Chapter 96: Chapter 97: The suspicion

Elara’s POV

I did not want to watch her.

I resisted it for another day. Maybe two. I told myself I was being paranoid. That everything Lena was doing had an innocent explanation.

I watched anyway.

Because the alternative was continuing to ignore something I could feel pressing against the underside of everything. And I was the queen. Ignoring things that pressed against the underside of everything had consequences I could not afford.

I started small.

Nothing obvious. Nothing that would alert her. Just paying attention. Noticing the things I had been telling myself not to notice.

The absences. The way she was gone for stretches that she explained with small, ordinary reasons.

Each reason made sense on its own. But together, they added up to something I could not quite see the shape of. A pattern of absence. A rhythm of disappearance that had not been there before.

The containment. The way she moved now, careful and measured, like someone who had been told to take up less space. The way she thought before she spoke. The way she looked at me sometimes, when she thought I was not watching, with something in her eyes that I could not read.

The acoustic wall.

I had noticed it weeks ago, before the investigation, before the waiting room, before everything became complicated. The way sound carried from my chambers into the antechamber. I had mentioned it to Lena once, in passing. Anyone standing there could hear everything, I had said. We should have someone look at it.

Nothing had been done. I had forgotten about it.

Now I remembered.

I tested it one afternoon.

Corvus was in my chambers, going over the latest reports on the investigation.

Then I asked him to wait.

I walked out to the antechamber. The space was small, empty, nothing remarkable about it. I stood where Lena had been standing the last time I saw her there. The spot near the door, where the wall curved slightly, where the acoustics shifted.

“Your Majesty?” Corvus’s voice came through clearly. I could hear every word.

I stepped back into my chambers. “Say something else.”

He frowned. “What kind of something?”

“Anything. Keep talking.”

I walked back to the antechamber. His voice followed me. Clear. Distinct. Every word.

I stood in that spot for a long moment.

Then I went back to my desk and sat down and did not move for a while.

She had been standing there for weeks. Months, maybe. Standing in the spot where sound carried, where she could hear everything that was said in my chambers. Everything.

The council meetings I had discussed with Corvus. The plans I had been turning over in my mind. The decisions I had not yet made public. The things I had said only to him, in private, in what I had thought was confidence.

She had heard all of it.

And someone had been feeding that information to Petrov. To the council. To whoever was pre-empting my decisions, raising my measures before I could raise them myself.

The shape of it was starting to become clear. I did not like the shape.

I did not confront her.

Not yet. Because confronting her without proof was the wrong move.

And because part of me, the part that was not the queen but just Elara, was not ready. Was still hoping there was another explanation

Maybe she had not realized the sound carried. Maybe she had just been standing there without meaning to, lost in thought, not listening, not reporting.

Maybe.

I did not believe it. But I was not ready to let go of the possibility that I was wrong.

I needed to know how far it went. Who else was involved. What had already been passed on.

Either way, I could not let her know that I knew. Not yet.

I sat with the cold geometry of it and made myself think like a queen instead of a friend.

It was one of the hardest things I had done.

Corvus was still in my chambers. He had been waiting while I stood in the antechamber, while I sat at my desk, while I worked through the shape of what I had discovered.

He did not ask what I had been doing. He was good at that. He knew when to push and when to wait.

“Corvus,” I said.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

I took a breath. “I need you to add someone to the list of people being quietly monitored.”

His expression did not change. “Who?”

I told him.

He looked at me for a moment. Just a moment. Something moved across his face, surprise, maybe, or acknowledgment, or the particular weight of a man who had been carrying a suspicion and had just had it confirmed.

Then he nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

He did not ask why.

I was grateful for that.

He left after that. The door closed behind him. The room was quiet.

I sat alone in my chambers, the tea Lena had brought cold on the desk beside me. The writing desk was closed. The left drawer was closed. Everything was as it should be.

I did not know when it had started. I did not know why. I did not know if she had been forced or if she had chosen it or if there was something in between that I could not see.

I picked up my pen.

There was work to do. Reports to review. Decisions to make. A kingdom to run. The dead girl was still dead, and the arrests were still happening, and the council was still moving faster than I could think, and somewhere out there, the Voice was still speaking, and somewhere in this palace, Lena was going about her day, pretending nothing had changed.

I dipped the pen in the ink. I wrote.

The words came slowly, the way they did when my mind was not fully in the room. But they came.

I thought about the acoustic wall. The spot where sound carried. The way she had stood there, listening, hearing everything I said.

I thought about the council meetings. The measures that had been raised before I could raise them. The decisions that had been made without me.

I thought about the pregnancy. The secret I had shared with her, the one person I had trusted with it, the one person who could destroy me with that knowledge if she chose to.

I did not know if she had passed it on. I did not know if she would.

But I knew I could not assume she had not.

I wrote until my hand cramped. Until the words blurred in front of me. Until the candle burned low and the room grew dark.

Then I set down the pen and sat in the silence.

The tea was cold. The desk was closed. The left drawer was still closed.

I thought about the girl who used to sit across from me. The one who had made me laugh. The one who had been my friend.

I did not know where she had gone. I did not know if she was coming back.

But I knew I could not wait for her.

I picked up the pen again. There was work to do.

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