"Eleana."
Just her name. No title. No softness. The sound of it made three knights flinch, though they didn't dare lift their heads. Even the physician's hands stilled over his leather case, frozen mid-motion.
She straightened by instinct, years of training pulling her spine rigid. "Father, this daughter—"
His eyes were on her now, and the rage in them was worse for how quiet his face stayed. No shouting. No theatrical gestures. Just that terrible, crystalline silence that pressed down on the room like winter ice.
"So you," he said, each word slow and heavy, measured like a judge's gavel, "as the eldest sister… not only failed to care that your younger sister is sick and barely out of bed…" His gaze flicked once to Elara still on the floor, then back to Eleana with surgical precision. "…you also chose to 'barge' into her palace without permission, and even raised your hand against her."
He did not shout. He didn't need to. The anger was in the way the air thickened until breathing felt like work, in the way the tiles at his feet cracked hair-fine under his aura like spider-web fractures spreading through porcelain, in the way every man in the room tried to make himself smaller, shoulders hunching as if they could disappear into their own shadows.
Eleana's fingers tightened in her skirt, nails digging into expensive silk. Heat crawled up her neck—shame, fury, disbelief all tangled together. "I did not strike—"
"The glom shows enough," he cut in, voice dropping colder, each syllable edged with frost. "Entrance without leave. A sick girl collapsing at your feet. Your hand raised. No one moving to help."
He let that picture hang between them, as sharp and inescapable as a blade held to the throat. The glom didn't lie. Whatever her intentions, whatever words she'd meant to speak, the recording had captured what mattered: power imbalance, cruelty, a princess on the ground and another standing over her.
The Emperor's gaze stayed on the now-empty air a moment longer, then slid back to Eleana with the weight of imperial judgment. Whatever warmth he usually felt for his brilliant eldest daughter had cooled to ash; what he saw now was someone who had begun to believe herself untouchable. She was useful, yes. Dazzling, even—sharp-minded, politically astute, capable of running ministries with the efficiency of a general commanding armies. But if this scene had spread beyond these walls—one princess raised to be crown heir, another found crumpled on the floor beneath her hand—what would the court have thought of the royal bloodline? What would the empire have whispered about its future? That the Blackwood ruled through brutality and family discord? That the next generation would tear itself apart before it even ascended?
No. Better to cut this now, swiftly and publicly, before rot could spread.
His eyes hardened to something glacial and absolute. "From this day," he said, his tone flat and icy as a blade drawn in winter, "the Eldest Princess, Eleana Blackwood, will remain confined to her own palace for one month. During that time, you will write on self-discipline and proper royal conduct and copy it a hundred times. You will deliver every copy to me."
The words fell like stones into still water. Ripples of shock spread across the room.
For a heartbeat, the room forgot to breathe. Even the wind outside seemed to pause. Confinement itself was not shocking; emperors had sent sons and cousins to quiet rooms since dynasties began, locked away princes who gambled too much or daughters who chose unsuitable lovers. But to see *her*—the assumed future Crown Princess, the one everyone already treated as half-enthroned, whose name appeared in court documents with unspoken weight—publicly punished over the "normal and silent" Fourth Princess… that was different. That was a message written in fire and blood.
In that moment, as the knights stared at the floor and even the physician's fingers trembled on his case, as servants pressed themselves against walls and the air itself seemed to recoil from the Emperor's pronouncement, it was clear: the air in the palace was going to change. Power was not fixed. Favor was not guaranteed. And perhaps—just perhaps—the quiet Fourth Princess was not as invisible as they'd all believed.
On the other side of the room, Elara lay on the bed and, quite simply, went to sleep.
She had no interest in watching the rest of the performance. Let them finish their little drama without her. Eleana might be a vicious sister, but the Emperor was hardly better in her eyes—perhaps worse, because his cruelty wore the mask of justice. Even in her first life, as a mere CEO running a corporation a fraction of this empire's size, she had known exactly what her employees were doing under her nose. Every affair, every embezzlement, every small betrayal—she'd known, or chosen not to know, depending on what served her interests. And this man wanted her to believe that a father, and an emperor of a vast empire stretching across continents, had no idea what was happening inside his own palace? That he hadn't known his daughters were at war? Bastard.
Besides, the longer she stayed awake and sharp, the more attention she would draw. A "delicate, half-dead" princess who collapsed then calmly tracked every word like a general surveying a battlefield would be suspicious. The court would whisper. Questions would arise. So when her vision blurred and this weak body finally demanded rest, muscles going heavy and thoughts turning sluggish, Elara let her eyes close and sank into genuine sleep. Maybe this vessel really was as useless as everyone said; just punishing the eldest princess had left her exhausted, drained as if she'd run for miles instead of merely lying here playing victim.