[Short Flashback…]
The night before the ceremony…
The palace kitchen was unusually empty tonight.
The head chef and most of the kitchen staff had been called away for a final briefing by Butler Allen regarding the morning’s ceremony preparations. Only a handful of cleaning staff remained, busy organizing ingredients and cleaning up for the night.
Hidden in the shadows near the entrance, Tressa smirked to herself “Perfect timing.”
With careful, calculated steps, she slipped inside the kitchen silently.
The scent of freshly cooked food lingered in the air, but she paid no attention to it. Her focus was solely on the large pot of vegetable soup, which almost everyone in the palace likes to have during dinner.
From the folds of her sleeve, she pulled out a small glass vial filled with an odourless, colourless liquid— A poison that acts slowly and leaves no immediate trace.
She
