The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 774

He sat with that newspaper for most of the night, and the money was the smallest part of it.

A billion dollars was a number. He could make a billion dollars.

What he could not make was a witness.

Alexander still did not know which of them had killed his mother.

He knew it was one of two women.

The Second Queen had borne the First Prince — the crown prince, the eldest, the one the court had been arranging itself around for thirty years.

And the First Queen had come late to it. She had been barren for nine years and then, past forty, she had borne the Second Prince, and from the day that boy could walk she had been pushing him at the throne with both hands.

Two women. Two sons. One line of succession, and eight queens' worth of children standing in the way of it.

One of those two women had signed that.

...

The summons arrived four days later, on paper, with a seal.

His Imperial Majesty required the attendance of Prince Alexander of Leonhart at the Hall of Council in the capital, to answer questions concerning the illness of Her Majesty the Second Queen, contracted following his visit to Harland.

Felicia read it over his shoulder and went white.

"They're blaming you."

"They are."

"But you were at the castle, you didn't even—" She stopped. She had learned in two years to stop in certain places. "Do you have to go?"

"It's the Emperor," Alexander said. "You don't decline the Emperor. You just arrive early."

...

The Hall of Council is the oldest room in the Empire.

Forty metres of polished black stone floor. A gallery running all the way round, three storeys up, with the standards of nine provinces hanging over the rail.

Windows so tall the light comes down in columns you could stand a man inside.

Two hundred seats on the floor and every one of them full, because a prince accused of witchcraft against a queen is the best thing to happen to that court in a decade.

Alexander walked up the middle of it alone, and he made himself look small doing it, and inside he felt absolutely nothing at all.

The truth was it was a fine room.

It was also not a large one. He had held four palaces in the other world and the smallest of them would have swallowed this hall whole.

He kept his eyes down anyway, on the stone, the way a nervous young man would.

...

And at the far end, on the seat, was his father.

Emperor Maximillian Leonhart was sixty-one years old and looked carved. Grey at the temples, straight-backed, both hands flat on the arms of the chair, wearing a plain dark coat instead of anything ceremonial.

Alexander had not seen that face since he was seven years old and it had been leaning over a hospital bed.

Fourteen years of birthdays. Fourteen years of letters burned in a grate by a butler.

He looked at his father for exactly one second and then he looked back down at the floor, because his throat had done something he had not authorised and he needed it to stop.

...

The Minister of Health did the talking.

He was a heavy man with a good voice, and he came down off the steps so he could stand directly in front of Alexander while he did it, which told everybody in that hall who had sent him.

"Your Highness. Let us be plain, since the whole Empire already is." He turned so the gallery could hear. "Her Majesty the Second Queen travelled to your residence in Harland province in perfect health. She was carried out of it, that same afternoon, unable to breathe."

He let that sit.

"Ten men of the palace guard died in your hall. No wound on any of them. Since that day Her Majesty's heart, lungs and liver have been failing together, and not one physician in five countries can tell this court why."

"The people are saying the word curse, Your Highness. The whole Empire is saying it." He spread his hands. "So this council says it too. Whatever is in that house, it answers to you. You are responsible for her condition, and you are responsible for curing it."

The hall made a sound of agreement.

It came from everywhere at once — the Second Queen's faction first, then the ministries, then men who simply did not want to be the only one silent. Somebody in the gallery called out that a prince who could not clear his own house should not be governing a territory.

Two hundred people, in one room, deciding what he was.

And on the seat at the far end, the Emperor said nothing at all.

...

He just watched.

His father was not going to help him.

So Alexander made a decision on the black stone floor of the Hall of Council, and it was the same decision he had made in a puddle in the rain two years ago.

Give them what they already believe.

...

He lifted his head, and his face was open and troubled and about twelve years old.

"I don't know anything about the Queen being sick," he said.

His voice came out too loud for the room, and slightly flat, the way it had for fourteen years. Somebody in the second row winced.

"Nobody tells me anything. I wasn't even in the hall when the soldiers fell down, I was behind Felicia, everybody there saw me behind Felicia." He frowned, working at it. "But I heard something."

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