Page 103 of The Crown's Awakening
I dress in silence.
The fabric settles over my skin in careful layers, the weight of it grounding me as I fasten each tie and smooth each fold into place.
The mirror catches me as I dress, reflecting something more composed than I feel.
A queen.
The word does not sit easily, but it does not slide away either.
Behind me, Colsar stirs. The movement is slight, a shift of breath, a quiet sound that follows it. I glance back just long enough to see his eyes open, unfocused at first, then finding me where I stand.
“You’re leaving,” he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
“For now,” I answer softly.
His eyes move over me, taking in the dress, the way my hair has been pulled back, the distance already forming between the bed and where I stand. “You won’t be gone long.”
It is not a question.
“No,” I say. “Not for long."
Colsar watches me for a moment, something unreadable passing through his expression before it settles into something steadier. “Then I will be here when you return.”
“I know.” I move back to him then, not out of hesitation but because I choose to, leaning down just enough to press a quiet kiss to his forehead, careful of the bandages, careful of the space where pain still lives beneath his skin. His hand lifts, brushing briefly against my wrist before falling away again.
“Be careful,” he murmurs.
“I will.”
The corridors are already awake. Servants move quickly. Guards stand at their posts with a tension that does not belong to routine, their eyes more focused than they had been the day before.
Word has spread that my husband has returned to me. And with it, the possibility that I may one day control two kingdoms.
I walk through it without slowing, my steps measured, my posture held in a way that feels less like performance and more like necessity. Every glance, every shift in the air around me, carries something unspoken, something that waits to see how I will move within it.
The throne room doors are already open when I arrive. Light spills through the high windows, pale and unyielding, illuminating the long stretch of floor that leads to the dais. It does not feel empty.
It feels expectant.
Petunis stands at the base of the steps, her staff already in hand, her presence already claiming the room. Her attention shifts to me the moment I cross the threshold, her expression unchanged, but something in the way she studies me suggests she is measuring more than my arrival.
“You are on time,” she says.
“I said I would be.”
“That is not the same thing.”
I do not respond.
She inclines her head slightly, as though acknowledging something that does not need to be named. “Good,” she says. “We begin now.”
I step forward, the distance between us closing with each measured step, the weight of the room settling more firmlyinto place as I approach the dais. The throne rises behind her, unchanged, unmoved, waiting.
“Today,” Petunis continues, turning slightly so that her voice carries across the room as though it were already full, “you will learn to hold power without letting it consume you.”
Her staff taps once against the marble.
“You will learn how to use it without announcing it.”
