The gala was a masterclass in high society and low-stakes treachery. The room was packed with elites, but the atmosphere was thick with a suffocating, underlying tension.
Midway through the banquet, Valeria gasped, the sound cutting through the chatter. She pointed to her naked left ear, she forced a tremor into her voice. "My 'Moon Tear' earring! It's gone! That's a White Wolf royal heirloom!"
The guards locked down the hall in seconds. Magnus, oozing self-righteousness, pointed straight at Charlotte, who was standing stoically behind Ragnar. "I saw this attendant lurking suspiciously around Lady Valeria just moments ago. The jewel must be on her! Search her!"
"Go ahead," Charlotte said, arching an eyebrow with a playful, dangerous smirk. "But if you find nothing, how exactly does Lord Magnus plan to apologize to my master, the Black Wolf King?"
"If it's not there, I'll get on my knees and apologize to the King in front of everyone!" Magnus snapped, looking smugly certain that the gem was currently sitting in her pocket.
However, as the search concluded, the hall fell into a tomb-like silence. The guards had scoured her uniform and found absolutely nothing—not even a pebble.
"Lady Valeria, are you sure you're looking in the right place?" Charlotte chuckled, her fingers blurring in a subtle flick. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like there's a familiar glow peeking out of his left pocket."
All heads turned toward Magnus. He instinctively reached into his own pocket and froze. His fingers closed around a cold, hard gemstone.
"This... this is impossible!" His face went bone-white.
Charlotte's lips curled. In the split second she had brushed past him earlier, she'd used a masterclass in sleight of hand and a custom micro-magnetic tether to slip the earring back into his possession without him feeling a thing.
"Bravo. Simply brilliant," Edric said, standing up to applaud. Each clap felt like a physical slap to Valeria and Magnus's faces. "A high-ranking White Wolf commander caught stealing his own treasure just to frame a servant. Is this how you people handle your business?"
Beside him, Rowan twisted the knife. "With intellect that dim, maybe you should check into the nearest asylum."
Valeria's face flushed a violent crimson. She gritted her teeth, forcing a strained, polite smile. "It was a clumsy oversight on our part. King Ragnar, please accept our apologies."
"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to," Ragnar said, his voice was pure ice. His violent dark eyes didn't even drift from the wine glass in his hand.
Humiliated and exposed, Valeria and her father were forced to offer a public apology to a lowly "servant."
By dusk, the hallways were buzzing with activity, and a heavy knock thundered against the door of the guest suite.
"King Ragnar, sorry to disturb your rest," a White Wolf commander said, standing outside with a squad of stone-faced enforcers. His tone was predatory. "An assassin has breached the palace. Everyone is subject to a 'special investigation.' Miss Anna, you're coming with us."
Ragnar started to growl, but Charlotte squeezed his hand, tracing a quick "OK" onto his palm.
She was led to a remote, desolate stone tower. The evening chorus of cicadas faded away, replaced by the heavy, suffocating scent of an ambush.
"Leading me to a dead end? You guys really know how to welcome a guest," she said, coming to a dead halt. Behind her plain mask, her eyes were as sharp as scalpels.
"Dead men don't get to complain," the commander spat, dropping his facade to reveal bared fangs. "The traitor Charlotte has broken into the palace. She took the Black Wolf guard, Anna, hostage. During the standoff, the hostage was unfortunately caught in the crossfire. Pronounced dead at the scene."
Four elite guards lunged simultaneously, their claws slicing through the air.
Charlotte pirouetted past a heavy strike, caught the attacker's wrist in a counter-grip, and snapped the bone. The sound echoed like a dry branch breaking in the silent night. Before the others could react, she drove a knee into another guard's gut and whipped out a strand of custom nanowire from her belt.
In less than three minutes, four of the clan's top fighters were left in a tangled heap, having never even found the chance to fully shift into their wolf forms.
She dragged the lead commander through the shadows, bypassing the patrols and slipping into Valeria's private bedchamber. She tossed him onto the floor like a sack of potatoes just as Valeria stepped out of the bath. A piercing, glass-shattering scream echoed through the palace.
Charlotte leaned against the doorframe, twirling a dagger between her fingers. "If you want the ceremony to go smoothly, behave," she warned coldly. "Otherwise, the next thing through your window might be a live bomb."
She turned and vanished into the night, leaving Valeria in a fit of hysterics and amidst the wreckage of her smashed porcelain.
Time was running out; only twelve hours until the clock hit zero. Charlotte didn't waste time on petty squabbles. Using a clandestine hit-squad provided by Edric, she launched a high-risk rescue mission in the island's outskirts.
When Elena saw her long-imprisoned parents and brother standing before her, unharmed, she finally broke.
"Lady Charlotte... I'm so sorry! I am so, so sorry!" Elena wailed, collapsing at Charlotte's feet.
"Save the waterworks," Charlotte said, her voice hard, though she reached down to pull the girl up. "Did you bring what I asked for?"
Elena wiped her eyes and produced a microscopic memory card she'd hidden in a sublingual compartment beneath her tongue.
"This is it... the footage of Valeria slipping the inhibitors into the old King's food. I was going to deliver soup that day and caught it through the door. I was too terrified to come forward, so I hid it. Even when Valeria searched me, she never found it."
"And the life-guarantee contracts they forced me to sign using my family as leverage... it's all on there."
Charlotte took the card, her thumb brushing over its surface. The last piece of the puzzle snapped into place.
"You did well. Now, get your family and get out of here. Edric's people will handle the extraction."
Once Elena was gone, Charlotte pulled out her mobile terminal. The screen glowed with a complex viral script—the core of a worm designed to hijack the coronation's thirty-thousand-square-meter surround-screen.
"Valeria, you've always loved the spotlight, haven't you?" A lethal glint sparked in her eyes. "Tomorrow, I'm going to give you a funeral broadcast to the entire werewolf race."