Chapter 21: Time
The cold marble of the council chamber floor seeped through the thin soles of Sloane’s slippers. She ignored it, her attention nailed to the trade minister droning on about flax import quotas. Sunlight, thick and slow as honey, cut through the high windows, illuminating dancing dust motes and the frankly impressive bald spot gleaming on Minister Bray’s head. Four months. Four months of this. Of her own voice, sharp and clear, cutting through bureaucratic fog. Of ledgers that made sense. Of problems with solutions that could be inked onto parchment and filed away.
Her place was cemented. They listened to her now. Not just because she was the Princess of Eldoria, Ronan’s wife, the mother of the heir. But because she was right. More often than not, she was right. She’d memorized the tax codes, the lineage of every minor lord, the yield of every granary in Solas. It was a fortress she’d built around herself, stone by stone, fact by fact.
The doors at the far end of the chamber groaned open. Ronan entered, his bootfalls a familiar, heavy rhythm on the stone. He didn’t take his seat at the head of the table. He came to stand behind her chair, his presence a sudden shift in the room’s atmosphere, like a barometer dropping before a storm. The minister’s voice faltered.
“A word, Sloane,” Ronan said. It wasn’t a request. His voice was low, but it carried the quiet authority of a landslide heard from a distance.
She didn’t look up from her notes. “We’re in the middle of the eastern flax review, Ronan. The tariffs are a mess.”
“It can wait.” The finality in his tone silenced the room more completely than a shout.
She placed her quill down with deliberate softness. She could feel the eyes of the council on her—the curiosity, the thinly veiled anticipation. A public argument was a spectator sport. She stood, her chair scraping loud in the silence. “Very well.”
She walked ahead of him, out of the council chamber, across the vaulted antechamber, and into the vast, echoing mouth of the throne room. The space was always dim, lit by sconces that threw wild, looming shadows up the painted ceiling where gods and heroes stared down, indifferent. Their footsteps echoed separately, out of sync.
He didn’t speak until they reached the dais, before the hulking mass of the Solas throne. It looked less like a seat and more like a cage fashioned from ancient, dark wood and black iron.
“Elara tells me you canceled the musician for Kael’s nursery this morning,” he said, getting straight to it. No preamble. Just the strike.
Sloane crossed her arms. “The man was incompetent. He played a lament for a victory march. He didn’t know the difference. I won’t have my— the heir’s ears filled with incorrect history.”
“Your what?” The words were a trap, laid calmly.
She didn’t step into it. “The heir’s.”
Ronan’s jaw tightened. He looked past her, at the empty throne. “He has a name. You gave it to him.”
“And it is on the proclamations, the lineage scrolls, and the royal seal. It serves its purpose.”
Months of this. Months of him trying to pry open a door she had welded shut. He would approach sideways, with reports of Kael’s progress—his weight gain, a smile that was probably gas, his apparent fascination with the pattern of light on the nursery ceiling. Sloane would receive the information as if it were a dispatch from a distant border: factual, to be noted, and filed. She had stopped visiting. She received the daily reports from Elara, read them, asked precise questions about his health and schedule, and moved on.
“His purpose,” Ronan said, turning his grey eyes back to her, “is not just to be a name on a scroll. He is not a treaty clause.”
“He’s the living embodiment of one,” she shot back, her voice echoing off the distant walls. “That is the reality. That is what keeps our nations from each other’s throats. My sentiment doesn’t factor into it. My presence in the nursery doesn’t secure the border.”
“Your absence does,” Ronan said, his voice dropping, gaining a gravelly heat. “It teaches him nothing. It teaches everyone else that the Crown Princess of Eldoria finds her own son… what? Distasteful? A burden?”
The word lanced through her, precise and cruel. “You know nothing about what I find.”
“I know you haven’t held him since the naming ceremony. I know you reroute your walks to avoid the garden where Elara takes him for air. I know you refer to him in council as ‘the infant prince’ like he’s a new tax.” He took a step closer. The scent of him—leather, iron, the cold stone of the castle—was suddenly overwhelming. “You built a wall, Sloane. I watched you do it. Brick by brick. But he’s on the other side of it. And so, it seems, am I.”
She laughed then, a short, sharp sound that bounced off the murals. “This isn’t about you. This is about practicality. About survival. I am doing my duty. Every conceivable part of it. I am here. I am governing. I produced an heir. What more do you want? Should I sit and rock him and sing lullabies while the southern barons plot and the treasury bleeds? Is that what makes a queen to you?”
“It’s what makes a person,” he snarled, the control slipping. He wasn’t the king in this moment. He was just a man, frustrated and tired. “He’s not a transaction. He’s a child. He makes noises. He smells like milk. He grabs your finger with a terrifying strength. That’s all he is right now. And you’re treating him like a flaw in a legal document.”
Her own control shattered. The cool façade she’d maintained for months cracked under the direct hit. “What do you want from me?” she shouted, the words ripping from her throat. “You want me to feel something? Fine. I feel everything. All the time. It’s like standing in a fire. And the moment I held him, that fire poured right into me, and I knew—I knew—if I let it, it would burn away everything else. Everything I am. Everything I’ve built. So I put it out. I smothered it. Because I can’t afford to be that person, Ronan. The person who cares that much. The person who could break that easily. You rule with your honor and your stoic duty. I have to rule with my head. Because my heart…” Her voice broke. She swallowed, forcing the next words out like shards of glass. “My heart is a liability. It always has been.”
The silence after her outburst was absolute, more profound than any noise. The shadows around them seemed to deepen, the throne looming like a judging beast.
Ronan stared at her. The anger had drained from his face, replaced by something harder to define—a weary understanding, a shared bleakness. He didn’t move to comfort her. He didn’t try to touch her.
“So that’s it then,” he said finally, his voice hollow. “You’ve sentenced yourself. And him. To a life of ledgers and correct historical marches.”
“It’s the only way I know how to do this,” she whispered, the fight gone out of her, leaving only a cold, stark exhaustion.
He nodded slowly, as if confirming a dire prognosis. “Then do it. Rule with your head. Be the perfect princess. Cement your place.” He turned away from her, towards the dark mouth of the corridor that led to the rest of the castle, to his study, to the nursery. He paused, not looking back. “But understand this. The wall you’re hiding behind? You’re not keeping the fire out. You’re just choosing to freeze to death, alone, on the wrong side of it.”
He left then, his footsteps fading into the gloom until she was alone in the cavernous silence with the watching gods and the monstrous, empty throne. The truth of his words settled into her bones, colder than the marble beneath her feet. She had won the argument. She had defended her fortress.
And her victory tasted like ashes and dust.