Queen Selene sat alone in her private solar, where the world beyond the palace walls was reduced to silence and filtered light.
Tall windows framed the morning sky, pale and undecided, their glow softened by sheer linen curtains that stirred faintly with the breeze. Shelves lined the stone walls, heavy with scrolls, ledgers, and bound volumes of law and lineage—histories she knew by heart. A brazier burned low at her side, perfuming the air with cedar and myrrh, scents chosen not for comfort but for clarity.
This was where she thought.
This was where decisions were made.
Her hands rested in her lap, fingers interlaced, her posture impeccable. Yet beneath the calm surface, her mind was anything but still.
The draw was approaching.
For generations—long before her, long before even the king's grandfather—the tradition had endured. When the time came to remind the people of humility, when the crown needed to bow without bending, it was always the same solution.
A royal marriage to a village maiden.
In theory, any prince could be chosen. The law allowed it. The priests approved it. The court pretended it was fair.
But in practice…
Her lips pressed thin.
In practice, it had always fallen to the youngest prince.
The reasoning had been repeated so often it had hardened into doctrine:
The youngest was furthest from the crown.
The youngest bore the least political weight.
The youngest could afford the sacrifice.
A duty, they called it.
A vital service to the realm.
Selene called it what it was—convenient cruelty.
And now, in her generation, the youngest prince was her son.
Piers
Her breath caught—not visibly, never visibly—but enough that her fingers tightened slightly against one another.
Piers was gentle where his brothers were sharp. Thoughtful where they were proud. He laughed easily. Trusted deeply. Loved without calculation.
A prince, yes—but still a boy in too many ways that mattered.
The thought of him bound by decree to a faceless village girl—dragged into a marriage meant not for love, nor alliance, but for spectacle—made something cold coil in her chest.
No mother would accept that quietly.
Certainly not a queen.
She rose slowly and crossed the solar, her steps soundless against the polished floor. From the window, the palace gardens spread below, immaculate and ordered, every hedge trimmed into obedience.
Tradition demanded obedience too.
But Selene had never survived this long by obeying blindly.
Her mind turned, measured, calculated. The draw could not simply be canceled—not without unrest. The people clung to this custom like proof that the crown still belonged to them.
But the prince chosen…
That could change.
Her gaze hardened.
There were other princes. Older princes. Princes already carved by court politics and ambition. Yet her thoughts never lingered on them—not even for a breath.
Alaric and Evander were not hers by blood, but they were hers by bond. She had raised them after their mother's death. Shielded them. Loved them without distinction.
She would not offer them to humiliation.
Never.
And so, inevitably, her thoughts turned to the one she had never been able to love.
Levi.
The name alone sharpened her resolve.
Levi stood apart from the rest of the royal bloodline like a fracture no one acknowledged. Born under whispers. Raised under scrutiny. His mother's sudden death—too sudden, too convenient—had left behind questions the court preferred buried.
Questions Selene had never stopped asking.
He was a prince in title, yes—but never truly embraced as one. The court watched him. The people feared him. Even the king kept a careful distance, as though Levi were a reminder of something better forgotten.
And unlike Piers, Levi would survive this.
He would endure the insult. He would bear the weight. He would not break.
If tradition demanded sacrifice, then let it claim the son already half-exiled by fate.
Selene turned from the window, her expression composed, resolved.
It would not be easy to redirect centuries of expectation. The priests would resist. The nobles would whisper. The king would hesitate.
But hesitation was a luxury she could not afford.
Her son would not be the offering.
And if the realm required a prince to kneel before tradition,
then Levi would be the one to bow.
The brazier crackled softly, sealing her decision into the quiet of the solar.