DARIAN

The silence is unbearable.

I can still hear my own words ringing in my head; Exile me. Strip me of my title. Just let her live.

They hang in the air like smoke, thick and choking, filling every corner of the throne room.

No one moves. No one breathes. The world feels frozen, caught between one heartbeat and the next.

My father’s eyes are on me. Cold. Calculating. But there’s something else there too, something I’ve never seen before. Not anger. Not disdain. Something heavier.

He exhales slowly, the sound loud in the stillness.

Then he does the unthinkable.

He pulls the sword away from Iris’s throat.

The crowd...