I quickly school myself to a mask of indifference and steel my spine. They need a king who sees all of these variables and makes logical considerationsbefore implementing decisions that impact all of our people.
No one announces my arrival, but they don’t need to.
As I step into the chamber, the room falls into stillness. Twelve sets of eyes lift, a dozen gazes sharpening like drawn blades. I let the silent judgment roll off my back.
I may have been born into this role, but I’ve more than proven that they’re all incapable of taking my throne from me, after one of them tried.
He no longer walks the shadows of this world.
I continue toward my seat at the head without pause, expecting to hear the sound of her steps following, but I don’t.
As I reach my chair at the far end of the obsidian table and take my seat, I find she still stands at the threshold. Her arms are wrapped around herself beneath the oversized coat, the hem barely brushing the tops of her thighs. The borrowed material does little to hide the littering of bruises beginning to form along her warm skin.
Every face in the chamber watches her now. Calculating and assessing.
An uninvited variable placed into the center of a council that does not welcome uncertainty. After how she handled the kings, I expect her to be tense or reactive, but what strikes me is how quiet she becomes.She doesn’t tremble or make a sound, yet there’s a weight to the way she stands, as though every gaze in the room presses down harder upon her than gravity itself. It’s like her presence folds inward, managing to make her appear so small.
This version of her is nothing like the woman whose eyes I watched blaze from the safety of my shadows as she challenged the other kings.
A flicker of something uncomfortable settles low in my chest at this change within her. Not quite guilt, but something adjacent. It feels jagged and is wholly unwanted.
My lips thin as her eyes drop from me to the stone floor.
I should have made preparations for her first. I should have ensured she was dressed appropriately, at the minimum. I should have considered what it would mean to bring someone like her here without warning, without context, without any protection from the eyes that now dissect her.
But I didn’t, and that misstep grates.
I rise slowly, letting the scrape of my chair against the stone purposefully draw some attention from her. My hand lifts in a silent command toward one of the attendants waiting in the shadowed alcove.
“Bring a chair for our guest,” I say, voice flat and quiet, but edged with enough steel to carve through the tension lingering in the chamber.
The attendant bows without a word and disappears down the corridor.
No one else speaks. No one moves.
They know better.
Still, I feel it, the subtle shift rippling through the council as they absorb the moment. They’re watching her, of course, but they also watch me. Trying to read into the smallest gesture with the sharpest glance. They take note of this break in protocol and are tucking it away to use against me in the future, but I don’t care.
I let them.
My gaze returns to her. She still hasn’t moved or met my gaze again. She just stands there, silent and unmoving, caught between shadow and scrutiny like she doesn’t know which one will reach for her first.
The attendant returns quickly, pushing a simple wooden chair across the stone with far too much noise. He places it just within the threshold near her, well behind the arc of the main council table where we all sit.
A placeholder for an outsider. An afterthought.
I exhale slowly through my nose, trying to diffuse the anger that simple action inspires within me. “The chair will go next to me. Move it.”
Several of the council members gasp as a few heads snap toward me, others toward her. Even the attendant hesitates for a beat before moving it again,dragging the chair forward with careful, uncertain steps until it rests at my right side.
Only then do I glance at her again.
She watches me now, and the firelight catching in the wideness of her eyes gives them a more golden, molten hue.
Surprise ripples across her features as her lips part with a slight inhale.
It lands in me with far too much precision.
