By the time the guard finished speaking, Nheera was already moving.
She did not wait for Laheir to respond. She did not spare a glance at the guard, nor did she slow her stride for anything. She walked out of the king's chambers and the fact that she didn't slam the door behind her was the only indication of the effort it was costing her to hold herself together.
Rage blurred the edges of her vision.
It coiled tight in her chest, threatening to spill over with every step she took. Decades of planning, of patience, of enduring a marriage she had come to loathe—it all trembled now on the edge of unraveling because of a single name spoken from a dying man's lips.
Ragnar.
