After nodding to the Council to dismiss them from the session, they slowly filter out of the room, conversing amongst themselves. I stand back from the group, locking eyes with Nemesia and giving her a pointed look. Then I sweep out of the chamber and back down the short hallway to my suite. She follows, understanding my desire to continue the conversation in private. We walk into my sitting room turned makeshift office, Nemesia collapsing into her favorite chair. I settle into a worn leather sofa that’s seen too many conversations like this one, its supple leather familiar and comforting despite being older than most of the other furniture in the room.

“Out with it,” Nemesia says. “I know you’re going to try and convince me not to go, but I have more reasons I did not share in the Council meeting.”

“Do those other reasons have anything to do with Mazus Vicant? And a fear that he’s somehow behind the disappearance of the thayar?” I ask.

She smiles conspiratorially, a grin I’m so familiar with after three centuries of friendship. “So, you share my concern? If that’s the case, I don’t understand your hesitancy to bring me with you to the Forum. It’s on Delsar this cycle, and you know Velmara won’t try anything there. Their relationship is too tenuous.” Velmara and the kingdom closest to them, Delsar, located just south of Velmara’s capital city, have almost as bad a relationship with one another as Velmara and Thayaria.

I sigh. “I agree that we need to use everything at our disposal to uncover the truth, even you. It doesn’t make me any less nervous for your safety, but as you once told me, sometimes I have to be the Queen my people deserve.” I smile. The tension falls away from Nemesia’s body. “Why do you think Mazus is behind our declining flower population?”

She walks to the bar cart I keep along the back of the room and pours herself a glass of amber whiskey. “I don’t have any conclusive evidence, just a gut feeling. There’s been nothing in any of our archives to suggest that this has ever happened before, or that any of the scholars of the past were even worried about something like this happening.