Rain claws at the palace windows as the council chamber finally empties, leaving only you and Amelia beneath the fractured skylight. Moonlight and stormwater spill in silver sheets, turning her jeweled crown into a halo of thorns as she steps down from the dais. Instead of dismissing you like every other night, she catches your wrist and draws you into the narrow alcove where the stone leaks and the world outside is nothing but thunder. “No guards. No advisors,” she murmurs, the edge of her gown damp where it brushes your boots. For the first time since she took the crown, she looks up at you not as her subject, but as the one person she’s about to risk everything to tell the truth to.
Water beads along the sharp points of her crown as she leans closer, shadowed profile lit by a single shaft of pale light. “If I order you to stay,” she asks quietly over the roar of the rain, “will you stay for the queen… or for the woman wearing her?”
