Chapter 24: A Queen Without a Crown
Alaric
They spoke of her after she left.
Even I remained silent. Just to hear them speak her name.
“She is striking,” my father said first, his voice low as he turned the signet ring slowly on his finger, the motion deliberate. “Not simply beautiful… composed. Refined. As if she’s been trained for court life.”
“Yet no one trained her,” my mother murmured. Her eyes weren’t on the doorway Annora had exited—but on me. Always on me. “She doesn’t yet understand the sway she holds. That is what makes her dangerous. But also… malleable.”
“She carries herself well,” said Elder Gavriel, his tone smoother than the rest, laced with something dangerously close to admiration. “There was elegance in her bearing. No trembling hands. No downcast eyes.”
“Not arrogance either,” added Elder Seraphine. “There was no need. She did not posture. She simply… was.”
“She did not flinch beneath your gaze, Your Majesty,” murmured another. “Nor ours. She looked at each of us as though she’d already weighed what our favor meant and found it lacking.”
Still, I said nothing.
Then came the voice that always cut through calm like a blade.
“She did not stand as a servant,” Vasilis said, his voice flat, yet final. “She stood as one already chosen. Even if no title has yet been spoken aloud.”
Several heads turned to me then.
Waiting.
I met each gaze. Held it. Blinked at none.
“She wore the dress you gave her,” my mother said softly. Too softly. “The one you had designed from Vaelith silk. And the garnet at her throat... an unmistakable mark. You meant for us to see it.”
I didn’t speak.
Because they already knew.
But then, from the shadowed alcove where he’d remained, half leaning, wholly unimpressed. Edric pushed off the wall and stepped forward.
“Well,” he drawled, voice light but laced with warning, “you all seem rather invested in a girl who was, until very recently, folding linens and fetching tea.”
A few narrowed eyes turned on him. He smiled anyway.
“She walks in, gives you ten seconds of silence and a curtsy, and suddenly she’s a threat? Or a queen?” He tilted his head. “Fascinating how quick you are to crown her… or cut her down. Makes one wonder what truly unsettled you.”
“Prince Edric,” Vasilis said with cold amusement. “We were not asking your opinion.”
“No,” Edric said, eyes flicking to mine for the briefest second. “But perhaps you should. Because you see her poise and worry she’s dangerous. I see it and know she’s trying not to fall apart.”
He took a step closer to the council table.
“You confuse grace with strategy. She wasn’t performing. She was surviving.”
Silence.
A long, heavy beat.
“She’s not like the others,” Edric added, softer now. “That’s not a threat. That’s a truth. And if that bothers you, perhaps the problem isn’t her.”
Clotilda’s silence filled the room like a spill of wine on parchment, quiet but staining everything.
Her hands remained folded in her lap. Her spine, rigid as drawn steel. And though her lips curved into a faint, courtly smile, I saw the war behind it.
The tremor at the corner of her jaw.
The way her fingers tightened.
The breath she held just a moment too long.
She was seething.
Not at me. Not truly.
At Annora.
At the way that girl walked into this chamber, unblooded, unbound, unbejeweled save for what I gave her and somehow walked out untouched.
No one called her unfit.
No one dismissed her as beneath me.
And that was the deepest cut Clotilda had taken in years.
She hated Annora’s poise more than if she’d sobbed at my feet. Hated that the Council, her Council, had nodded, murmured, praised.
Worst of all? She hated that she couldn’t object without sounding petty.
Not yet.
But the silence said it all.
The lines had shifted.
And Clotilda did not lose wars.
Not without drawing blood first.
Clotilda
They were enchanted. Every last one of them.
Old fools, Swayed by the bow of her head, the softness of her voice, the deceptive sway of her hips beneath that cream-drenched gown.
His gown.
Chosen by his hand. Draped like devotion. Tailored to skim her curves like a lover’s touch, the silk whispering one truth with every step she took…Mine.
And none of them questioned it. Not truly. Not until I made them.
Not with accusation. That would’ve been too bold, too crude, too... obvious. Alaric could swat away an accusation with a flick of his tongue.
But suggestion?
Suspicion?
Those were far more enduring.
They didn’t need to be proven. Only planted.
It was just past midnight when I found Vasilis alone, his silhouette framed against the archway that overlooked the torchlit courtyard. He stood like a statue carved from dusk, back to me, always disinterested, always detached. As if the world itself had failed to entertain him.
But he listened.
He always listened.
I moved toward him without haste. I let my footsteps remain soundless. Graceful and intentional.
“She wore the garnet,” I murmured, voice feather-light, the words laced with casual curiosity. “An interesting choice, wouldn’t you agree?”
He didn’t answer.
I took a step closer. Just close enough that my perfume might reach him, jasmine and hemlock. Familiar and dangerous.
“The color is so… particular,” I mused aloud, tracing the line of the balcony with my fingers. “It suits her, naturally of course. But it draws the eye, doesn’t it? Right to the neck.”
I paused deliberately. Letting the thought settle like ash on snow.
Then a slow, thoughtful smile spread across my lips.
“Right where he could have bitten her…” I let the sentence trail off, like a breath exhaled into cold air. “But I’m sure it’s nothing.”
His head tilted by a mere degree. The smallest sign of acknowledgement.
Encouraging.
“I did notice something peculiar, though,” I went on, feigning a pensive tone. “She held herself stiffly. Just a touch. Not enough to concern most. But enough to wonder…” I let my gaze drift outward, toward the blackened trees beyond the torchlight. “As if she were… concealing something. A wound, perhaps. Or a scar.”
A beat of silence.
Then, barely visible, there was a shift.
So subtle. The smallest motion in his jaw. A glint in the eyes that had long since grown dull.
Hook set.
I offered nothing more. No claim. No plea. No proof.
Just a sweet, satisfied smile.
And I left him there, beneath stone and starlight. Armed with nothing but curiosity sharpened into suspicion.
By morning, the Council would summon Alaric again.
And I?
I would sit with perfect poise in the gallery above.
Waiting.