The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 776

The Hall of Council went so silent you could hear the rain on the gallery windows three storeys up.

The Minister of the Interior was still on one knee in front of the throne.

He stayed there for a moment longer than he meant to, and in that moment every man in the room watched him understand it.

He had stood up and asked for Harland. Then he had chased a prince down the middle of the floor.

Then he had asked the Emperor to put that prince on a scaffold.

And now there was a ghost in the room that wanted his head, and the only thing standing between the Second Queen and her grave was whether the Emperor was willing to hand it over.

He had dug the hole himself, one shovel at a time, in front of witnesses.

There was no way out of it.

They had wanted to take everything from him, and he had turned around and hit them exactly where it hurt.

The Emperor leaned forward on the throne.

"Alexander."

The hall held its breath.

"I am going to ask you one question, and I want a plain answer. Can you cure the Second Queen, or not?"

Alexander bowed.

It was a clumsy bow, too low, the bow of somebody who has read about bowing.

"Your Majesty, I don't know anything about medicine." He straightened. "I'm just an idiot who only woke up a little while ago. I don't know how bodies work. Everything I do, I do because the voice tells me to. I just listen."

He spread his hands.

"And the voice said, if nobody agrees, then it won't ever tell me how to save her. So honestly, I don't know. If it won't tell me, then no. I can't."

The Emperor looked at his son for a long moment.

"Then who," he said, "is the man speaking in your head?"

Alexander bowed again, and this time it was a little better.

"He says he's the ancestor of this house, Your Majesty. My great-great-grandfather. He says he was the greatest Emperor the Leonhart line ever had, and that this was once his castle — the one in Harland province, the summer castle, where I lived."

He kept his eyes on the stone.

"He says he'd been asleep for a long time. He only woke up because he couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand watching one of his own blood being treated like a dog in a house that used to be his. The servants eating at the table, off the silver. And his blood eating out of the scraps. And the Emperor with no eyes to see any of it."

He lifted his head.

"He says that's why he came. To teach a lesson."

Something happened to the Emperor's face.

It went red. Not all at once — it came up from the collar, slowly, a deep dark colour, and his hands closed on the arms of the throne.

"Did you eat from the scraps?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Did the servants of my house make you eat from the scraps?"

"Yes." Alexander said it simply, because it was simply true.

"They didn't let me eat at the table. When I sat at the table, they hit me. They threw a bottle at my head. And then they gave me what came back off their plates, in the kitchen, cold."

The Emperor stood up.

It was the first time he had stood all afternoon, and half the hall stood with him out of pure reflex.

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