👑 THE LAST THRONE 👑
{.🩸some crowns are paid in bl00d 🩸. }
The whole back side of the estate came alive at once. Guards ran in from different corners. Maids came from the corridor behind the kitchen.
Two of the night security men almost crashed into each other at the garden gate. Everyone arrived at the same time and everyone was talking at the same time and for a few seconds nothing useful was happening at all.
Zaran was still on the ground.
He was lying on his side on the old paving stones, one arm under him. The cut on his temple had opened up and bl00d was moving slowly down the side of his face, dropping onto the pale stone in small quiet drips.
Nobody moved toward him immediately. Not because they didn’t care. But because everyone was waiting for someone else to take charge first.
“Pick him up carefully.” One of the senior guards finally said it. “Slowly. Don’t rush.”
Three guards crouched down together and lifted him as gently as they could manage.
His head dropped slightly to the side and one of the maids pressed her hand over her mouth.
The other maids stood together in a small group a few steps back.
They were staring at him the way people stare at something they can’t stop looking at even when they want to look away. One of them kept glancing at the side door that Kofi had walked through minutes earlier.
She kept her thoughts to herself. Everyone did.
Nobody said what they were all thinking.
👑Queen Yemisi’s POV 👑
My handmaid had barely opened her mouth before I was already moving.I don’t even remember standing up.
One moment I was sitting, the next I was walking fast through the connecting corridor between the queens building and the princes wing and my heart was doing something I can’t properly describe.
When I got to the lower sitting room they had already laid him on the long seat near the window. His face was still. Too still. A cloth had been pressed to the side of his head but bl00d had soaked through it already.
I looked around the room.
“Where is the head of security?” I asked.
Nobody answered fast enough.
“I said where is he.”
Dogo stepped forward from near the door. Big man, quiet man, fifteen years on this estate. Right now he looked like he wanted the floor to open and take him.
“My queen we were on the front rotation when’
“My son was in the back garden. At night. By himself.” I kept my voice low because I find that low is scarier than shouting. “And not one person noticed he had gone down until the noise reached the main building.”
Dogo bowed his head. He knew better than to say anything else.I turned around.
“Nkem.”
He was standing near the wall, arms at his sides, face tight. He had obviously been there the whole time and had been hoping I wouldn’t notice him yet.
“My queen I..”
“I will deal with you later.” I said it quietly. “Right now just stand there and don’t speak.”
He closed his mouth.
The physician arrived not long after. We all moved back and let him work. I stood on the other side of the glass partition watching him examine the cut, he checks Zaran’s breathing, press two fingers to the side of his neck.
I watched every single movement. My handmaid appeared at my elbow with my phone. I took it without looking at her.
“Dr. Fashola.” I dialed my personal physician in Accra. He picked up on the second ring. “I need you on the first available flight to Eshara. Tonight if possible. It is about Zaran.”
He asked me a few questions. I answered them. He said he would call me back in ten minutes with his travel details.
I dropped the call and looked through the glass again. Zaran still hadn’t moved.
The physician came out after about forty minutes.
“The cut is not deep. No serious damage to the head.” He said it and I breathed for what felt like the first time since I left my building.
“But he needs rest and he needs someone familiar with him when he wakes up. Someone he is comfortable with.” He paused. “He has been asking for someone called Sena.”
I already knew that name.
“That is his girlfriend.”
“Her presence will help him settle when he comes round.” The physician said and went back inside. I picked up my phone and called Sena.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
I called again. Nothing.
I walked out to the side of the building where the small garden chairs were and tried again. Still nothing. I sat down and looked at my phone. I had called eleven times now and sent three messages.
Was she having problems with Zaran? Even if they were having problems that was not a reason to ignore his mother calling this many times. Something was wrong.
A sound came from behind me. A short laugh. The kind that isn’t really about anything funny.
I didn’t turn around. I already knew that laugh.
Queen Adira walked around to my front.
She was wearing a night wrapper and holding a small cup of tea like she had just happened to be taking an evening stroll at this hour. Kofi’s mother.
The woman who had made it her quiet hobby for twenty years to remind me what she thought of my son.
She looked at my phone in my hand. “Calling the girlfriend?” she asked pleasantly. “Or perhaps looking for someone to push him around in a chair now?”
I looked at her.
“Because I was thinking.” She tilted her head. “A man who cannot even walk properly through his own family’s garden at night. What exactly is the plan for him? Hmm?”
“Adira.” I said her name once.
“I am just saying what everyone is already saying quietly.” She sat down in the chair across from me like we were two friends having a conversation. “A cripple cannot inherit anything in Eshara.
That is not my rule it is an old kingdom law. So all this running around for Zaran… all this drama tonight… it is a lot of energy for something that will not change his position in this family.”
I looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Then I said “Your son Kofi has been back in this estate for less than 48 hours. And already my son is on a bed with bl00d on his face.” I paused. “I am not saying anything. I am just noticing things out loud.”
The smile on Adira’s face did something complicated. I stood up before she could reply and walked back inside. I didn’t push her. I didn’t need to. What I said was enough.
Sena never called back that night.
I went in and sat beside Zaran on the edge of the seat. The physician had gone to prepare something in the next room. It was just me and my son.
“Sena.” He said it low and soft. Still not fully awake. Somewhere between sleeping and conscious.
“I am here.” I said it gently. I kept my voice soft. “Rest. You are fine.”
“Sena.”
“I am here. Rest now.”
He said her name two more times. Then his breathing evened out and he went still again.
I stayed right there in that chair the whole night. I did not move, I did not sleep. I just sat with my hand over his and watched him breathe.
~~The other side of Eshara~~
The poorest part of the kingdom was called Itodo. Not many people from outside knew the name. The people who lived there knew it too well.
Remi was already awake before the sun had fully come up.She was in the small compound outside their house crouched over a bucket, washing her father’s work clothes from the day before.
Their compound was not much to look at. The fence on the left side had a crack running from the top all the way down. The mango tree in the corner leaned more to one side every year.
The front gate had been tied shut with rope since the hinge broke two rainy seasons ago.
Remi didn’t think about any of that. She grew up here. It was just home.
She was 21. Pretty in the way that doesn’t require any effort, the kind of pretty that catches you off guard when someone is just standing there doing ordinary things.
Nice height, good skin, a face that was genuinely lovely when it wasn’t doing the specific expression she wore when she was about to cause a problem.
Which was often.
Her mother sold yam flour in Itura Market. Her father fixed wooden furniture for people in the area. They were not the poorest family in Itodo but they were close enough to it.
Her mother had borrowed small amounts of money from three different people in the last year alone just to keep things steady.
Remi had a younger brother, Tutu, who was thirteen and thought he was already a grown man.
He appeared at the doorway now, still in his sleeping clothes, watching her scrub the collar of their father’s shirt.
“I need water.” He announced this like it was news.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Morning. I need water the drum is low.”
“Then go and fetch some from the tap down the street.” Remi said without looking up.
“The tap down the street has people queuing since five o’clock. You know that.”
“Then go and join the queue.”Tutu made a sound. “Can you not go? You are already outside.”
“I am already doing something outside. There is a difference.”He stood there for a moment hoping she would change her mind. She didn’t even look at him.
He went back inside muttering something she chose not to hear.Remi wrung out the shirt and sat back on her heels.
The street was starting to wake up around her. Someone two houses down was frying something that smelled like akara. A radio was playing somewhere further up the road.
A small group of girls from the next compound walked past on their way to get water, talking loudly over each other.
Remi listened to them without meaning to.
“You heard about the royal gathering this weekend? Free entry, free food, they are opening the palace grounds…”
“Emeka said the princes came back. All of them.””All of them? Even the one that runs that big company?”
“That is what I heard. My aunty works near the palace, she said the whole estate has been busy since yesterday.”
“I am going. I don’t care what I have to wear I am going to that gathering.””Me too. My cousin said the youngest prince is the most handsome out of all of them…”
They passed the gate and their voices faded down the road.Remi shook her head slightly and went back to the washing.
She was carrying the wet clothes inside to hang them when she heard a voice from the front of the house. Sharp. Familiar. The kind of voice that had only ever shown up at their gate when something had gone wrong.
“Where is your daughter?”Remi stopped walking.”I said where is Remi. Don’t look at me like that, you know who I am.”
That was Madam Kalu’s voice. The woman who owned the row of shops on the corner of their street. The woman who had been looking for reasons to be upset with Remi for the better part of six months.
Remi’s mother came out of the house.”Good morning. Is there a problem?””Don’t greet me. Where is your daughter? I will not ask again.”
Remi quietly set the wet clothes down on the low stool near the back window. She looked at the back door. She looked at the clothes. She made a decision.
She slipped out through the back before anyone came to find her.
