#rhea's queue.

The last day of the Concord had finally come and the Mistress of Whispers was barely hiding her relief at watching guests beginning to depart. Rhea had never been fond of vacant chatter, and though she could wear the mask of pleasant civility with expert ease when the occasion called for it, she disliked it greatly. Pleasantries and diplomacy weren't to her taste. Never had been. Rather than spending her time admiring artists or inventors, her attention had been placed on quietly tracing the vanishing trail left after the death of Lady Talia Hightower. She could wave off at the foreigners as they began to return to their keeps, for every whisper indicated that she shouldn't look at suspects outside of their own borders, but within.

Not everyone seemed so eager to retreat and leave the highly social season of the Verdant Concord behind, however. As the lady strolled through one of the exhibition areas, where sculptures and paintings were beginning to be taken down and packed away, she found Lady Matilda Tyrell engaged in conversation with a blonde-haired lord. 'Engaged' was perhaps too kind a word for the scene she saw. Rhea passed judgment immediately. No doubt he was a proud, little Westerner entirely convinced his opinions mattered to someone other than himself. Matilda, although nodding and appearing as polite as a lady could be, did look like someone who'd been trying to get a word in and was unable to due to endless monologue. It was perhaps the sort of thing only a woman might be able to detect, because time and time again it were women who were on the receiving end of interactions like this in which lords remained blind and gladly oblivious.

“Lady Matilda,” she called, approaching the pair. “The king has asked for you”. Rhea's tone left no room for question. She did not offer an apology for the interruption either, and only offered a sharp smile to the lord. “It is quite urgent. We should not keep King Cedric waiting”. She tilted her head to the side when her clear blue eyes found Tilly's, indicating the urgency to leave.

“Ced did not call for you, don't worry,” she said once they walked out of the exhibit's area and were well out of earshot from the gold-haired lord. “You mask exceedingly well,” Rhea added after a moment, almost praising the Tyrell lady's ability to keep such a well-crafted facade of politeness and grace. “I've been in similar situations before. Men talking my ear off, convinced they have fascinating notions that must be shared to enlight me,” she scoffed, shaking her head. Some men were helpless in that sense, too oblivious because of their ego and vanity. “I saw you and thought, 'She looks miserable and he has no idea', the buffoon”. Rhea glanced sideways at Cedric's cousin, the corner of her mouth curving into a witty smirk. “Tell me, was my instinct correct? Or whould you rather have stayed to finish that conversation?”.

Rhea spotted the man and noticed that he spotted her as well the moment she walked out to the balcony. It was the last feast for the Verdant Concord, the last gathering in which Cedric honored his guests. Thankfully, they would all begin departing in the morning and throughout the rest of the day. She was content to see them all leave, particularly the Westerners. Soon, the halls and gardens of Highgarden would fall to their usual rhythm again.

The Mistress of Whispers could have ignored Lord Prester. She could have nursed her goblet of Arbor gold and just look at the night sky in silence. Something in her stirred, however. A sort of ancient resentment that lived at the core of her, a festering wound she never bothered to heal or put to rest. “Lord Prester, isn't it?” she asked casually as she turned to the man. She looked at him inquisitively, a polite smile on her slips, yet the gesture appeared cold.

“I remember you from some years ago. The Reach and the West proudly coming together for battle in the Isles”. The war that ended Ironborns. But that wasn't the only time she recalled seeing him or hearing his name, however. She recalled all too well those Western houses which staunchly supported Alaric's arrest of Rhea nearly a decade ago, as Cedric's brother folded under the pressure of the Lion King. She blamed them for what was done to her as well, she blamed them the same as she had blamed Alaric. “Do you not miss the sea, my lord? Landlocked here for the duration of the Concord? Though I imagine you must be glad to head home tomorrow”.

There were no definitive answers yet, but the few leads she'd managed to dig out led to one place. Oldtown. Once again, the threats against the Hightowers came from within. If it were up to her, she'd have delivered the news at the Council and see it all catch flame and burn for the Master of the Arts. She wasn't investigating for his sake, after all, but for Harlon's sake.

Rhea had never cared much about the Hightowers. It had been years since they became more of a nuisance than an asset. But the Mistress of Whispers knew that her brother had a good enough relationship with Gael, so she thought best to meet with him first to get his opinions.

Little after entering her brother's study, she'd confirmed what she and others had been suspecting. Talia had died by poisoning. “It was a mixture of Tears of Lys and a small dose of belladonna,” Rhea told Omer. The mixture had made the poison act so swiftly without needing to use a very large dose of either. “The Tears of Lys were delivered in Oldtown, one week before the concord,” Rhea told her brother as she showed him a folded parchment. It was a brief, hectic letter in which a merchant fearfully admitted to a cousin of his that he'd not included all the merchandise that was transported in the cargo manifesto he was meant to make. Through the man's writing, it was evident that he feared for his life. In his letter, he confessed to having agreed to the illegal transportation of "perfume" after the safety of his family had been threatened. The merchant asked for his cousin's help to take care of his wife and son if something unexpected were to happen to him.

“He is dead now, if you're wondering. Sudden passing under 'mysterious circumstances'...” the Mistress of Whispers added with a serious expression. From what she'd managed to learn directly from the cousin, the merchant's death had happened in a similar way to Talia's. “My attention is in Oldtown. I'm pulling more threads there,” Rhea added, wondering if her brother's mind was going to similar places at her own. It was both a disgrace and a damn joke that the Hightowers continued to be attacked from within their own land.