Chapter 34: Chapter 35: Against them

Elara’s pov

The meeting continued with logistics. Guest accommodations. Banquet planning. Protocol discussions. Who would sit where. What gifts would be exchanged. Which topics were appropriate for dinner conversation and which should be saved for private negotiation.

I participated like a robot, responded when they needed a response. My mouth said the right words. My face showed the right expressions. But my mind was elsewhere.

Three days.

Three days until a foreign king arrived expecting to negotiate for my hand.

Three days to figure out how to understand this without revealing the impossible situation I was in.

After the meeting, I retreated to my dad’s private study which was now mine. I dismissed everyone except Lena who was the only one who was allowed to see me.The door clicked shut, and the exhaustion I’d been holding at bay hit me fully.

I sank into my chair. Pressed my fingers against my temples. The headache that had been building all afternoon pulsed behind my eyes.

“Are you well, Elara?” Lena’s voice carried careful concern. “You look pale.”

“I think I’m fine.” The words came out automatically. “Just tired.”

Lena didn’t move. I could feel her watching me. Waiting.

I glanced up at her. Searched her face for… what? Judgment? Suspicion? She knew me better than anyone in the palace. She’d seen me at my worst. Held me while I cried. Helped me dress for my coronation while my hands shook with fear.

But her expression showed only the familiar worry of a devoted servant. Nothing more.

I turned to the window. Looked out over the palace grounds. The afternoon light was fading. Long shadows stretched across the courtyards. Servants moved through the gardens below, small figures going about their work, unaware of the battles being fought above them.

Somewhere below, in the holding cells, Kaelen sat in darkness.

The council wanted me to marry Thorin. Malakor was consolidating power around me, making decisions that should have required my approval. And I was trapped between impossible choices.

A wave of nausea rose suddenly. I gripped the windowsill. Breathed carefully. Slowly. Waited for it to pass.

Stress, I told myself. Just stress. The pressure of everything crashing down at once.

It couldn’t be anything else. I couldn’t afford for it to be anything else.

But the exhaustion that never quite lifted. The way certain smells turned my stomach. The heaviness in my body that felt like something fundamental had shifted.

I pushed the thoughts away. There was no room for whatever possibility right now. I had three days to solve an unsolvable problem.

“Lena,” I said without turning around. “I need you to find out exactly what the council has promised King Thorin. What commitments have been made in my name without my knowledge.”

“Yes, Elara, I will do that”

“Discreetly. I do not want Malakor to know I am investigating.”

“I understand.”

I heard her footsteps cross the room. The door opened and closed softly.

Then silence.

I stood alone in the fading afternoon light. Thinking of Kaelen in his cell. Thinking of Malakor’s maneuvering. Thinking of Thorin arriving with expectations I couldn’t fulfill. Thinking of my own body, I couldn’t be sick, not now.

I couldn’t enter marriage negotiations while Kaelen remained imprisoned. Malakor would use him as leverage, proof that my judgment was flawed, that I needed guidance, that I couldn’t be trusted to choose my own protection. Thorin would see a weak queen who couldn’t even secure her own safety.

But more than political calculation, something deeper drove me.

The memory of Kaelen’s blood on my hands came back. The way he’d looked at me in that cell. The kiss that had changed everything between us. The feel of his skin under my fingers as I pressed bandages to his wounds. The sound of his voice, rough with pain, telling me to go, to save myself, to leave him.

I couldn’t leave him there. Not anymore. Not while time ran out and the walls closed in.

I moved to my desk. Pulled out fresh parchment. Began drafting an agenda for an emergency council meeting.

I would call it for tomorrow morning. I would force the conversation about Kaelen’s release before Malakor could prepare his opposition.

This was my first major power play. My first direct challenge to the council’s authority over my decisions.

It was risky. If I lost, my position weakened significantly. Malakor would have proof that I couldn’t command the council. That my authority was hollow. That I was exactly what he said, a child playing at being queen.

But if I didn’t act now, I would enter the negotiations with Thorin from a position of complete vulnerability. A queen who couldn’t even protect the man who’d saved her life. A ruler who let her people be crushed while she sat silent. A woman who had no power except the power others gave her.

I finished the agenda. Read it over. Added notes about the legal basis for my authority to release prisoners under royal mercy. Cited precedents from my father’s reign. Built arguments that even the council would struggle to dismiss.

Then I sealed the meeting notice with my personal seal. The wax was still warm when I called for a servant.

“Deliver this to every council member,” I instructed. “It must reach them tonight.”

The servant bowed and left.

I returned to the window. The last light was gone now. Darkness covered the palace grounds. Somewhere below, torches flickered in the dungeon entrance.

My hand moved unconsciously to rest against my stomach. It was feeling weird again.

Three days until Thorin arrived.

Tomorrow, I would fight for the right to make my own choices.

Tonight, I allowed myself to admit, if only in the privacy of my own mind, that this was about more than political strategy. This was about the man sitting in darkness below me.

This was about claiming power over my own life, even if it meant risking everything I had fought to build.

I am Queen Elara of Dravara and it’s high time the council members sink that into their head.

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