Stella
The council chamber had never felt like it belonged to me. Not really.
Even after the crown. Even after the vows. Even after the blood and the battles and the rebuilding. It still felt like a room where men made decisions and women survived them.
Today, it felt worse. It felt like a room where they were deciding how much of me was worth saving.
I used to command rooms like this. Not with volume. With presence. With certainty. Now I felt like a ghost at my own table.
They weren't looking to me for instruction. They were looking at me for damage assessment. Hunter's jaw ticked when he looked at me. Kael measured my posture, my breathing, the steadiness of my gaze. Lorraine wasn't looking at me at all — she was looking around me, as if something stood just behind my shoulder.
Cas
