Long Live the Crown
The bells rang at dawn.
Not sweetly.
Not in celebration.
They rang like war drums.
Like metal striking bone.
Serena stood at the edge of the antechamber, wrapped in ivory silk, her collar gleaming against her throat. Her hair was swept up, her eyes rimmed in kohl, her mouth set in a line of determination.
She looked like a queen.
Even if they would never call her one.
Princess Elara adjusted the folds of Serena's cape with delicate fingers.
"I've never seen you so still," she said softly.
Serena looked at her reflection.
"I'm not still," she whispered. "I'm just bracing."
"For the crown?"
"For the knives."
In the grand hall, Damián stood alone beneath the high arch of the ancestral crest.
Candlelight flickered off the steel crown that sat on the red cushion before him—sleek, sharp, carved with Virelia's sigil: a serpent coiled through a sword.
He didn't blink.
Didn't fidget.
He waited.
And when Serena stepped into the room, every noble turned.
They stared.
Not at the crown.
Not at the ceremony.
At her.
The rebel at the prince's side.
The ruin they couldn't touch.
Because she had already been claimed.
The Archbishop raised the crown with trembling hands.
"Do you, Prince Damián Alaric Vireaux, swear to protect this land, this people, this legacy?"
Damián did not look at the priest.
He looked at Serena.
"I swear."
"Do you vow to rule with justice, with strength, and—"
"I vow to destroy anything that threatens what is mine."
The Archbishop hesitated.
Then lowered the crown onto his head.
It settled against Damián's brow like a weapon remembering its master.
Applause rippled through the chamber.
Soft. Reluctant.
But it didn't matter.
He was king now.
In every way that mattered.
But then—
The room shifted.
A movement near the back of the hall.
A servant stepped forward with a scroll.
An urgent message, delivered silently to the council dais.
Whispers broke.
The tension cracked.
Serena stepped forward, pulse pounding.
Damián caught her arm.
His grip was iron.
"Wait."
She looked at him.
His jaw was tight.
Eyes unreadable.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Trouble," he said.
Then, louder, to the room: "Read it."
The High Chancellor opened the scroll with shaking fingers.
His face went pale.
"Your Majesty," he said, "there has been a breach."
Silence.
"Where?"
"The West Wing. The old chapel. The vault is empty."
Serena felt the blood drain from her face.
"The vault?" she whispered.
Elara stepped forward. "What was in the vault?"
Damián's voice was a low growl. "Letters. From the old king. Secrets."
He looked at Serena.
Then at the room.
And then he said:
"Someone is trying to start a war."