Chapter 64: Chapter 65: The gathering

Kaelen’s POV

The old chapel stood forgotten on the edge of the lower city, its stone walls crumbling but still solid enough to provide shelter. Once it had served the merchant quarter, back when my father’s trade agreements had made this district prosperous. Now it was abandoned, windows dark, door rotted off its hinges. The perfect place for meetings that couldn’t be discovered.

A single candle sat on what remained of the altar, casting flickering shadows across the faces of the six people gathered in the nave. Cold air seeped through cracks in the walls, making the flame dance and shudder.

My people. The ones who’d lost everything to the crown, just like me.

The ones I’d sworn to lead to justice, no matter the cost.

Right now, they were questioning whether I was still capable of leading them anywhere except to ruin.

“Three months, Kaelen.” Marcus’s voice cut through the silence like a blade. He stood across from me near a broken pew, arms crossed, jaw tight with frustration. “Three months you’ve been inside that palace. Three months as her personal guard, standing outside her door every night, close enough to end this with a single knife thrust. And what do we have to show for it?”

I kept my voice level, controlled. “I was building trust. Getting close enough that she’d never suspect–”

“Too close, apparently.” Vera interrupted, her aged voice carrying the weight of years of grief. She sat on one of the few intact pews, wrapped in a dark shawl, her face lined with sorrow. She’d lost her son to Elara’s father’s execution, dragged to the block alongside him because he’d protested the increased taxes, because he’d dared to speak against the injustice. “We heard about the fifty lashes. And all sorts of nonsense. That’s not building trust, Kaelen. That’s forgetting why we’re doing this.”

The accusation hung heavy in the musty air.

I wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that maintaining my cover required those sacrifices, that letting her die would have ended our access to the palace entirely, that everything I’d done served the larger mission.

But the words felt hollow even in my own mind.

Because the truth was more complicated than tactics and strategy. The truth was that somewhere between infiltrating her guard and standing watch during sleepless nights, listening to her pace and cry and struggle under the weight of a crown she never asked for, something had shifted inside me.

I’d started seeing her as a person instead of a target. As someone I was willing to protect instead of kill.

And that was the most dangerous thing I could have done.

“And now you have nothing anyway.” Dmitri’s voice was younger, sharper, still raw with the kind of anger that came from fresh loss. He leaned against the chapel wall near the door, keeping watch. His father had died just two years ago, worked to death in the mines after the crown seized his land. “You got yourself fired. Dismissed. Thrown out like garbage. So what was the point of any of it?”

The question hit harder than I wanted to admit.

“The point,” I said carefully, “is that the palace is in chaos. I heard Malakor collapsed today. Right in the middle of the council chamber. Heart seized. He’s alive but weak, probably done as Chief Advisor. The queen promoted someone else, Corvus, the one who investigated Valerium. New advisor who’s untested. The queen isolated and making mistakes. This is exactly the instability we need.”

“Instability we could have created by killing her when you had the chance.” Marcus leaned forward, both hands gripping the back of a broken pew. “You stood outside her chambers every night. You knew her routines, her vulnerabilities, her guards’ rotations. You had everything we’ve worked years to achieve. And you didn’t take it.”

I met his gaze steadily. “Because killing her would have made her a martyr. Her father was hated, but she’s young, sympathetic. If she dies by assassination, the people rally around her memory. The crown strengthens. We lose everything.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. It was solid tactical reasoning.

It also wasn’t the whole truth.

The whole truth was that I couldn’t do it. That I’d stood outside her door more nights than I could count with my hand on my knife, telling myself tonight would be the night, and every time I’d found a reason to wait. To delay. To convince myself the timing wasn’t right.

The whole truth was that I’d saved her life instead of taking it, and I still didn’t fully understand why.

“So what’s the plan now?” Vera asked. Her eyes were sharp despite her age, missing nothing. “You’re outside the palace. You’ve lost your access. How do we finish what we started?”

I took a breath, steadying myself. This was the part I’d been preparing for. The part that would either convince them to keep following me or convince them to find a new leader.

“We don’t just kill her,” I said. “We destroy her. We turn the people against her, make them see she’s weak and incompetent. We attack supply lines so she can’t protect her own kingdom. We spread the truth about her erratic behavior, her poor judgment, the way she pushed away everyone who tried to help her. We make her collapse from within.”

I looked around at the faces illuminated by candlelight, meeting each set of eyes.

“And when she falls, it won’t be because we killed her. It’ll be because the people of Dravara demanded her removal. Because the kingdom itself rejected her. That’s how we win. That’s how we make sure another tyrant never takes that throne.”

Silence for a moment as they processed this.

Then Marcus asked the obvious question: “And how do we do all that without your access to the palace?”

“We still have someone inside.” I glanced toward the chapel door. “Lena should be here any moment.”

As if summoned by her name, the door creaked open.

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