Herald of Steel

The divine ascension ritual was a legendary rite known throughout Adhania. From the highest noble, to his children, and perhaps even his maids- everyone knew about it.

The ritual granted outsiders the ability to become part of the Adhanian royal family- i.e., part of the divine, golden lineage, thus becoming demigods- above all mortal law and answerable to none.

Who would not want that?

In fact, the significance of this was perhaps even greater than one could imagine from a mere surface level analysis.

For instance, a large reason why Ptolomy’s family managed to succeed the previous ruling dynasty was because they had two members, one man and one woman, who were offered this ritual many years ago. This fact was then used during the post war negotiations with the nobility to prove they were the most deserving heirs to the throne.

Hence, by partaking in this ritual even once, one’s entire family could become eligible to fight for the divine throne.

Similarly Seelima was no longer treated as a mere sex slave with low, filthy blood because Alozmer had graced her with this ritual. Her past was completely wiped away and in every sense of the word, she was now a bona fide noble carrying the most high of bloods- blood that was also inheritable, to be carried by her descendants till the end of time.

This was the reason Princess Hellma was also treated as every bit of regal loyalty despite her mother being only a concubine.

And to truly see the difference in the scale of her treatment, just contrast this with her half sisters’- Lady Ezaya, Elia and Anisha. The latter group was never formally acknowledged by their father and thus the court simply treated them as ’common’ nobles.

In the same way, Lady Inayah was never conferred the honored ceremony. Thus despite her higher birth status, she was now actually beneath the Queen Mother in the hierarchy.

For a long time, this was not the case. Rather it was the opposite, Lady Inayah used to boss the Queen Mother around, especially during the early days of their life in the imperial harem, when she had just started to sponsor Seelima.

In fact, the ebony noblewoman had originally chosen to ally with the red head over all the other imperial slave concubines for this simple reason: she thought Seelima was pretty and ambitious but not particularly that clever or sharp.

And she thought like this because of the circumstances surrounding the Queen Mother when she first came to her for help.

Lady Inayah certainly did not buy the simple explanation Seelima gave her about being just harassed by the investigating team regarding the murder. As a noble born around the capital and coming from a tutoring family with close ties to the royal palace, Lady Inayah knew very well that it could not be true. The stories about the investigation team and their accomplishments were the stuff of legends, etched into the long annals of the country’s history in glorious detail.

It was widely known to be perhaps the only institution in the whole royal court yet to be compromised by corruption and infiltration of other powers- part of the kingdom’s intelligence services, they were specifically responsible for safeguarding the royal family from all covert attacks and assassination.

This meant they were handpicked not only for their exceptional skill, but for their unwavering loyalty- nearly all of them held a fanatical devotion to the king.

Because of this, they were granted an extraordinary degree of autonomy and remarkably, even with such a long leash, the investigators wielded their power with remarkable discipline and restraint.

As a result, they became both feared and respected by the nobility: trusted for their fairness, yet dreaded for their ability to uncover even the deepest of their secrets.

Now, the modern day state of the organization under Ptolomy was nothing like their illustrious past. Alozmer had done an absolute job gutting this once pristine establishment down to its bones, turning it even less than a dead, rotting carcass. And he had done this in no small part due to Seelima’s urging, as he pampered her to his mad heart’s content.

Otherwise, if that intelligence service still existed, the Queen Mother could never have done all that she had done and she certainly could never imagine being able to poison Alozmer. The security protocols around the god king were... in a single word- ’perfect’.

However for the timeline we are discussing, such degradation had yet to happen.

Thus when Seelima brought the topic up, Lady Inayah accurately judged that these men would never hound an imperial concubine, someone directly related to the royal family, without a very good reason.

So the noble lady had the mentioned incident quickly investigated in secret, and then swiftly connected the scattered dots to conclude the former was indeed guilty.

Lady Inayah could not figure out exactly why the Queen Mother killed that poor, slave girl, someone who was very clearly her friend, but she guessed that perhaps the two had a fight due to some unknown reason, things got physical and the Queen Mother accidentally pushed the other out of the window.

So she deemed it as simple manslaughter.

Upon reaching that conclusion, Lady Inayah then smugly sneered to herself, thinking how foolish the Queen Mother was to not even know how to cover such simple tracks.

However in doing so, Lady Inayah forgot that it was really easy to judge things from the comfort of hindsight, one where you had the ability to endlessly reiterate and fix problems without the presence of any external shock, pressure, or panic.

It was the perfect world.

Similarly she overlooked many obvious clues, such as the bloodied bat found in the crime scene and mistakenly assumed the smashed head occurred from the fall.

The reality of the incident thus got hidden from her- one which was far darker and colder than she could have ever imagined. The murder was actually an extremely calculated, premeditated one, prepared months in advance, perhaps from the day the Queen Mother bought that dress off that slave.

And the only reason why the Queen Mother was even in danger of getting caught was mostly due to her inexperience. She was still only a fledgling chick and could not properly control her raging emotions. So she made some dumb mistakes.

And as for when Lady Inayah would come to know the real chain of events, well it would be almost two decades later. She would of course come to suspect her original hypothesis a lot sooner, once she started to see the Queen Mother’s true colors. But by then it had already been many years and the black lady did not feel like poking.

The exact details would only come out suddenly one day entirely out of context.

During the twilight days of Alozmer’s rule, the two ladies casually met one fateful afternoon in the garden to simply talk and drink. And as they dined and cheered about how they had successfully managed to put the mad king on death’s door and how close the rebellion was close to succeeding, the Queen Mother, out of nowhere innocently chuckled out this truth,

"Hahaha... soon ’we’ will have killed a king. And to think, I began all those years ago with that slave girl. Ah... what was her name again?"

Seelima took a casual sip of her drink as she tossed this comment into the air as if it were but an afterthought, barely worth her breath. She did not seriously bother trying to remember the girl’s name, nor could she.

Time had buried that memory beneath layers of dust too thick to sift through. She could no longer recall the girl’s face, nor even the sound of her voice. All that remained vivid in her mind was the image of her shattered skull—twisted, broken, caved in with blood continuously pouring out.

That was a sight difficult to ever forget- especially given that was her first ’intentional’ kill.

"Slave girl! You mean... that girl you were suspected of killing when you just came to the palace?" Lady Inayah sharply picked up on Seelima’s comment and instantly felt overwhelmed by a profound sense of curiosity.

The black noblewoman had spent no small amount of time trying to piece together the true sequence of events behind that fateful incident. After all, it was the very catalyst that had led her to where she now sat and whom she now sat beside. So those missing pieces had gnawed at her heart for years, like a silent itch that never quite faded.

And now that such a pristine opportunity before her... her heart simply could not let it pass.

"Ahhh... hahaha... right, right! I suppose I never did tell you the full story, Ina!" The Queen Mother also did not feel shy to hide the truth and openly admitted to everything.

"Honestly, you must have already guessed... but yes, I did kill that slave... took a club to her head and split it open like a coconut." She smiled faintly upon making the extremely crude description, like she was recalling something only mildly amusing.

Then, flicking her palms, simply pursed her lips,

"I had taken a dress from her. It was that golden dress I used to wear all the time in the beginning. I don’t know if you still remember, but His Majesty used to always praise me in it, saying how good I looked."

"So after a while I became afraid the girl would tell him the truth. That would have ruined everything."