The palace of Elareth had been darker these past days than even the cruelty had made it. With King Magnus away at war, Queen Isadora ruled the halls with her venomous tongue. The handmaidens bore her wrath in silence, their arms striped from lashes given for imagined faults. The slaves moved like shadows, never daring to breathe too loudly. Iridessa, with child in her, was her favored target. She was scolded for slow steps, struck for silence, accused of insolence when she bowed her head. But Iridessa endured without a sound. She did not weep or plead. And that quiet strength stung Isadora more deeply than any rebellion could have.
Then the sky changed. Clouds gathered, low and swollen, as if the heavens themselves had come to mourn. The war had ended, but no victory horn split the air. Instead, a long, low blast groaned from the kingdom gates — a sound that made every villager stop in their tracks. It was the horn of defeat.
They came staggering through the gates: bruised, bloodied, broken soldiers. Some leaned on staves, others dragged themselves on bandaged legs. Behind them, a cart creaked forward, pulled not by beasts but by two wounded men whose arms still dripped blood. Upon that cart lay a shrouded body, heavy as stone. The murmurs spread like wind, something was wrong, very wrong.
The horn was sounded again, this time to summon the palace. From the upper steps, the lords emerged, grim and tight-lipped. Servants pressed together in silence, their eyes darting between one another.
Isadora herself swept forward in her gold silks, her gaze sharp as a hawk's.
Miri hovered behind Iridessa, both women pale with the same uneasy knowing.
When the cart was dragged to the courtyard's center, the soldiers stumbled to their knees. One spoke, his voice cracked and mournful.
"My lords… my queen… the king is dead."
A gasp, sharp and scattered, broke the hush.
"This," the soldier went on, laying a trembling hand upon the shroud, "is the body of King Magnus."
Silence gripped the courtyard, as though the air itself had been taken away.
The second soldier raised his head, his words strained but clear. "The King of Deyvra told us—he ought to have burned our king's body, and sent fire upon all Elareth. But he would not. He said, 'Take him back. Bury your dead.' And so… we have brought him here."
The cloth was pulled back. Gasps rippled again.
Magnus's face, once cruel and sneering, was pale and stiff, lips parted slightly as if in protest even in death. His crown was gone. His body bruised and broken, and worse, one arm severed at the shoulder — a king returned not whole, but shamed.
Queen Isadora's steps faltered as she came forward. For once her tongue was still. Her hand reached, shaking, and touched the cold cheek of the son she had raised into a tyrant. Her knees buckled. The queen of ice and cruelty crumpled to the ground. A wail tore from her throat, raw and broken, a cry that had not been heard in Elareth before, not even when King Rael died. She clutched the body, pressed her face to his chest, and wept until the sound carried across the square like a curse.
But none answered her grief.
The lords stood unmoved, their faces unreadable. All save Lord Brennor, whose tears slid openly down his beard. The others stared as if waiting for thunder.
Iridessa stood with her hands folded over her belly, eyes fixed on the lifeless body of her husband, but no tear stained her cheek. Her lips did not quiver, nor did Miri at her side weep.
The servants did not weep either. Instead they stared with a strange calm, some with mouths pressed tight as if holding back laughter, others with eyes that gleamed faintly in the dim light. The king who had beaten, cursed, and destroyed them now lay as broken as the men he dragged to war. His death brought no mourning in their hearts. Only silence.
Magnus the Cruel was gone.
The horn of defeat was lowered. Clouds pressed heavy over the palace roof, and the courtyard was filled with a stillness unlike mourning — it was the stillness of release, the first breath after a storm that had lasted far too long.
And as Queen Isadora wailed over her son's corpse, the kingdom of Elareth, did not echo her grief.
-
Days passed and the kingdom sank into a hush that was almost a new thing—an absence that tasted of dust and waiting.
In the villages, mothers stoked small fires and wiped their faces raw with cloths, trying to quiet children who asked for fathers who would not return.
At the palace windows curtains hung still; servants moved with the slow, careful motions of those who have nothing left to hope for.
Isadora shut herself away. Even the court whispered that the queen who had once torn others with her tongue now sat with lips numb and swollen from crying. Her chamber grew staler by the hour; her hands, once quick to strike, trembled when she reached for anything. In her solitude she did not summon comfort—only a small, animal grief that made her lean into the memory of the son she had made monstrous.
Iridessa took refuge in the other kind of silence. In her chamber, she let one corner of her mouth lift—half smile, half prayer—as if the palace itself had finally learned to be quieter. She touched the swell at her center, fingers light as if afraid she might startle the life within. Perhaps, she thought, the child would not be born to that same cruelty. Perhaps the palace would not be the same place to which a child could be dragged.
Then a carriage came; not the slow cart of a country merchant but a tidy vehicle bearing the crest of Velmora on its flank. Soldiers accompanied it—men in foreign livery, brass dulled and reins slack from travel. They did not announce themselves beyond the single, clean clang of iron on the palace gate. Two of them walked behind a small cart; bundled atop it was a body wrapped in coarse cloth, edges stained dark where blood had dried. A scrap of paper, sealed with cold wax, was pinned to the cloth.
A maid, startled in the corridor outside Isadora's chamber, ran in and caught at the post. "Princess Evelyn—" she screamed, voice cracking. The name was a blade through the thick air.
Isadora heard the scream as if from a long tunnel. She rose, skin paling at once, and stumbled to the doorway.
The maid could only point with a shaking hand toward the yard; Isadora shoved past her and ran.
Iridessa and Miri, who had been walking in the antechamber, followed after—some instinct drew them out.
The lords who had been gathered in hushed counsel also spilled into the courtyard. The palace emptied itself into the open like a held breath finally let go.
The cart stood in the middle of the yard. The foreign soldiers fell to their knees with a discipline that was almost reverence. One of them straightened and spoke in a voice wasted thin by travel.
"Your Majesty," he said, and the words steady. "Princess Evelyn of Elareth is dead."
Hands flew to mouths. A dozen different noises met that simple declaration: disbelief, a low animal intake of breath, the rustle of linen.
The second soldier drew the cloth back so there could be no doubt.
Evelyn's face was pale beneath the gloom, her hair clinging in dirt, a smear of dried blood at the temple. The sealed paper lay upon her breast.
Isadora stepped forward as if in a trance. "Evelyn!" she cried—one long sound that opened into a wail. She made for the body as if the world could be righted by touch alone, but her legs failed and she slumped into the arms of the nearest maid.
The women lifted and bore her back to her chambers, murmuring prayers and commands. She clung and wept, a storm finally freed.
Lord Hale moved before the others. He broke the wax and unfolded the note, his voice steady as he read aloud so that even those who pretended not to listen must hear.
"Princess Evelyn of Elareth," he read, "did plot murder against Queen Aurora of Velmora. For this deed she was brought to punishment."
A single, stunned silence answered him. Then, like a hand smacking a drum, questions rose.
"Princess Evelyn went to Velmora?"
Miri pressed fingers to her lips. "Is Aurora safe?" she whispered, the fear sharp and immediate. It was the only thing that mattered in that moment—whether Aurora still drew breath.
Iridessa's small smile faded into something colder. She straightened, folding her hands over the soft curve of her belly, and said, level and sure.
"I told you she did not travel cleanly. Evelyn's steps were not the steps of a right one."
A murmur threaded through the ranks of lords. One voice—thin and high—asked, "Did she go to Velmora then? Did she seek the queen's courts?"
The lords went to the court chambers, the talk thickened and the men argued, moved by rumor and hot anger where sorrow should have sat.
Lord Brennor's voice rose, sharp and defensive. "Velmora has every reason to slander us. Princess Evelyn would never—this could be a lie to shame our kingdom."
Another lord, blunt and weary from the last days' losses, shot back, "we all saw Evelyn's hatred. She had no love for Aurora. Who else would travel with such intent?"
Brennor would not be satisfied. He pressed the matter, insisting that the Velmoran story required scrutiny.
The lord's tempers started to unspool when Iridessa, who had been strangely quiet, went white, then flushed, and bolted. She came into the chamber not with hesitation but with purpose—a scrap of paper clenched in her hand.
She said nothing at first; the chamber stilled at her entrance. Then she thrust the sheet toward Lord Hale. "I found this in Queen Isadora's chambers," she said, breathless. "It was hidden in her wardrobe.The hand is Evelyn's —she wrote from Velmora. Read."
Lord Hale took the page with fingers that did not tremble. He read, his voice low so everyone leaned in. The words were not long—not the flourish of a noble, but a plan, cold and precise: Evelyn spoke of plans to have Aurora killed.
Brennor's protests died in his throat as if someone had squeezed the sound out of him. The court chamber, already raw from grief and dread, settled into a hard, factual hush.
Lord Hale, that same steady man who had earlier given voice to the Velmoran dispatch, looked up and said something that fell like a verdict among the ranks.
"The wickedness of this house has come home," he said. "What was sown in private has risen here to be reaped."
What followed was a ritual of small things: the body—despised or pitied—was placed aside and later given what passable rites the palace would grant a princess who had been judged elsewhere.
In the corners, servants whispered that justice had worn many faces.
Iridessa folded herself into a great, quiet steadiness that unsettled those who mistook placidity for weakness. Miri hovered at her mistress's side, eyes darting for any sign of danger that might come from Inside the palace.
Isadora could not bear two funerals. The first had hollowed something out of her; the second hollowed it further until there was nothing left to hold grief with. For days she refused food, answering only when someone pressed a cup to her lips. Her wails turned to small, muttered complaints, then to long silences. The court ministers tried to shield her—prepared speeches and soft words—but the queen who had cut others into quiet submission now sank inward as if grief were a blade turned upon herself.
When the burials were done—the king wrapped and taken, a private thing only for the lords and a few servants; the princess carried out under the watchful eyes of strangers—Isadora's heart lost its claim.
The maids found her one dawn with a face that had gone drawn and gray. She lay as if asleep, but the breath she took was paper-thin.
They called for the healers; hands fussed and priestly words passed like litany, but the wound was not a thing the healer's salves could touch. Perhaps it was the strain of too many winters; perhaps it was the sudden unravelling of a life ruled by control; perhaps grief, left to roost, ate her down from the inside.
When the chamber was quiet and the candle gutters burned low, Isadora's chest stopped its small work. The palace shut its doors and the wailing that rose for her was less a cry than the last tired echo of a long cruelty.
Thus the royal family hollowed almost at once: a king, a princess, and then a queen who had ruled in fear and forged that fear into others.
The kingdom lay heavier then; the silence that had come after defeat and death stayed on, but now it carried something else too—an edge of consequence. Where once the palace had bruised the people, now the people peered at the empty windows and wondered which hand would reach for power next.