The incessant pattering of anxious footsteps was on the verge of driving everyone to leap across the room to strangle the source.

“Your Highness,” Lady Abigail sighed, barely wincing when another very expensive porcelain vase of red petunias exploded on the floor.

Still pacing with careless movements, Emilia Syrene disregarded any notion of sense and continued her theatrics. Arms crossed, biting her nails, her red hair a wild mess under a ridiculous black headpiece as she rambled through the cluttered room — Lady Abigail scoffed internally. The Royal Concubine was hardly the picture of refinement.

Abigail flicked a knowing look towards Lord Harrison, prepared to share her exasperation with the man, but he didn’t even spare the scene a glance. He simply sipped on the tea set she had brought, his legs languidly crossed and eyes steadily roaming across the morning’s paper. She withheld another sigh of irritation. She would never know how he could be so unaffected every time Emilia Syrene was in another one of her fits. She could scarcely stomach it.

Another frustrated snarl gritted out of Emilia as she whipped the heavy piles of twined scrolls and papers taking up the space on her unused desk. “That little SWINE,” Emilia shrieked, stomping all over the fallen files that the Empress had sent over. Her bejeweled slippers stained dirty prints on the important agendas.

The fear-stricken maids scurried over with wide eyes, attempting to clear away the mess, but alas, Emilia shoved them all away in a bout of fury, raging until they scattered out the room.

“Calm yourself,” Lord Harrison blandly voiced, still refusing to look up from what had to be the most interesting periodical in the Empire.

“Calm myself?” Emilia spat, her crazed eyes pinpointing on his indifferent posture. She stumbled over like a drunk and tore the newspaper from his hands. “That maddening whore of an Empress thinks she can slight me like this and you’re asking me to calm myself!?”

Peering at her through his wire-rimmed glasses, Lord Harrison’s face looked positively scathing. Lady Abigail relaxed into the divan cushions with a hidden smirk, anticipating the splendid show she had been waiting for all morning.

“What exactly is so maddening to you?” he asked in a low voice.

“She —”

“What could possibly be more maddening than this ceaseless tantrum of yours?” he continued, his voice rising with every word.

Emilia barked out a humorless laugh. “Tantrum… Don’t act like this is unaccounted for when everything has stemmed from your failure. One month of her and her silver-haired lap dog that you allowed into the Court you’ve claimed is under your palm. One month and look what they’ve undone. Do you know how many noble wives have come to the Palace, looking for the Empress instead of me? Do you understand that every single appeal you made me take to Richard is now in the works of being overturned? People are rallying to the Grand Duke. People are starting to favor her again. Richard is starting to YEARN FOR HER AGAIN.”

Harrison Ballio stood to his full height. He was always an unusually stringy man who never had the broad build to intimidate. But only those who could see the full depth of his iron, grey gaze would understand that he had other means to maim a person. Most likely with the use of his barbed mind. Abigail squeezed her thighs together, unwittingly aroused by the image. She wondered distantly if he’d be open to another tumble in the broom closet after this scolding.

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Snatching her jaw with his skeletal fingers, Lord Harrison looked down at Emilia with disgust. “If anyone has plunged into failure, it is you.” His voice was soft, but the deadly edge didn’t escape anyone. “Your only purpose is to keep the Emperor in your hand. To keep him satisfied, enamored, ignorant. Though, from what I’ve heard, he never calls for you anymore.”

Emilia flinched.

Lord Harrison continued. “Every action that has passed since the Empress brought Amon vel Feyras to the Capital has been tolerated because of the Emperor. He is the one who allowed him into Court. He is the one allowing the approval of their plans. And you are the one who is losing him.”

Emilia tried shaking his touch off, but he only dug his fingers into her chin. “What did you promise me?” he uttered under his breath, almost too quiet for Abigail to hear. She scooted closer to the edge of the divan.

“Your advantage is fading,” he whispered. Then his lips disappeared behind Emilia’s ear where his threatening words traveled to one sole location. Abigail seethed in resentment, though the paling, angered face of Emilia Syrene soothed a hint of her ire.

Shoving him away, Emilia glared piercing daggers into his skull. “Don’t test me,” she warned.

“Or, what?”

Raising her chin, her black eyes spoke for her. She was threatening him with something Abigail couldn’t decipher.

Lord Harrison scoffed, his arrogant face looking down at her as if she were an unruly child. “Handle it. And if I hear any more of your whining or infantile defiance, I will find another who can do as she is told.”

Flitting his coat behind, Lord Harrison marched towards the door.

“I want her dead.”

Freezing in his tracks, he turned a glacial gaze towards Emilia’s fuming form.

“Whatever means or puppet you choose to do your bidding, you and I both know it’ll crumble as long as she breathes,” she quivered out. “I want her gone. Dead. Obliterated.”

Lord Harrison stared at her in silence, seeming to taste her words to determine if it was sweet or bitter. When Abigail could no longer stand the suspense, she opened her mouth to intervene until a breathy, chuckling sneer burst from him. “You are still so incredibly moronic.”

“I want her dead. Now.”

“If you honestly think the Empress’s death will ease your path, you are sorely mistaken, you imbecile.”

Emilia clenched her fist, her fury for the woman engulfing her alluring beauty with green jealousy. “I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

Abigail held her breath when a dangerous glint sparked in his eyes. “You will do no such thing.”

“I will —”

“Abigail,” Harrison abruptly called. Lady Abigail stood in anticipation, earnest for his thoughts.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“Do you understand what she is asking for?” he asked.

Abigail nodded, the first thrill of his malice reaching her head. Was he was asking for the unthinkable? If so, it goaded her.

Lord Harrison rolled his tongue across his teeth, his brain clearly churning with the outcomes.

“Do it,” he ordered, squinting back at Emilia with distaste. “In the proper way. A way that even I would never suspect.”

A slow smirk stretched across Lady Abigail’s lips.

Emilia parted her mouth, an ugly smile making its way onto her expectant face. “You’re going to —”

“You will do nothing in this,” Lord Harrison instructed. “Keep yourself away from her. Seek the Emperor’s favor.” He flicked a disgusted glance at the messy piles of paper thrown to the floor. “And for God’s sake, do your duties as Royal Concubine. On that, even I agree with our beloved Empress.”

Emilia seethed, looking at the Interior Palace responsibilities that Her Majesty had sent for her to complete. The very duties that every Royal Concubine was expected to do, but ones the Empress had been shouldering alone. Until now.

Abigail glanced at Emilia, repulsed as well. No matter the opposing side, even she couldn’t help but consider if standing by the Empress would have been the more glorifying one.

Before Emilia could start raging like a toddler again, Abigail followed Lord Harrison out the door and straight into the nearest empty room where he took his rage out in lust. As they reached their rough ecstasy and his sour breath panted in her neck, another wave of elation rumbled over when he muttered her next task. Explicitly this time.

Oh, yes. This would be exhilarating.

She had never done it before.

How would someone go about the death of a monarch?