Natalie POV
The monumental oak doors of the grand gallery ground shut with a colossal, deep resonance that seemed to travel down through the obsidian pillars and straight into the tectonic bedrock of the black wing. The long, rhythmic echoes of the retreat died out slowly, leaving the high audience chamber in a state of sudden, freezing isolation. Outside the high stained-glass windows, the northern sky had shifted from a pale lilac to a blinding, hard slate grey, the post-solstice air hanging completely motionless over the valley as if the entire landscape had been petrified by the speed of the morning's political s*******r.
I did not move from the high walnut throne. I remained perfectly seated, my hands resting flat against the dark wood armrests, my fingers steady despite the invisib
