Chapter 66: Chapter 67: The voice

Kaelen’s POV

Lena stood close to me, her hand still pressed against my chest, her eyes searching mine for something I couldn’t give her.

The chapel was silent. Everyone watched. No one moved.

Then Vera cleared her throat, breaking the tension like a knife through rope. “As touching as this is, we still need a plan. Lena, what’s the situation inside the palace? As of now ”

Lena stepped back from me immediately. The change was so fast it made my head spin. One moment she was raw and hurting, the next she was all business, her face smoothing over like nothing had happened. The transformation was unsettling, from raw emotion to cold efficiency in a heartbeat. Like she’d flipped a switch inside herself.

“Malakor collapsed during the council meeting,” she reported. Her voice was steady now, professional. No trace of the tears from moments ago. “Heart attack or seizure. The physicians aren’t sure yet. He’s alive but incapacitated. Can’t speak, can’t move much. Probably won’t be back on the council for soon.”

Marcus raised a brow from where he stood near the broken pew. “And Elara promoted someone to replace him? Kaelen mentioned it earlier, Lord Corvus?”

Lena crossed her arms as she spoke, her eyes flicking to me for just a moment. “Oh, he did? Well, I almost forgot how easy it was for him to sneak in and out of the palace like a shadow. Must be nice to just slip away while the rest of us actually have to work.”

The words carried an edge. A reminder of what I’d cost us, what I’d risked, what I’d thrown away.

“The queen is isolated,” Lena continued, pushing past the moment. “Making emotional decisions. You can see it in everything she does. She fired you, after all, which was purely reactive, not strategic. She didn’t think it through. She just reacted to her feelings and now she’s stuck with the consequences.”

That last part carried an extra edge, sharp and pointed.

Dmitri pushed off from the wall where he’d been leaning. He was young, barely twenty, but his eyes held the kind of anger that came from watching his father die slowly in the mines. “Vulnerabilities we can exploit? Weak spots we can hit?”

Lena considered for a moment, her brow furrowing in thought. “Her judgment is compromised. That’s the main thing. She’s emotional, reactive, easy to push off balance. Easily manipulated if you know which buttons to push and when to push them.” She paused. “And she’s about to get a new personal guard, looks like she has really gotten rid of you.” Lena said as she glanced my way.

I ignored her look as I filed that information away carefully. A new guard captain meant new security protocols. New routines to learn. New schedules to observe. New vulnerabilities to identify and exploit. Everything we’d learned about palace security over the past months might need to be reassessed.

“What about resources?” Vera asked. She’d settled back onto her pew, wrapped in her dark shawl, looking like some ancient oracle dispensing wisdom. “Supply lines, storage, weak points in the city’s infrastructure. Places we could hit that would hurt but not kill.”

“The main grain storage is near the eastern market.” Lena knew this information cold. She’d been gathering it for months, maybe years. “Guards rotate every four hours. The shift change is sloppy, there’s always a gap of five to ten minutes when no one’s watching. Poorly lit at night because the merchants complained about torch smoke damaging the goods. The merchants complain about it constantly, worried about thieves, about rats, about spoilage. If you wanted to send a message, that would be the place.”

Marcus looked at me. His expression was hard to read in the dim candlelight, but I could feel the weight of his question. “First strike? Something to show we’re still here, still fighting?”

I nodded slowly, the plan forming in my mind as I spoke. “We hit the grain storage. Make it look organized but not military. Well-planned thieves who know what they’re doing, not soldiers with training. The people are already nervous about food prices, about shortages, about whether winter will be hard. This will make it worse. Make them feel unsafe. Make them question whether the queen can protect them.”

“And when she can’t stop it from happening again?” Dmitri’s eyes were bright with understanding.

“Then they start questioning whether she can protect them at all.” I met his gaze. “Whether she’s fit to rule. Whether maybe the crown isn’t as strong as it pretends to be.”

Vera nodded slowly, seeing the shape of it. “Fear breeds doubt. Doubt breeds dissent. Dissent breeds action.”

“Exactly.”

“And you?” Her sharp old eyes fixed on me, missing nothing. “How do you operate now that you’re outside the palace? You can’t just show up at meetings like this forever. Someone will notice. Someone will talk.”

I’d been thinking about this since my dismissal. Since the moment Elara had ordered me away with ice in her voice and tears in her eyes. The answer had come to me slowly, taking shape over the long walk through the city to this forgotten chapel.

“I become someone else.” The words felt heavy, important. “Someone the people can rally behind. A voice for those the crown has rendered powerless. For the families who’ve lost everything to royal greed and noble indifference.”

“The Rendered Voice,” Dmitri said, understanding immediately. His eyes lit up with the idea.

“Just The Voice.” I shook my head. “Simple. Direct. Someone who speaks for the people, not some fancy title. I’ll wear a mask, keep my identity hidden. Let them wonder who I am, where I came from, why I care. That way when I’m exposed eventually, and I will be, it’s only a matter of time, it’ll be more powerful. More meaningful. The queen’s own former guard, the man who almost assassinated her. Make it seem like she’s just like her father.” I knew this bitter truth, Elara might turn out to be a better queen and a better person than her parents but that wouldn’t bring back the years of suffering my people went through and it wouldn’t bring back my parents from their grave.

I looked at my team, the irony wasn’t lost on any of them. I could see it in their faces. The symmetry of it. The poetry.

Marcus grinned, a rare sight.

We spent the next hour planning specifics in that cold, crumbling chapel. The air was damp and musty, heavy with the weight of years of neglect. The candle burned lower and lower.

Timing for the grain storage attack. Who would do what, who would be where, who would take the lead. Dmitri volunteered for the actual breach, he was young, fast, knew the eastern market from childhood. Marcus would coordinate the lookouts, make sure no one got caught. Vera would handle the rumor network afterward, spreading the story in ways that made the crown look weak and ineffective.

We talked about networks of merchants and laborers who could spread rumors for us. People who had reason to hate the crown, who’d lost someone or something to royal policies. Safe houses where we could store supplies and meet in secret, places the palace guards didn’t know about or had forgotten.

Through it all, I felt Lena’s eyes on me. Cold. Assessing. Hurt beneath the professionalism she’d wrapped around herself like armor.

I’d broken something between us tonight. Something that might have been salvageable before, something that might have healed with time and careful words. But now it was shattered, scattered across the floor of this chapel like the broken pieces of a vase.

And I couldn’t even regret it properly because my mind kept drifting back to Elara. To the way she’d looked standing in that corridor, ordering me away while tears gathered in her eyes that she refused to let fall. To the exhaustion I’d seen in her face these past weeks.

No. I was seeing things that weren’t there. Projecting meaning onto innocent gestures because I wanted a reason to believe she needed me. Wanted a reason to go back.

Finally, assignments were made. Everyone knew their roles, their timing, their responsibilities. The meeting began to break up, members of The Rendered slipping out one by one, disappearing into the night through different exits. Marcus went first, then Dmitri.

Vera paused at the door, looked back at me with those knowing eyes. “Be careful, boy. Love makes fools of us all. But hate can do worse.” Then she was gone too.

Lena was the last to leave. She stood at the chapel door, one hand on the rotting wood, looking back at me one final time. The candle was almost out now.

“She’s sick every morning,” Lena said, her voice carefully neutral. Like she was reporting weather or supply movements. “Barely eating. Exhausted all the time. Mood swings that go from rage to tears in moments. I’ve been watching her for weeks.”

My heart stuttered in my chest. Skipped a beat. Then another.

“Could be stress,” Lena continued, watching my face like a hawk watches prey. “Could be the pressure of ruling. Could be the weight of everything falling apart around her.” She paused, letting the silence stretch. “Or it could be something else entirely. Something that would explain a lot of things. Her behavior. Her moods.”

I couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.

“Draw your own conclusions.” Lena’s voice was flat, but her eyes held something I couldn’t read. “You’re smart enough to figure it out..”

Then she was gone, the door closing behind her with quiet finality. Her footsteps faded into the night, swallowed by darkness and distance.

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