The Shadow Queen’s voice faded, leaving behind a silence that seemed to press in on Elaris’s ears. She sat frozen on the throne, the cold of the stone leaching all the warmth from her body, but it was nothing compared to the hollow dread opening up inside her.
Tonight. They were moving tonight.
“Breathe, child.” The voice was a soft caress in her mind. “Panic is a luxury you cannot afford. You must think. You must listen.”
Elaris sucked in a sharp, ragged breath that hitched in her chest. The voice was right. She couldn’t just sit here and wait for them to come for her. She pushed herself up, her legs feeling shaky and foreign beneath her. The Great Hall felt like it was shrinking, the walls leaning in. She needed to get out. Now.
She practically stumbled from the hall, her shoes making too much noise on the stone. She didn’t know where she was going, her mind a jumbled mess of they can’t do this and of course they can. A hot, sharp pressure built behind her eyes. How could they? Her own brothers. Her father wasn’t even in the ground.
She turned a corner, heading blindly toward the family’s private gardens, just needing to be somewhere that didn’t smell of politics and betrayal.
Meanwhile, in a dimly lit antechamber that smelled of dust and forgotten things, a secret meeting was underway.
Lord Valerius paced, his fine leather boots scuffing the stone floor. “The timing is precarious. The people are still mourning Osric. To move so openly against his chosen heir…”
“The ‘people’ will thank us for saving them from a madwoman,” Darius interrupted, his voice flat and hard. He stood rigidly by the cold fireplace. “We present the facts. Her public hysterics. Her family history. The physicians’ accounts of her… episodes of confusion.” He didn’t look at Finn as he said the last part.
Finn, lounging against a table, picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “The ‘physicians’ accounts’ you just paid old man Hemsley to write this afternoon, you mean.” He let out a soft, airy laugh. “Don’t worry, brother. By the time we’re done, the entire court will remember her babbling to ghosts since she was a child. Perception is reality.”
They thought the door was closed. They thought the thick tapestries muffled their words. They were wrong. The heavy oak door didn't quite latch, leaving a slim crack of yellow light.
And outside that crack, a young woman had frozen, her arms clutching a basket of fresh linens. Lyra, Elaris’s personal maid since they were both girls. She’d taken a shortcut, her mind on finding some warm spiced wine for her mistress, who had looked so terribly pale.
Now, her stomach clenched into a hard knot. She pressed herself against the cold stone wall, her heart thumping so hard she felt dizzy.
“—put it to a vote of the full council at dawn,” Darius was saying. “We have the numbers. Valerius, you’ll speak first. Detail the… instability.”
“And if she refuses to abdicate?” another voice, a lesser lord, asked nervously.
“Then she will be removed,” Darius stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. “For the good of the kingdom.”
Lyra didn’t wait to hear more. She stumbled back, her soft-soled shoes making no sound. Her first thought was to run, to hide in the servants’ quarters and pretend she’d heard nothing. Fear made her throat tight. These were powerful men. They could have her thrown in the dungeons and never think of her again.
But the image of Elaris’s face—pale, terrified, alone on that giant throne—flashed in her mind. She was her queen. But more than that, she was her friend. The girl who’d shared stolen sweets with her under the staircase.
Swallowing down her fear, Lyra turned and ran, not toward safety, but toward the gardens.
She found Elaris standing in the moonlight, gripping a marble railing as if she might fall over. She was just staring out at the darkness, shaking.
“Your Majesty?” Lyra whispered, her voice unsteady.
Elaris flinched, whirling around. For a second, she just looked like a scared girl before her face went carefully blank. “Lyra. You startled me.”
“I… I need to speak with you.” Lyra glanced over her shoulder, her eyes wide. “Somewhere private. Please.”
Back in the queen’s solar, with the door bolted, the story spilled out of Lyra in a rushed, terrified whisper. The hidden room. The voices. The dawn council. The paid physician. The vote.
As she spoke, Elaris felt the hollow dread inside her fill with something else, something heavy and dark and solid. The fear didn’t leave; it was just buried under a wave of cold, clear understanding. They weren’t just doubting her. They were building a cage of lies around her. Her own brother. Her father’s trusted lords.
She felt completely alone. Everyone she saw was a potential enemy.
When Lyra finished, she was crying silently. “I am so sorry, Your Majesty. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Elaris placed a hand on the girl’s shaking shoulder. Her own hand felt strangely steady. “You did exactly what you should have,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “Thank you, Lyra. Now, go to your quarters. Tell no one. Act as if nothing is wrong.”
Once alone, the calm shattered. She paced the room, the anger a hot pulse in her temples. She kicked a footstool, a sharp, satisfying pain shooting through her toe. She wanted to scream until her voice gave out. She was trapped.
“You are not trapped.”
The Shadow Queen’s voice slid into the chaos of her mind, smooth and certain.
“You are armed with the one thing they do not expect: the truth. And you have me.”
Elaris stopped pacing, breathing hard. “What do I do?” The question was a plea.
“You do not wait for dawn to break upon your execution,” the voice purred. It was no longer just comforting. It was cunning. “You strike first. You walk into that council chamber on your own terms. And you remind them… just who it is they are dealing with.”
“How?” Elaris whispered, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.
“Let them have their lies,” the voice whispered, a note of dark amusement in its tone. “We will simply give them a truth far more terrifying.”
A slow, cold feeling spread through Elaris’s chest. It wasn't warmth. It was resolve.
The fear was still there, a constant hum in the background. But it had been joined by something else. Something vengeful. And it listened to the voice in her head.
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