The inner chamber was empty of courtiers, empty of healers, empty of everything except the flower bed at its center, and the woman lying upon it.
The queen.
Nymeria's jaw clenched at the sight of her, though she had seen it a hundred times these past months.
The queen lay in the blossoms, her massive chest rising and falling in slow shallow swells, her chubby, soft body settled into the flowers like a temple idol, wobbling faintly with each breath.
Her hair spread across the petals in a dark silver fan. Even dying, even dimmed, she was far and away the most delicious thing in any room she occupied, and the flowers around her had grown toward her body all season as if even they could not help leaning in.
Nymeria knelt at the bedside and pressed her fist to her heart.
"My Queen. You called for me?"
"Perhaps I did. Who knows, anymore, what I call for."
