"We truly do not know what we would have said to the King if something had genuinely happened," one of the senior delegates said, his face pale as he wiped a thick layer of cold sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief.
He looked as if he hadn't slept a single second, his voice trembling with the raw aftermath of panic. "If Her Royal Highness had lost her life under this roof... the diplomatic fallout would have been catastrophic. A full-scale war wouldn't have just been a threat, it would have been an absolute, bloody certainty."
"Indeed," another high-ranking Solaric diplomat chimed in, his hands shaking slightly as he gestured wildly. "To think that a poison could be slipped into her glass at an imperial banquet! The security of this capital is utterly laughable. We are only standing here by the absolute grace of the heavens."
