Not slammed — shut. 

Quietly. Firmly. Locked. 

The tower study is colder than I remembered, but maybe that’s just me. Kaelis stands with his back to the door, arms folded, expression unreadable. I move to the table, stripping off the layered finery they made me wear — the sash, the velvet overcoat, the gold-tipped throat necklace. It feels like shedding a costume. And beneath it, I’m still burning. 

“He used that man like punctuation,” I mutter, tossing the sash aside. “A collapse to shift the room. A single moment to pull their attention away from everything else.” 

Kaelis doesn’t disagree. 

“He played them,” I continue, “like he already knew how the council would retell it. How they’d twist it into proof that I’m unstable, too emotional, too easily… compromised.” 

Kaelis steps forward, slow. “You’re not wrong,” he says. “But you’re not surprised either.” 

I meet his eyes. “No.” 

Because I’m not. 

This is who Eiran is — poised, brilliant, venomous in his restraint. He never shouts. He never leaves marks. But somehow you still wake up already bleeding. 

“He’ll keep doing this,” I say. “Discrediting me. Isolating you.” 

Kaelis nods. “Until there’s no one left to protect you.” 

I pace. 

Not aimlessly — I’m drawing something in my mind I can’t quite name yet. 

A map. 

A path. 

A question I haven’t asked myself honestly until now. 

“What would happen,” I say slowly, “if I didn’t let him finish?” 

Kaelis doesn’t answer right away. 

So I push. 

“What if I did more than survive it? What if I fought back?” 

Finally, he speaks. “That depends,” he says. “On what you’re willing to lose.” 

I pause. 

Not because I don’t know the answer. 

But because for the first time, I think I might. 

I look at him. 

Really look. 

He’s still in his formal jacket — black wool, light mail hidden beneath. One strap at the shoulder is slightly loose, like he’s been clenching his fists too often. His hair’s still damp from the rain earlier, curling slightly at the edge of his temple. He hasn’t taken a breath that wasn’t measured since the feast. 

I step toward him. “What have you lost, Kaelis?” 

He doesn't meet my gaze. 

Not right away. 

“I’ve served three monarchs in my lifetime,” he says finally. “Only one of them died in their bed.” 

I wait. 

He doesn’t tell it like a story. 

No flourishes. 

Just fragments. 

“First was Lord Harren of Balel. Loyal to the throne, or so he believed. When politics turned, his own cousin named him traitor to curry favor with the capital.” He flexes his jaw. “They executed his knight first. Publicly. Claimed she whispered rebellion into his ear.” 

His hands are still. 

But I see it — the memory settling behind his eyes like weight beneath armor. 

“Second was Queen Maren of the River Vanner. Too gentle. Too idealistic. She thought truth could protect her. She was wrong.” 

“And the third?” 

Kaelis finally meets my gaze. “You.” 

The word lands like a heartbeat. 

“You’re not like them,” he adds, quieter now. “But they’ll try to write your ending the same way.” 

I nod. “So what do we do?”

 “I prepare the exits,” he says. “You decide if we use them.” 

I step closer. 

The distance between us feels different now. 

Not safer. 

Not tenser. 

Just true. 

“They call you stone,” I say. He doesn’t move. “But I’ve never met anyone more alive beneath the silence.” 

That makes him look at me again — really look. 

I don’t reach for him. 

But gods, I want to. 

And somehow I know: he would let me. 

Not tonight. 

Not yet. 

But the moment is there. 

And neither of us denies it. 

Kaelis leaves me alone after that. 

Not because he’s retreating — but because he trusts me to sit with what I’ve learned.

I stay at the desk, candle low, quill in hand. I don’t write the speech they want for tomorrow. Not the apology. Not the statement of unity. Not the carefully worded fiction the court’s already drafted for me. 

I write something else. 

A letter. 

Not official. 

No seal. 

Just ink on parchment, smudged slightly at the edge where my hand trembles — not from fear, but from the weight of knowing this changes things. 

   — Elira 

I fold it once. Slide it into the inner pocket of my coat. I’ll deliver it through Rellin — my old attendant, reassigned quietly after I spoke too freely in front of him one winter. 

They thought he was harmless. 

He is. 

But he’s also loyal. And loyalty is dangerous now. 

I sit back in the chair, exhale, and let my eyes drift to the tower window. 

Dawn isn’t far. 

Tomorrow, I’ll play the princess again. 

But tonight, I started becoming something else.

I hand the letter off at dawn. 

Rellin doesn’t ask questions. He never has. 

Just bows once, tucks the folded parchment into his sleeve, and vanishes down the service stairs with that same quiet gait that’s always made him invisible in rooms filled with power. 

I return to my chambers with my cloak still drawn tight, the corridors barely stirring, the palace holding its breath like it knows something has shifted. 

I think, maybe, I’ve finally moved ahead of him. 

I think, maybe, I’m finally playing my own game. 

But elsewhere, in a quiet chamber off the servants’ quarters, a different parchment is already being read. 

Not by Rellin. 

Not by me. 

By someone who answers to another voice entirely. 

The letter is a copy. 

The original was never touched. 

The reader finishes it, folds it precisely, and tucks it into a second sleeve stitched with red silk. Outside, morning breaks over Arathen. 

Inside, a whisper carries through a corridor no princess ever walks. 

“She’s begun.”