Chapter 46: Chapter 47: the empty bed

Kaelen’s POV

Morning light filtered through the heavy curtains of the queen’s chamber. Soft. Gray. The kind of light that came just after dawn, when the world was waking but not yet awake.

I opened my eyes slowly, my body still heavy with sleep and the exhaustion of the night before. The room still held the heat and scent of what had passed between us, that mix of sweat and perfume and something else, something that belonged only to Elara. But the intensity had cooled. The air was quieter now. Still.

Too still.

I reached for her without thinking. An instinct. My hand moving across the bed to where she should have been lying beside me, warm and soft.

She was not there.

My hand found only cold sheets.

I came fully awake in an instant. Not the slow drift into consciousness but the sharp snap of alertness that came from years of being a soldier. I sat up, my eyes scanning the chamber with the practiced assessment of a guard looking for threats.

No signs of struggle. The door was closed, locked from the inside the way I had left it last night. No broken furniture except what we ourselves had knocked over. The wardrobe door hung slightly open. A chair was overturned near the window. Small signs of the storm that had swept through this room hours ago.

But no Elara.

At first, I told myself she had simply risen early. She was the queen. She had duties. Responsibilities. Maybe she had slipped out while I was still sleeping, gone to attend to some urgent matter that could not wait.

But then I pressed my hand against the sheets where she should have been.

Cold. Not just cool. Cold.

She had been gone for a while. Long enough for her body heat to disappear completely from the bed.

A quiet unease settled in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.

I threw back the covers and stood, my bare feet hitting the cold floor. I was still undressed, my clothes scattered where we had torn them off the night before. I grabbed my trousers from where they had landed near the foot of the bed and pulled them on quickly.

“Elara?” I called out, not loud enough to carry beyond the chamber but loud enough for her to hear if she was in the bathing room or the dressing chamber.

No answer.

The unease in my chest tightened into something sharper. Something that felt uncomfortably like fear.

I moved through the chamber, checking each connecting room. The bathing chamber was empty, the water in the basin cold and unused. The sitting area where she sometimes worked on correspondence was dark and quiet. I pushed open the door to the balcony, locked from the inside, undisturbed.

She was not here.

I returned to the bedchamber and stood in the center of the room, trying to think like a guard instead of a man who had just spent the night in the queen’s bed. Trying to assess the situation logically, professionally.

Something was wrong. I felt it in my bones. The same instinct that had kept me alive through years of dangerous work was screaming at me now.

Where would she go? Why would she leave without telling me?

Unless she had not left willingly.

The thought hit me like a fist to the gut. I moved to the main door, checking the lock. Still secure. No signs of forced entry. But someone with a key could have

A knock at the door.

Sharp. Efficient. The knock of someone who expected to be admitted immediately.

Lena.

I barely had time to pull on my shirt before the door opened. Lena walked in as she always did, moving with that quiet efficiency she had perfected over years of serving the queen. She was already talking, her attention on the schedule in her hands.

“Your Majesty, I have your appointments for–”

She looked up.

She saw me.

Standing half-dressed in the queen’s bedchamber, in the early morning light, with the bed clearly slept in behind me.

She stopped dead.

For one long, horrible moment, absolute silence filled the room. Lena’s face went through several expressions in rapid succession, surprise, confusion, understanding, and then something harder. Colder.

Anger.

What,” Lena said, her voice sharp enough to cut, “are you doing here?”

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say that would make this better.

“Kaelen.” Each word was precise, controlled, but fury trembled beneath them. “I asked you a question.”

“Lena–”

“Are you sleeping with Elara?”

The words were low, dangerous. Not shouted. Worse than shouting.

Silence.

“Our plan,” she continued, stepping closer, her eyes blazing, “is to kill her. To have our revenge. To make her pay for the sins of her parents.” Her voice cracked slightly, but she forced it steady. “So what the fuck are you doing, Kaelen?”

The accusation hit harder because it was true.

“You forgot everything,” she said.

“Everything we worked for.

Everything we swore to do.”

“I did not forget,” I said quietly.

“Then explain this.” She gestured to the disordered bed, the scattered clothes, the unmistakable evidence of betrayal.

“Explain why you are in her bed instead of sharpening the blade meant for her throat.”

I clenched my jaw.

“Our purpose,” Lena said, her voice dropping now, something raw slipping through the anger, “me and you, what we share, you know I would do anything for you. Anything. I have sacrificed everything for this.”

Her eyes searched mine, not just for guilt, but for reassurance. For loyalty.

“And you know,” she whispered, “you once said you would do anything for me.”

The words hung between us.

I should have answered.

I should have reassured her.

I should have said something about the plan, about revenge, about how this was strategy and nothing more.

But I couldn’t.

Because my thoughts were not on Lena.

They were on Elara.

On the cold sheets.

On the empty bed.

On the question that was beginning to claw its way through my chest

Where was she

“You know what, never mind, now where is she?” Lena demanded as if reading my thoughts

Hearing the question in my head being voiced out made my stomach drop.

“I do not know,” I admitted.

Lena’s expression shifted from anger to alarm in an instant. “What do you mean you do not know?

“She was gone when I woke. The bed was already cold.”

“Cold?” Lena’s voice went up. She did not finish. She spun toward the dressing chamber, moving with sudden urgency. “Your Majesty? Elara?”

I followed her as she searched the connecting rooms. The bathing chamber. The sitting area. The small study where Elara sometimes worked late into the night. Each room was empty.

Lena stopped in the dressing chamber, her eyes scanning the wardrobe with the practiced eye of someone who knew exactly what should be there.

“Her riding clothes are gone,” she said quietly. “The dark cloak. The boots she wears when she does not want to be recognized.”

Understanding dawned slowly. Then all at once.

“She left,” I said. “On her own. She left the palace.”

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