’s painted eyes and to the man beside him. Her lips quivered, then tightened into a whisper of a smile.

"My son. We will rise again. Even if I must crawl with you, broken and bloodied, we will rise."

She sank into the high-backed chair by the bed folding her hands in her lap. The composure looked queenly, almost serene. But her leg bounced, restless, betraying the storm still coiling inside her.

The flames crackled, casting light and shadow across the room. To an outsider, it would have seemed a portrait of quiet reflection.

But within Helga’s chest, grief and fury warred endlessly, gnawing at her reason. Her mind was not gone—it was sharpened into something more dangerous.

In the silence of her prison, the queen began to plan.

...

The fire from the candle snapped, sending up a brief flare of light. Helga’s eyes tracked it, unblinking. She had not moved for some time, her body held unnaturally still, like a predator coiled in the grass. Only her hands betrayed her—fingers twitching, curling, uncurling, as though some invisible thread pulled at them.

The silence in the chamber was thick. She could hear the smallest sounds: the scuttle of a mouse behind the wainscoting, the shifting boots of guards in the corridor, the faint crackle of wax dripping onto the floor. Every detail pressed itself upon her, sharp and insistent.

"You strip me of my crown," she whispered into the stillness, voice almost tender. "You bolt my doors. You call me mad. But I am still Helga, your wife and Queen of Northem."

Her voice trembled, not with weakness but with fury contained. She leaned forward in her chair, staring at the flickering candle as if it were her court.

"They will not remember me, as you say. They will not whisper ’mad queen’ in their halls. No. They will remember me as the mother who fought when no one else would. As the woman who dared stand where kings faltered. My name will be a shield. My laughter, a blade."

Her throat caught, and for a moment, she felt the weight of her own words collapse upon her. Images intruded—Reuben’s broken body, pale against the linens; Heimdal’s face, frozen, condemning; Astrid’s ghostly smile, glimmering at the edges of her vision.

"No," she snapped aloud, rising abruptly to her feet. "Not her. Not her. Never her."

She paced the room, her steps quick, restless, leaving trails in the rug. Every turn of the chamber became a circuit of thought.

If Heimdal had ordered the court to investigate... then whispers were already stirring. Nobles circling like vultures. Old enemies sharpening knives. Her family’s name—the house that had given Northem its queen—now dragged to the gallows of suspicion.

She pressed her palms to her temples. Think, Helga. Think.

Her mind was not broken, not fully. It was sharpened by pain, split into jagged pieces, but each piece gleamed with cunning. She thought of the chambermaids who would come with food and clean linens. Of the guards who could be swayed with pity—or gold. Of the nobles beyond these walls who feared Heimdal’s wrath more than they hated her.

"You would bury me alive, husband," she murmured, lips curving faintly. "But graves are where seeds are sown."

Her hand brushed over the shards of the broken teacup. One sliver glittered in the candlelight, sharp as a dagger. She picked it up, turning it over in her fingers, watching the candlelight run along the edge.

The thought came unbidden, cold and clean: Stone walls keep the body. But words... words escape. And words can kill.

She closed her fist around the shard, feeling it bite her skin. The sting was real, grounding. A drop of blood welled and slid down her hand. She watched it with a strange calm.

"My son will not be the last crippled heir," she whispered. "If Heimdal dares deny him the crown, then every line, every legacy he loves will wither. And Astrid—" Her voice broke into a breathless laugh. "Even in death, Astrid will not have the last word."

Helga sat back down, clutching the shard as though it were a scepter. Her eyes gleamed with feverish clarity, with the firelight dancing in their depths.

In her prison, the queen began to scheme. Not wildly. Not incoherently. But with the terrifying lucidity of a mind stripped of all restraint, all mercy.

The guards outside heard only silence. But within the chamber, the silence was pregnant with danger, with promise, with the slow birth of ruin.