I Became The Extra King With Seven Wives-Chapter 22: Lumiel’s First Council [1]

I watched silently as everyone filed back inside. Once the heavy doors boomed shut, sealing us in, I glanced at Alice.

"Anything to report, Alice?" I asked her. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"No, Your Majesty," she shook her head.

"Did they talk about anything else? Anything at all?" I asked.

"Nothing, Your Majesty," she shook her head again.

"That makes it even more suspicious," I muttered, loud enough for the front row to hear.

I looked at them, rows of nobles in their finery, all staring back with varying degrees of anxiety. I sighed, letting the sound echo.

"I hate hypocrisy," I said, leaning forward. "And I won’t even waste breath talking about traitors and liars."

I swept my gaze over them, making eye contact with as many as I could. I let the silence stretch for a bit.

"So, I am giving you a chance to speak," I said, keeping my voice dangerously calm. "If you have anything to say, anything to confess, you may do so now. Believe me, doing it now is the wiser choice. I will be merciful."

I heard several gulps. Eyes darted around, checking neighbors. But no one stepped forward. No one spoke.

"Because if I find out myself, and I will, Believe me, I will make sure you regret ever having been born in Helios. I will make sure your death is an event people tell nightmares about."

When I said that, I could literally feel the fear spike in the room. Good. It meant the traitors were sweating. I already knew the main ones thanks to the Game, but judging by the tension, the rot went deeper than I thought.

Still, no one confessed.

Not a single soul.

"Very, very disappointing," I muttered, shaking my head with exaggerated sadness.

Then I shifted gears, turning my gaze to Roland Kestrel, the Chancellor.

"Lord Roland, would you update me on the important matters at hand for our Kingdom?" I asked, shifting the subject.

"Yes, Your Majesty," he nodded, stepping forward. "The most urgent issue would be with the Rhadamantian Empire. The number of spies and knights trespassing around our borders near the Frozen Peaks has risen considerably in the last few days."

"They have definitely learned about King Marconius’s death by now," Elbert Ashcroft added grimly.

"Are they preparing for war already?" I asked.

It was no secret. The Rhadamantians had always coveted the Flame of Helios. Now that my father was dead, they likely saw this as their golden window of opportunity. But they wouldn’t march blindly. They would probe first. Send spies. Gauge the capital’s stability. Get inside information.

"Very likely, Your Majesty," Mark Lewis, the Treasurer, said, pushing up his glasses. "We have to act immediately to show them our strength."

Several nobles nodded in agreement, eager to look decisive.

"Show our strength," I repeated the phrase. "That’s an interesting point of view. But are we in any position to flex muscles against them? Don’t they have a larger army? A stronger one?"

I glanced toward the side of the hall, where a man stood like a monolith.

Arges Raimond.

The strongest man in the Kingdom. Morgana’s father. He had the same fiery red hair and intense red eyes, though his were weathered by decades of battles. He stood with his hand resting perpetually on the hilt of his sword, a veteran commander who looked like he could dismantle everyone in the room without breaking a sweat.

When he felt my gaze, he turned toward me and bowed his head deeply.

"Indeed, Your Majesty. We shouldn’t take them lightly," he said. "Their legions outnumber ours three to one."

"Then are we expected to simply wait until they mass at our gates?" Elbert asked. "Because they will attack, eventually. It’s not a question of if, but when."

"We aren’t going to sit idle while they sharpen their blades at our borders," I said. "But charging headlong into their territory would be suicide. The Rhadamantians have cultivated quite the arsenal of dangerous cards."

"Do you have something in mind, Your Majesty?" Roland asked, leaning forward slightly.

"I may have several, things yes," I replied, allowing a smile to touch my lips. But I offered nothing more. No details. No elaboration. Just that smile.

The silence that followed was filled with disappointment and suspicion. Several of them exchanged glances, trying to read meaning in the gaps I’d purposefully left. But I had no intention of laying my plans bare in a throne room populated by vipers.

My message was clear: I didn’t trust them.

"Double the patrols along our northern borders," I ordered. "Make certain no foreign boot crosses our threshold uncontested. If Rhadamantian scouts or knights are caught trespassing, execute them. No trials. No diplomatic protests. No prisoners to ransom back. Just corpses to send a message."

A ripple of surprise moved through the younger nobles. The older ones, veterans of my father’s much less brutal and more pacifist methods, merely nodded.

I turned my attention to Elbert Ashcroft. "Elbert, your estates border the contested territories. I grant you full military authority over the surrounding lands, including command over any lesser lords who hold fortifications in the region. Fortify. Recruit. Do whatever is necessary to make our borders a graveyard for Rhadamantia."

"I shall honor your trust, Your Majesty," Elbert said, placing his hand over his heart and bowing. Despite his ambitions, he was a very capable man so I trusted him on that part.

I would deal with his ambitions later. For now, I needed someone ruthless holding that border.

I shifted my gaze back to Roland, dismissing Elbert from my attention. "Next matter."

"Famine, Your Majesty," Roland said, his voice dropping in pitch. "Several towns throughout the western provinces are suffering severe grain shortages. Bread riots have already begun in two settlements, and winter stores are dangerously low."

"The west," I repeated slowly. "Let me give a guess, this sudden catastrophe has something to do with Gardenia’s new ruling council trying to demonstrate their newfound independence by strangling our supply lines?"

I glanced briefly at Diana. She stood rigid as a statue, her lovely face carved from marble and shame.

"Your instincts are correct, Your Majesty," Roland nodded. "The new regime has severed the main trade routes connecting our kingdoms. All previously negotiated grain shipments have been halted. They’ve stationed armed checkpoints on roads that were, until recently, open highways."

Our main sources of wheat and rice flowed from Gardenia’s fertile plains. Losing that lifeline wasn’t just inconvenient, it was potentially catastrophic. Hungry citizens were restless citizens. Restless citizens became mobs. Mobs burned palaces.

"These shortsighted fools didn’t waste a single breath, did they?" I muttered, sighing.

Unfortunately, we needed them far more than they needed us. Gardenia knew it. They were gambling on geography.

Our kingdom sat like a fortress wall between them and the Rhadamantian Empire. If the eastern legions wanted to invade Gardenia, the easiest route, the only truly viable land route cut straight through Helios. The alternative was a treacherous sea voyage around the southern cape, through waters notorious for sinking entire fleets.

So even if we despised Gardenia’s new rulers, even if they bled us dry with embargoes, we couldn’t afford to let them fall. Because if Rhadamantia conquered Gardenia, we would find ourselves surrounded.

Gardenia’s usurpers understood this perfectly. They were squeezing us, confident we would endure any humiliation rather than face strategic annihilation.

"A true bunch of ungrateful bastards," I spat out.

I saw Diana lower her head further, her lilac hair falling forward like a curtain, but my anger wasn’t aimed at her.

Her father had been a good man, a genuinely good man in a profession that rewarded bastards. It was thanks to King Gardenia that we’d had those trade agreements in the first place, forged through decades of trust between him and my father. But now he was gone, gutted by the civil war his own nobles had engineered, and those same parasites had seized power. They’d abandoned everything their previous King had built with my father, likely out of spite, because both monarchs had outsmarted them by betrothing Diana to me.

The new regime had probably planned to force Diana into marriage with whatever puppet noble they propped up, using her royal blood to legitimize their coup. But that plan died the moment she and her younger sister crossed into Helios under my father’s protection.

So was this embargo their petty revenge? Or a threat? A hostage negotiation dressed up as policy?

Like Give back the Princesses if you want your grain.

I could feel Diana’s eyes on me. Not just, dozens of stares from nobles who saw a very simple solution to a very complicated problem.

Just hand over the sisters. The alliance would spring back to life overnight. Hell, Gardenia’s new rulers might even shower us with gratitude, overjoyed to reclaim the royal bloodline they needed to legitimize their stolen throne.

Bargaining Diana away was the easiest, most logical solution.

But my dear Father.

He had placed Diana as my First Wife specifically to prevent that outcome. He knew the possible consequences, the embargo, the political fallout, the famine. He’d known, and he’d done it anyway, because he valued his friendship with King Gardenia more than expedient politics. He’d chosen honor over convenience.

But had he believed we could survive this? That we’d find another way through the storm?

If so, then...

I looked at Eleanor.

"Eleanor."

"Your Majesty."

"Have your father come to the capital. I need to speak with him.."

Eleanor seemed surprised for a heartbeat, then smiled. She nodded, understanding flickering in her gaze.

"I will send word immediately, Your Majesty."

"Your Majesty?" Roland called me confused like were the other nobles.

"I don’t plan to beg those fools in Gardenia," I said. "We will secure supplies through other channels. They aren’t the only kingdom that grows wheat and rice."

Whispers erupted instantly.

I had just publicly declared that I had no intention of negotiating with Gardenia after all. No intention of entertaining the obvious, expedient solution that would solve everything.

No intention of handing over Diana.

Which, by every measure, should have been the correct choice. The smart choice maybe. The choice that put the Kingdom first.

I was certain none of these nobles understood why the hell Diana had been made Queen instead of being left to rot in Gardenia’s civil war. To them, it was an incomprehensible decision that had called down unnecessary crisis on our heads. A lot of them supported more Asthenia than Diana obviously.

With my father dead, they probably assumed I would rectify his mistake. Or rather thought of forcing the decision onto the weak me they thought of seeing.

Unfortunately for them I wasn’t anymore..

Neither would I go against my Father’s final wish to keep his friend’s family safe. Handing over Diana, throwing her back into that snake pit to be devoured, would be spitting on his grave. It would be admitting that his trust, his honor, his belief in something beyond mere survival meant nothing.

And I’d be damned before I admitted that.

Even if it meant my people went hungry. Even if it meant making enemies I couldn’t afford. Even if it meant every noble in this room thought I was a fool.

My father had bet everything on us, maybe me in finding another way.

So I would find another way.