Page 78 of The Crown's Awakening
“I expect you to behave as a queen would,” she continues. “You will be cold when it is required. You will be calculating when it is necessary. You will make decisions that serve the crown, not your comfort.”
The weight of this does not feel too heavy. It feels just right. I lift my chin.
“You are in charge,” she says, her voice lowering slightly, not softer, but more focused. “Do not allow anyone to make you feel small. Not in word. Not in action. Not in implication. If they attempt it, you will correct them.”
I draw in a slow breath, holding her stare as the meaning of it takes hold. “I understand.”
Her attention remains on me, assessing, before she inclines her head once. “Rest,” she says. “Tomorrow will not be forgiving.”
She turns and leaves, her presence withdrawing from the corridor as quickly as it had filled it. I remain there after she leaves, the quiet closing in around me, her words moving through my thoughts, aligning with everything else the day has demanded.
I briefly wonder if I should tell Aunt Petunis about my intunar ability or that I am carrying two children, not one. But Jularin’s voice returns, quieter, but no less certain.Keep it to yourself.
I exhale slowly, letting the tension ease from my shoulders as I reach a decision that feels less like certainty and more like survival.
Not yet. For now, it remains mine.
When I return to my chambers, sleep comes quickly.
In my dream, everything is different. Warmth replaces the cold, the tension in my body loosening in a way that feels almost unfamiliar. Colsar is there, as he had been when nothing stood between us. Our children are beside us, small and laughing, their voices bright and untouched by everything that has come before this moment.
I let myself stay there.
Sleep pulls me deeper, and even that fades.
CHAPTER 27
The Education
The next day, Aunt Petunis leads me past the main training hall and into a narrower chamber set deeper within the palace. The walls are reinforced, the light dim and contained. There are no attendants. No observers. Only the two of us.
She moves to the rack along the wall without explanation, selects something, and returns to me. A wooden staff. She holds it out.
“This is your trainer,” she says.
I take it. The difference is immediate. No hum. No pull. No quiet force shaping my grip toward something easier. Only weight. Only balance. Only what I choose to do with it.
She watches my hands adjust and says nothing.
"Again," she says, before I have done anything.
I move through the first sequence, the staff cutting through the air in controlled arcs, my footing steady, my grip firm. The motion is familiar enough that my body finds it quickly, settling into the rhythm of it.
She lets me finish. "You are mediocre at best." The words come without force, which somehow makes them sting worse. She pauses, letting them sit. "Mediocrity is unacceptable."
My fingers tighten around the wood.
She steps forward and adjusts my grip with precise minimal correction, two fingers repositioning my hand in a way that changes the entire angle of the staff. "A staff is not a blade," she says. "If you fight it like one you will lose it." She taps the end lightly against the floor. "This is reach. This is control. You command distance with it."
She steps back. "Again."
I move. This time I shorten the arcs, control the extension, feel the length of it rather than forcing it. The staff becomes less about striking and more about where I am in relation to everything else.
"Better," she says. "Not good."
We repeat it. Again and again, each pass stripping something away. Force. Excess. Assumption. What remains is smaller and tighter and harder to maintain, which is precisely the point.
"You rely on reaction," she says as I reset. "Reaction is slow. You will act, and others will respond to you."
