Before the courtiers gathered in the throne room that afternoon, Laheir had sent a servant to Nheera with a request that she meet him at her earliest convenience. If she agreed, this would be the first time they had spoken privately since their last major dispute, the one that had spiraled into something far uglier when she revealed her plans to marry Hairan off.
She despised that he believed he could make her regret her decision by involving his brother in their quarrel, and she had already vowed to make him suffer for it. But that particular reckoning would have to wait. For now, she still needed him, needed his influence, his reach, his usefulness in her carefully constructed plan to secure the throne for her son and consolidate even more power for herself.
