Claimed by the vampire prince

Chapter 475: Chapter 475

Circe lowered the letter slowly.

For a long moment, she said nothing. She simply stood there in the middle of the foyer, the parchment held loosely in her hands. The two men waited, watching her with that particular way of people who had prepared themselves for difficult moments such as these. They were evidently waiting for her reaction.

But her eyes strayed back to the letter, unable to help herself.

She read it again. Not because she had missed anything the first few times, but because the words were so absurd that she found herself almost unwilling to accept that they had been written at all.

She couldn’t begin to fathom that someone had sat down, dipped a quill into ink and deliberately formed these sentences. Or that the whole thing was handed off to messengers that carried it all this way. All to feed her lies because they thought she was gullible enough to believe them.

The sheer effort of it was almost offensive.

She lifted the letter slightly, holding it up as one might hold something unpleasant.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Her voice was flat. The indignation in it was audible, and the disgust that threaded beneath it was unmistakable. She looked at the men over the top of the parchment, and her expression made clear exactly what she thought of the letter.

Because it did disgust her. The audacity of it. That Nheera would go so far as to put this in writing. Was this another one of her ploys? Had she truly nothing better to occupy herself with than this? Reading the words had been a shock the first time, she would not pretend otherwise, but the shock had lasted only a moment— only as long as it took her mind to catch up to what her body already knew.

She would have felt it if Ragnar was dead.

When Ragnar had felt her die for those brief desperate moments in the cave, he described it as something being severed. Like something essential being pulled out of him without warning. He had known what happened instantly, without anyone having to tell him.

She had felt nothing of that sort. The connection between them was still there, she could feel it even now, across the distance that separated them. It pulsed steadily, the way it always had, like something alive and bright. That small piece of him that had taken up residence in her chest remained exactly where it had always been.

With all of that, how could she possibly be expected to believe a single slip of paper?

She would not. She refused to take the word of the same woman who had spent years making Ragnar’s life a misery over what her own heart was telling her plainly. frёewebηovel.cѳm

Ragnar was out there. And he was alive.

At her question, the two men exchanged a glance. It was a brief one that lasted barely a second, but she caught it. Their expressions shifted in that moment.

This was not the reaction they had come prepared for. They had expected tears, perhaps. Grief, certainly. They might not have been aware of how close she and Ragnar had become, but the lost of a husband was still a thing of sorrow.

Instead they were standing across from a woman whose eyes were lit not with sadness but with something far closer to contempt.

One of them opened his mouth.

"Your Highness, I understand this is a very difficult thing to come to terms with, but—"

"Where is his body?"

The question landed before he could finish his sentence. Both men stared at her.

"Your Highness—" the second one began.

"You have come all this way to tell me that my husband is dead." Circe spoke calmly even though all she wanted was to yell at them. "How am I to lay him to rest without a body? How am I to do anything without one? I want to see it for myself."

"We do not have a body with us," the first man said, and he already knew how the words were going to be received.

Circe looked at him for a moment. Then she looked back down at the letter.

She took it by the corner with two fingers, and in one smooth motion, tore it cleanly down the center. The two halves fell from her hand and drifted uselessly to the floor.

"If the prince is dead," she said, "it means he died on the hunt. He died so that the people of this kingdom might be safe, people like you. After everything he sacrificed, the only gesture Queen Nheera can extend is a letter. If she genuinely wished to honor his death, she should have come herself. Instead she sent the two of you, and now I am asking the two of you to leave my estate while I still have the goodwill to make that request politely."

The men did not move right away. They stood there for a second or two, caught somewhere in the plain reality that there was nothing left for them to say or do here. They had been dismissed.

Then, without a word, they turned and walked out of the manor.

Circe watched them go until they were through the door.

The foyer was quiet again. Her gaze still fixed on the entrance. The torn pieces of the letter lay at her feet.

She became aware of a presence at her side.

Casilo had appeared beside her.

She heard him before she saw him. When she did glance over, she found him watching her while struggling to keep his expression neutral. He looked concerned for her.

He had heard the exchange, she had no doubt of that. And despite the way she had handled herself, he was still looking at her the way someone looks at a person that was close to shattering to pieces.

It made sense that he would. Of anyone in this manor, Casilo had seen the entirety of the relationship she and Ragnar had built together. He had been present for the early days, when the two of them had butted heads, and he had watched as that gradually gave way to something neither of them had planned for. He had seen them grow to love and adore each other. So his expectation now was not unreasonable. It came from a real and honest place.

But beneath his concern was heartache. Ragnar was not simply his general. He was not simply his prince. Between them existed the kind of bond that had stood the test of time. Brothers in everything except blood. The news had struck him, she could see it in him plainly, in the slight tension around his jaw and the careful way he was holding himself together. And still his first instinct had been to come and stand beside her.

But as he continued gazing down at her, he realized that the look on Circe’s face was not one of grief. It was the look of a woman already calculating her next move.

"Your Highness..." Casilo said tentatively, stepping just enough to draw her attention. His voice carried an unfamiliar hesitation and it sounded out of place. Casilo was rarely unsure of himself.

"Ragnar is not dead," Circe said, her tone resolute. "I can assure you of that."

Confusion knitted his brows together. "How can you be so certain?" he asked.

She had looked away briefly but at his question, her eyes snapped back to his. The intensity in her eyes burned with such conviction that, for a fleeting moment, it nearly forced him to step back. He held his ground.

"You will simply have to take my word for it," she replied.

"If His Highness is alive then where is he?"

Circe’s expression hardened, her mind already working, connecting threads only she could see. "Only the queen can answer that," she said slowly. "If she is claiming that Ragnar is dead, then she must know, at the very least, what happened to him and where he is."

As the words left her lips, darker possibilities began to take shape in her mind, creeping in uninvited. What if the queen already had Ragnar? Locked away somewhere deep within the palace dungeons, hidden from sight and stripped of everything. What if they were planning something far worse?

For the queen to go this far, there had to be more beneath the surface. A larger agenda.

There was something she was missing.

Circe turned the thought over in her mind, searching for a detail she overlooked but nothing came. The absence of answers only sharpened her resolve.

The faintest trace of worry that had lingered in her chest vanished, replaced by something colder. Determination settled over her like armor.

Whatever this was, she would uncover it.

Turning back to Casilo, she asked, "Ragnar has spies in the capital, doesn’t he?"

Casilo nodded. "Yes, he does."

"Then use them," she said. "Make inquiries. I want every piece of information you can gather."

He did not question her again. He simply bowed his head and obeyed.