Lorelei attacked in the harem and Riley and Sabrina sent away-An Action in The Murderess | Readify Wiki: A Better Way to Explore Books

The attack on Lorelei in the royal harem is the turning point that makes Riley and Sabrina the women Aaron chooses to send away. Their assault grows from suspicion over Celeste’s disappearance, but Aaron’s response—separating them from Lorelei and ordering their removal—places the harem’s personal rivalries inside a larger system that exposes women leaving the palace to enslavement.

Background: The Harem and Its Monthly Selection

Aaron’s decision takes place within a recurring royal practice: each month, the princes must choose women to leave the palace while new virgins arrive. He resents the task and the fate awaiting many of the women. The Courtesan Slave Trade connects the palace’s arrangements to a black market where courtesans may be sold, and Aaron has secretly helped women escape rather than sending them into that trade. His stated intention is to spare his own courtesans from slavery, though his ability to protect them is limited by the king’s system and the arrival of the traders.

The danger is not abstract to Lorelei. She tells Aaron that Grady bought her at a slave auction a few years earlier, after her uncle sold her into slavery. Her history gives the conflict over Celeste and the harem’s departures a wider context: the women are not simply changing residence, but may be transferred into a market that has already shaped Lorelei’s life. Aaron also knows that King Gideon receives money for women he sells, tying royal authority to the trade Aaron opposes.

The Attack on Lorelei

Aaron enters Lorelei’s room and finds four new dresses laid across the mattress, but the living area beyond holds a different scene. Riley and Sabrina have pinned Lorelei to the floor while the other women watch. Sabrina demands to know what Lorelei did with Celeste. Lorelei begins to threaten them with her gun, but Riley mocks the threat, and Sabrina says they want Lorelei gone.

Aaron intervenes, pushing Riley and Sabrina away from Lorelei. The encounter is brief, but it changes the practical question before him: rather than choosing among the women solely according to the monthly routine, he now has to respond to a violent attack inside the harem. He lifts Lorelei from the floor and carries her to his room. The other women’s actions, in his view, make the choice of who will leave the palace easy: Riley and Sabrina are to go, because he will not tolerate jealousy turning into violence.

Selection, Separation, and the Limits of Protection

After carrying Lorelei to his room, Aaron hangs up the four dresses left for her and tucks her into bed. He informs King Gideon that Riley and Sabrina are the women he wants removed; Gideon appears pleased but makes no comment. The decision resolves the immediate danger to Lorelei, yet it also sends the two attackers into the same system Aaron has tried to shield his courtesans from. His choices are constrained by the monthly selection and the palace’s ties to the slave trade, not simply by his personal judgment of the women.

Aaron has not arranged for Riley and Sabrina to escape before the slave traders arrive. By the next morning, they are gone. Although he is angry at them for attacking Lorelei, he does not believe their violence warrants selling them into slavery: one terrible act, in his view, cannot justify another. His refusal to endorse that outcome does not prevent it, exposing the gap between his protective intentions and the power of the institution he serves.

That gap becomes visible when Aaron later seeks the women’s whereabouts through the rebels. He identifies them as Riley and Sabrina and confirms that they had belonged to his harem. After three days of travel and preparation with Lorelei and Rhys, the group learns that both women have already been purchased by Kyle Mattock, a buyer known for acquiring women for black-market brothels. What began as a palace punishment has thus carried Riley and Sabrina into a more explicit form of enslavement, prompting Aaron to join an effort to rescue them.

The attack’s consequences therefore extend beyond Lorelei’s immediate safety and the women’s removal. Aaron’s attempt to separate a violent rivalry from the harem’s coercive economy cannot keep Riley and Sabrina out of that economy; instead, their sale gives his later rescue mission its urgency. At the brothel, after Kyle is taken away, Aaron leaves Riley’s next decision to her: he will not force her to return with him. The gesture marks a limit he tries to place on his authority, though it comes only after the machinery of selection has already taken her from the palace.

Selection, Separation, and the Limits of Protection

Aftermath: Sale and Rescue

Aaron’s order did not ensure Riley and Sabrina’s safety. He had not arranged their escape before the slave traders arrived, and by the time he returned to the harem-selection routine, they were gone. He remained angry that they had attacked Lorelei, but did not regard that violence as grounds for selling them into slavery. His objection, however, could not undo what the palace’s system had set in motion.

Later, Aaron sought help from the rebels and identified the missing women by name, confirming that both had belonged to his harem. He, Lorelei, and Rhys spent three days traveling and preparing to rescue them; by the time they reached the area near the slave-trade operation, Riley and Sabrina had been bought by Kyle Mattock, a buyer who supplied women to black-market brothels. Their transfer turned Aaron’s decision to send them away into the immediate cause of a rescue mission.

After the raid on Kyle’s brothel, Aaron left Riley’s next choice to her rather than forcing her to return with him. The offer of choice comes only after the palace’s monthly selection has exposed her to sale and captivity. The episode’s central reversal is therefore not that Aaron’s protective intentions are absent, but that they cannot reliably shield the women from a trade connected to the royal system he serves.