Chapter 526: Chapter-526
"So," Heena murmured.
Her tone was the warmest, sweetest, most sickeningly affectionate sound that had ever escaped her lips. It was the kind of voice a predator uses right before it snaps its jaws shut.
"What is the actual deal, dear?"
Samuel visibly trembled. The sheer, concentrated sugar in her voice was vastly more terrifying than her murderous shouting from the market street. He knew that if he gave the wrong answer right now, he was not going to survive the carriage ride back to the estate.
"Um," Samuel started, his voice cracking slightly before he hastily cleared his throat. He immediately raised his hand in a gesture of absolute surrender, deciding to throw his only shield right under the carriage wheels. "It was Grandma."
The carriage hit a bump, but the jolt was nothing compared to the absolute shockwave that ripped through the cabin.
Grandpa Marcuset’s massive, bearded jaw instantly dropped. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. ’Wait. What?’ he thought, his military brain completely short-circuiting. ’Did my sweet, gentle, terrifying wife actually make this pretty boy do this?’
Heena’s eyes finally snapped open.
The calm, calculated mask of the patient predator completely shattered, replaced by a look of profound, unadulterated disbelief. She uncrossed her arms, leaning forward to stare directly into Samuel’s eyes. She raised a single, incredibly sharp eyebrow.
"Let me make sure I am hearing you correctly," Heena said, her voice dropping all pretense of sweetness and returning to a dangerous, icy flatline. "Are you sitting here, in my carriage, trying to tell me that my beloved grandmother explicitly told you to go to the prime merchant district... and put me into insurmountable financial debt?"
Samuel violently shook his head, his dark hair falling into his eyes.
"No! No, of course not," Samuel defended himself rapidly, his hands up. "Grandma didn’t explicitly tell me to bankrupt you. She told me to cause a commotion."
Silence descended upon the cabin once again. But this time, it wasn’t the silence of impending death. It was the silence of deep, absolute, synchronized offense.
Grandpa Marcuset puffed out his chest, his armor clinking loudly in the confined space. "A commotion?!" the old general boomed, looking entirely insulted. "I can cause a commotion! I just verbally destroyed the Minister of the Right in front of the Emperor and the entire royal court! I caused a massive political commotion just an hour ago!"
"And I literally rode a Vanguard warhorse onto a civilian sporting ground, humiliated a noble, and extorted a purebred riding horse out of him!" Heena added, slapping her hand down onto the velvet seat in sheer indignation. "I am a walking commotion! The entire capital is talking about me! So why the hell would my grandmother bypass both of her perfectly capable, violently aggressive family members, and secretly tell you to cause a commotion?!"
Samuel turned his head away, looking out the carriage window.
His shoulders were shaking. He was biting his lower lip so hard it was a miracle it wasn’t bleeding, and his nostrils flared with the intense, agonizing effort of holding his breath.
Heena’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. ’Is he... is he trying not to laugh?’
"Well," Samuel choked out, his voice muffled as he refused to turn back around. "The Grandma said..."
He stopped. He physically couldn’t finish the sentence without losing his composure.
Across the carriage, Grandpa Marcuset leaned entirely forward, his massive frame practically eclipsing the sunlight streaming through the windows. The idea that his wife had been plotting behind his back with this pampered hostage was driving him crazy.
"What did my wife say, boy?!" Grandpa demanded, his voice vibrating with the force of a battlefield command. "Spit it out!"
Heena didn’t yell. She just slowly reached over, completely ignoring the boundaries of personal space, and gently grasped the fabric of Samuel’s expensive new crimson tunic, right near his collar.
She tilted her head, her fox-like eyes glittering with a highly dangerous light.
"Are you going to speak?" Heena whispered, her grip tightening on his collar. "Or should I just drag you out of this moving carriage and beat you up right now?"
Samuel finally turned his head to look at her. He deliberately refused to meet her eyes, focusing entirely on her chin, because he knew with absolute certainty that if he made eye contact with her furious expression, he would burst into uncontrollable laughter and subsequently be murdered.
"Well," Samuel began, his voice trembling with a mixture of suppressed humor and genuine fear. "Before she left for the southern border, Grandma pulled me aside. She gave me the jade token, and she told me exactly what was going to happen today."
He took a deep breath, composing himself, and prepared to deliver the absolute, unvarnished truth.
"Grandma said that the two of you..." Samuel paused, glancing nervously between Heena and Grandpa Marcuset. "...that you two thick-headed idiots would undoubtedly go and cause a massive, uncontrollable commotion in the Imperial Palace."
"Thick-headed idiots?!" Grandpa Marcuset gasped, clutching his armored chest as if he had just been shot with a physical arrow.
"Let him finish," Heena hissed, her own eye twitching violently at the insult.
Samuel swallowed hard and continued, actively channeling the grandmother’s tone.
"She said, ’Those two are completely predictable. They are going to do something entirely nonsensical, aggressive, and highly dangerous to draw attention. If I leave it to them, they won’t just cause a political commotion... they will start a literal bloodbath in the palace courtyard.’"
Heena opened her mouth to aggressively defend her perfectly bloodless, highly calculated extortion of the Ninth Prince, but Samuel held up a finger, rushing to finish the monologue before he was interrupted.
"Grandma looked me dead in the eye," Samuel explained, his voice growing surprisingly solemn. "And she said: ’Listen to me, Samuel. When I come back from the South, I want my family’s reputation to be intact. It doesn’t have to be perfect—I know who I am married to—but I want it to be at least seventy-five percent good! If I leave the Vanguard’s public relations to those two idiots, they will completely destroy it by noon.’"
Samuel finally looked Heena in the eye, unable to hold back the absolute, smug satisfaction dancing in his gaze.
"She told me," Samuel quoted softly, "’If you really want to make a commotion and draw everyone’s attention away from whatever treasonous thing my husband and granddaughter are doing, you have to do something good. Something completely harmless but incredibly loud. A massive financial scandal in the prime district is perfect.’"
Heena let go of Samuel’s collar. She slumped back against the carriage wall, completely and utterly stunned.
Her brilliant, masterful plan to draw attention at the sporting grounds... her precise, tactical bullying of the Ninth Prince... it was all just a secondary footnote to her grandmother. Grandma Marcuset hadn’t seen Heena’s actions as the grand maneuvers of a strategic mastermind. She had simply anticipated that her warlord husband and her aggressive granddaughter would inevitably act like a pair of rabid dogs off their leashes, and she had pre-emptively deployed Samuel to act as the shiny, expensive distraction!
Samuel wasn’t finished. He leaned forward, delivering the final, absolutely crushing blow to Heena’s pride.
"And then," Samuel smiled, a brilliant, thoroughly entertained expression lighting up his face. "Grandma patted my shoulder and told me exactly why it was my responsibility."
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