The room goes silent.
Elandor’s quill stops moving. Seren’s tears glint in the low candlelight. Even Ronyn—usually the one to cut tension with a sardonic remark—has gone still. Despondent. And I can see the pain in his face, too. I can see the way he aches for Elyssara’s heartbreak—the trauma that never needed to exist.
Lesara’s hands tremble. “You think I don’t know what I’ve done?” she whispers. “Every night, I’ve prayed to the Stars that she survived. That she’d find her way back to me. That the rebellion might mean something if she lived.”
“Prayers,” I bite. “You reduce the existence of the brightest Star in all the realms to a figurehead for the rebellion?”
For a moment, no one moves. The tension in the chamber feels alive, like the air itself is braced for a blow.
Then movement—small, fragile.
Elyssara.
She takes one step back, her chest rising too fast, eyes glassy and far away. Like she’s falling inward. Like the weight of two decades is finally crushing her.
Her lips part, but no sound comes.
The tether between us flares—fear, heartbreak, disbelief—then collapses into static.
I move before she can.
In two strides, I’m at her side, my arms catching her just as her knees buckle.
“She’s alive,” she whispers, but it’s not joy. It’s devastation. It’s too much truth for one body to hold.
“Enough,” I murmur, callous and final, eyes never leaving Lesara. “She’s done for now.”
Lesara starts forward, instinctive, but I lift a hand—flat, silent, absolute. The gesture of a man who’s started and ended wars. Who’s bent fate itself to his will.
“You’ve said enough, Your Highness.”
Elandor opens his mouth to protest, but one look from me shuts him up.
“Take today,” I say, my voice turning to command. “We depart for Zerynthia at the moon’s peak.”
The declaration drops like a hammer, reverberating through the room.
The rebellion has its puppet master. The truth has its proof.
And I have my war and my woman.
“We have a war to face.”
I turn, gathering Elyssara against my chest. She’s trembling, eyes open but unfocused, like she’s trapped between past and present.
Her breath brushes my collarbone—uneven, shattered—and something in me fractures to watch it.
“I’ve got you, darling,” I whisper, steady, unshakable.
Because I will hold her together until she remembers how to do it herself.
I gesture to Ronyn and Seren to join us, because she’ll need them.I’llneed them to execute my plan.
Without another word, I carry her from the chamber, the sound of my boots echoing through the stone halls.
Behind us, no one dares to speak.
Not the queen who hid.
