Ten years passed like water carving stone.
I was no longer a girl with a collar. I was a name behind closed doors. A shadow that didn't need to announce itself. Mira didn't introduce me anymore. She didn't need to. If I stood behind her, something important was about to end.
Her mother had been gone for years. Died when Mira was barely a girl. Poison, grief, or both.. no one ever said aloud. But Mira had been promised the title of Lady of Letters when she came of age.
Then the court broke its promise
Gave the seal to a quiet man. One of their own. Loyal. Predictable.
Mira said nothing.
But the silence stretched for months.
Until Bendragon came.
------
The night of the coup was quiet. A stillness before thunder.
Elarith's palace was carved from pale stone. Every step echoed judgment. Mira walked it with paper in one hand, a hidden blade in the other.
Jason Bendragon was waiting in the wings. Not yet king. But already, people bowed when he entered. He promised Mira her title. Her seal. Her inheritance.
He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have to.
He placed a ring on her desk.. gold, with the old seal of Letters.
"This belonged to your mother," he said. "And tomorrow, it belongs to you."
She didn't smile. She simply nodded. Then he left the room.
------
I followed her through the servant corridors that night.
My task was clean. Two advisers. Both had spoken against Mira's claim. Both still alive.
I wore red under my cloak. Mira's idea.
"So they remember who carved the silence," she said.
I slit the first one's throat while he read scripture. The second I found asleep.
He never woke up.
------
The halls echoed like they remembered every secret we never said.
I have seen Jason Bendragon only couple of times. One more time the day Mira's mother died and he arrived unannounced..
no crown, no blessing, just a stare that sliced through bloodlines and inheritance alike.
The way he looked at her then... It wasn't kingly. It was colder.
Like he saw something unfinished. Something useful.
She bowed that day. He didn't.
-----
When Bendragon entered the throne room at dawn, Mira was already there.
She didn't speak.
He stepped over blood of his father and old power, sat on the throne, and said:
"Divinity has remembered this land."
-----
Later, I found her in the garden. Alone.
The ring was on her hand now. The papers signed. Her new seal glinted in the sun.
But her voice was cold.
"I gave him a kingdom," she said. "And he gave me what should have been mine to begin with."
She didn't say his name. She never did.
But the way she watched the sky that day... not in awe, but in calculation.. I knew the crown had made a mistake.
They didn't give her power.
They delayed it.
And now?
------
I stood beside her. Unmoving. Obedient.
Because that's what I am
Not her voice.
Her blade.