Loreen's POV
Loreen blinked.
Greta.
He stood in the middle of the room and looked at Sairis and tried to make the name fit the accusation and found that his mind kept pushing back against it.
Greta. His father's wife. The queen. The woman who had been in this palace for years, who had sat at council meetings and received visitors and managed the royal household with the particular efficiency of someone who had been doing it long enough to make it look effortless.
Loreen did not harbour any love for Greta. He never had. She had come into his father's life after his mother died and had occupied a space that Loreen had never been willing to make room for.
He had been civil because the situation required it and nothing more. Nobody in this palace hated Greta the way Loreen did, quietly and consistently and without apology.
But accusing her of poisoning his mother. Of killing Candice. Of slowly poisoning the king himself.
