Chapter 8 - The Reckoning
For a long, excruciating moment, the only sound in the east drawing room was the crackling of the fire in the marble hearth.
Serena stood frozen, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. The reality of what she had done—the catastrophic, irredeemable magnitude of her staggering ignorance—collided with her brain like a freight train.
She had screamed at a Queen. She had ordered a Sovereign to scrub mud off a floor. She had poured boiling coffee over the hands of a reigning monarch.
“Your... Your Majesty...” Serena choked out, her voice finally breaking into a pathetic, desperate sob as she dropped heavily onto her knees against the Persian rug, ignoring the delicate tulle of her expensive Italian gown. “I... I didn't know! Please! I swear to God I didn't know! If I had known who you were—!”
“If you had known who I was?” Queen Margaret interrupted, her voice dropping into a register so cold and biting that Serena flinched as if struck. “If I had been just another poor, nameless domestic worker, your behavior would have been acceptable?”
“No! That’s not—I didn't mean—!” Serena wept hysterically, tears smudging her expensive makeup, her chest heaving as terror clawed at her throat. “Please, Your Majesty, have mercy! Edward! Where is Edward? He loves me! We’re getting married tonight! He’ll tell you—!”
The heavy mahogany doors behind Serena clicked open.
Footsteps approached.
Serena scrambled around on her knees, looking up with wild, tear-filled eyes as Prince Edward entered the room. He wasn't looking at her with love. He was looking at her with the detached curiosity one might reserve for a specimen under a microscope.
“Edward!” Serena sobbed, crawling toward him and grabbing the hem of his velvet trousers. “Tell her! Tell your mother! Tell her it was all a misunderstanding! We’re supposed to be married!”
Edward looked down at her, his expression entirely unmoved. He gently, firmly pulled his trouser leg free from her grip and stepped back.
“My mother,” Edward said, his voice flat and steady, “came to this estate three weeks ago incognito, posing as domestic staff, at my direct request. We wanted to see how the woman I was allegedly going to spend the rest of my life with treated the people beneath her when she thought no one of importance was watching.”
Serena froze. The blood drained entirely from her face, leaving her skin a ghostly, sickly white.
“You... you tested me?” she whispered in horror.
“We tested your character, Serena,” Queen Margaret corrected, stepping closer and looking down at the kneeling bride with profound disdain. “And you failed spectacularly. A woman who rules through cruelty, arrogance, and abuse of the vulnerable is a woman who destroys everything she touches. You do not possess the grace to enter a noble house. And you certainly do not possess the heart to stand beside my son.”
Serena shook her head frantically, her voice turning shrill with panic. “You can’t do this! The guests are out there! The press is waiting! The wedding invitations went out to half the world! You can't just cancel an engagement like this! It’ll ruin me!”
“It will not ruin you, Miss Ashworth,” Edward replied coldly, pulling a slim white document from his breast pocket and letting it flutter down onto the rug in front of her. “It will simply return you to the exact level of reality you spent your entire life trying to escape.”
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Serena looked down at the paper. It was a formal annulment and dissolution agreement, already signed by corporate legal counsel and stamped with the royal seal.
“Sign it,” Edward commanded. “And your departure from these grounds will be quiet, orderly, and uninterrupted.”
