The training yard smelled of dust and cold air and old sweat honest and clean after the suffocating perfumes of the night before.
Soren had half expected the old captain to cancel their lesson after the coronation. His body ached; his calves still burned from holding every step in perfect control, his shoulders from the weight of the crown, his jaw from smiling without baring his teeth.
Arven was already waiting.
He stood near the edge of the practice ground, cloak thrown over one arm, practice blades resting on a rack beside him. A low table nearby was cluttered with a ledger, a couple of scrolls, and a chipped mug gone cold.
"You should be in bed," Arven said by way of greeting. His eyes, however, moved over Soren like they were checking for cracks, not like they were looking at porcelain.
"So should half the court," Soren replied. "They will not be."
A corner of Arven's mouth twitched.
"No," he said. "Most of them also did not spend a week teaching their body how not to flinch under a kingdom's stare."
He tossed Soren a wooden blade.
Soren caught it with only a small sting up his arm. The familiarity of its weight steadied him in a way the crown never had.
"If you can still stand," Arven said, "you can still learn. The spine you showed them last night will do you no good if you cannot keep your feet when someone decides they prefer you dead."
They moved through drills: steps, turns, changes of direction. Soren's muscles complained, but there was comfort in the ache. Here, no one asked him to be beautiful. Here, he was allowed to be simply tired and determined.
After a while, Arven lifted a hand.
"Enough," he said. "For now."
Soren let the blade lower, breath coming fast but steady. Sweat prickled at the back of his neck; his legs felt heavy, but the weight was honest.
He braced for more corrections, another set of drills. Instead, Arven jerked his chin toward the low table.
"Sit," he said. "You thought being queen was standing straight and not falling in front of them. That is the part they see. Now we work on the part they ignore until it ruins them."
Soren sat. Arven pushed the ledger toward him and opened it to the middle. Columns of ink stared back taxes, grain routes, troop numbers, annotated in a clerk's tight, neat hand.
"What is this?" Soren asked.
"Records," Arven said. "Your predecessors. Queens and consorts who succeeded, and those who failed. Who they invited when the harvests were bad. Which houses they married into which offices. How many festivals they held. Where they stood when they needed the people to love them, and where they stood when they needed the nobles to remember their place."
He flipped to another page, tapping a subtle change in the numbers.
"History is not stories," he went on. "It is patterns. A queen's duty is not only to smile and bless children. You will be expected to care about harvest feasts, patronage, which orphanage receives a donation, which guild gets praised by your presence. That looks harmless. It is not. Here" his finger rested on a column "these numbers changed because a consort made a winter celebration in the poorest district a tradition. Attention followed money. Money followed attention. Trade shifted. Houses rose and fell. All because of where she chose to stand."
"So all the balls and festivals are… moves," Soren said slowly.
"Wrapped in silk so no one notices the blade," Arven said. "You will learn what is underneath. How to read a budget. How to see when a petition is bait. Which charities are true and which are excuses to move coin. Which ceremonies you can bend, which you cannot. You do not simply attend events. You make sure every event does something for the Crown."
He flipped to a second bundle of pages laws, brief notes in the margins.
"We will cover law," he said. "What you can sign. What you can suggest. What you can refuse to lend your name to. The queen's signature does not command armies, but it can choke or bless anything that wants to look virtuous."
Soren ran a thumb along the edge of the page. Ink and numbers swam for a moment, then steadied as he forced himself to focus. He thought of the boy he had been, with none of this, and of the man who had walked a hall full of teeth in borrowed titles and hard-earned poise.
"And if I decide I don't like any of this?" he asked, a dry edge in his voice. "That I do not want to be their soft weapon for festivals and speeches?"
Arven's eyebrows lifted slightly.
"Then you will be a fool," he said. "Because they will still use the role. Better that it be your hand on it than theirs."
Soren breathed out through his nose, looking back at the ledger. The weight of it felt like another kind of armour. Heavy, but his.
"Fine," he said. "If I'm to be their queen, then show me how a queen actually rules them and where she can do more than just smile and nod."
It came out sharper than politeness required, threaded with bitterness and a stubborn, unwanted hunger to matter. He needed to know he wasn't being dressed up just to decorate someone else's decisions; if he was going to carry their fear, he wanted to know which levers it put in his hands.
Arven's mouth twitched again, nearer to approval this time.
"Good," he said. "Now we begin."
They worked until the sun had climbed higher and the ache in Soren's shoulders had settled into something dull and familiar. By the time a page arrived to remind him the council would soon sit, ink had smudged faintly along the side of his hand and his head was thick with new names and numbers.
Soren closed the ledger, promised Arven he would return to it later, and changed into formal robes before making his way to the council wing.
---------
Ecclesias had made his position clear in private three days earlier.
The council remained his alone to command, but Soren would sit near its doors "until you can smell a lie in these chambers the way you smelled fear in the hall." The ministers had been informed some displeased, none foolish enough to object aloud after the coronation threat. Soren was not a councillor. He was an observer: silent, watching, learning, exactly where Ecclesias wanted him.
By midmorning, the palace was buzzing.
Rumours moved faster than servants. A bouquet of rare frost-lilies arrived from one duchess, all pale petals and hidden meanings. A velvet box containing an antique ring was delivered by a timid steward whose hands shook as he offered it "for Her Majesty's future heirs." Notes followed, folded small, written in elegant, careful scripts: compliments on the dance, offers of private dinners, sly references to shared enemies.
Soren read none of them.
He sat in the small antechamber outside the council hall, spine straight, hands resting loosely in his lap as messengers came and went in nervous waves. The table beside him piled slowly with unopened gifts and sealed letters. A clerk tried, once, to ask if he wished to inspect them.
"Later," Soren said, without looking away from the door. "If they are sincere, they can wait. If they are not, they are not worth reading."
The clerk blanched and bowed himself away.
The doors to the council chamber stood open a crack. Voices drifted through: the low murmur of older nobles, the sharper tones of newer ones trying to sound important, and, every so often, the clean slice of Ecclesias' voice dropping through them like a blade.
Soren listened.
He had no formal seat here. Yet. But after last night's very public warning that anyone who thought to insult or threaten his queen would find not just themselves but their line cut short, the men at that table knew exactly whose shadow they sat under.
"—only suggest," Lord Halren was saying, his tone polished to careful neutrality, "that such a… decisive display, while effective, may have unintended consequences. The court is not accustomed to so much… attention gathering around one figure so quickly."
He did not say queen. He did not say *Consort*. He said nothing that could be read back as a direct insult. It was all concern, all distance.
"Attention," Ecclesias repeated. "Explain, Lord Halren. Choose your words with care. You are among friends, not fools."
The warning was mild, but everyone in the room heard the iron behind it. Soren did too. A faint, cold satisfaction slid through him.
Halren hesitated for one, precise heartbeat before continuing.
"Only that appearances matter, Your Majesty," he said. "When the entire court witnesses… the depth of Your Majesty's favour, some may wonder whether decisions in this chamber are guided solely by long-standing policy, or whether personal… anchors… might be given more weight than is wise."
He never said influence. He never said control. He never said the Queen tells you what to do. But every man there could hear those words under the others.
"And you believe," Ecclesias said, "that my anchor endangers you."
There was a ripple of discomfort around the table; a chair creaked, someone's quill stilled mid-note.
"I believe," Halren said carefully, "that such concentrated regard, resting on one person especially one so new to our customs may tempt some houses to… test lines they would otherwise respect, in hopes of reaching that person. It could unsettle the balance."
It was almost clever. He framed Soren as a temptation to others, not a problem himself. He pretended to worry about what they might do, not what Soren was.
Soren's hands tightened on his own knees. Coward, he thought. Too afraid to say my name, but happy to carve around it.
"Ancient customs and balance," Ecclesias said. "The same balance that nearly starved the border provinces? The same customs that failed to prevent three succession crises in two generations? Those customs?"
No one answered.
"And of course," Ecclesias went on, "you bring me these concerns out of loyalty. Out of fear for the realm. Not because you resent that someone you cannot predict did in a week what your houses have failed to do with generations of tutors."
Halren swallowed. The sound carried even to the doorway.
"Your Majesty," another councillor ventured, voice thin, "Lord Halren only—"
"I heard what he only," Ecclesias cut in. His tone did not rise. That made it worse. "I have already told this realm what happens to anyone who insults my queen. I assume no one here is eager to test whether I was speaking for effect."
A collective stillness settled over the table. They remembered: the quiet, deadly promise in the hall, the way he had spoken not of fines or exile, but of ending lines.
"Forgive me, my lord," Ecclesias added, looking directly at Halren, "if I do not weep because you are afraid of the consequences of your own thoughts. If you are so terrified of the influence you imagine him to have, perhaps you should ask yourselves why your own is so weak."
Outside, Soren's breath caught. *Him.* Not title. Not role. *Him.*
"That said," Ecclesias went on, "you raise one useful matter: the way they see him. The way they see us. Speak plainly, Lord Halren. If you are capable."
There was nothing for it now. Halren had steered too close to the edge to retreat with nothing.
"I worry for stability, Your Majesty," he said, each word chosen like a step on thin ice. "Those who were not raised in our traditions may not fully see the weight of the place they now occupy. It may, unintentionally, draw more pressure onto the throne than is wise. Some houses have spent generations preparing heirs for these rooms. It is… difficult to watch so much rest on one who has not had that preparation."
There. *No education. No breeding. Not one of us.* All without saying it.
Soren let one slow breath in, one out.
He was meant to remain outside, at the edge of things, a shadow learning the shape of power. That had been the agreement: observe, do not intrude. But listening to Halren circle him like a wolf too afraid to show its teeth, Soren felt the line of that agreement tighten and then give.
If they would use his place to test the king's warning, let them do it with him in the room.
He rose.
The clerk beside him stiffened. Soren ignored him. He smoothed his robe once, set his shoulders, and stepped through the half-open doors.
Conversation snapped off. A quill rolled to a stop. Heads turned.
Every man at the table knew he had permission to be near. None of them had expected him to cross the line on his own feet. Ecclesias did not call him back. That, more than anything Soren might say, told the council this, too, was his will.
Soren did not walk to Ecclesias' side. That would look like hiding behind the throne. Instead, he stopped just inside the room, at the edge of the circle of seats, exactly where everyone could see him and no one could claim he had overstepped a boundary drawn in ink.
"Forgive the interruption," he said, voice even. "It seems I am being discussed in absentia. It felt… impolite not to attend."
One or two councillors flinched at the word *impolite*, hearing their own weapon turned back on them.
Ecclesias leaned back in his chair, watching Soren with open interest. He still said nothing to stop him.
Halren inclined his head, the bare minimum he could give and still call it respect.
"Your Majesty," he said, "we meant no disrespect to your… position. The matters at hand are simply—"
"You are concerned," Soren said, cutting in gently, "that a man without tutors might accidentally tilt the kingdom off its axis by standing too close to its king."
Several mouths snapped shut.
"I worry for stability," Halren said. "Those who were not raised in our traditions may not always see their… weight."
Soren tilted his head slightly, as if considering this like a sincere point.
"You are correct about one thing," he said. "I did not grow up in your traditions. I did not spend years being taught how to sit in these chambers and say nothing while people starved so that old families could feel important."
A flicker of anger, quickly smothered, moved across more than one face.
"But you are wrong about the rest," Soren continued. "You speak of my weight as if it were an accident that fell on you from the sky. His Majesty did not trip over me in a corridor. I walked into your teeth with my eyes open. I prepared to stand where I did. I know exactly how heavy that is."
He let his gaze move slowly around the table, not daring, just seeing them, one by one.
"If it eases your mind," he added, "you may think of me however helps you sleep. Investment. Risk. Mistake. I will not spend the rest of my life chasing every whisper. But if you are going to be afraid, at least be accurate. Be afraid because I intend to learn exactly how much good and how much damage this position can do—and then decide for myself what to do with that."
The room held its breath.
Ecclesias' mouth had curved, slow and sharp.
"Lord Halren?" he asked softly. "Any further concerns you would like to share about the weight of my queen while my queen is in the room to hear them?"
Halren bowed his head, just enough to be legal.
"No, Your Majesty," he said. "For now, my curiosity is… satisfied."
"For now," Ecclesias echoed, the earlier promise from the coronation hanging unspoken beneath the words. "See that it stays that way."
The table shifted: men straightening, papers rustling, everyone pretending nothing mortal had just passed between them. The council moved on: grain, borders, trade. Soren did not speak again. He stayed at the edge, listening, learning, letting them grow used to the sight of him there not at the king's shoulder, but within reach of it.
When the meeting finally adjourned, councillors filed out in careful groups. Some avoided his eyes. Some stared. A few gave him shallow, testing inclinations of the head.
Soren did not chase or cling. He merely stepped aside to let them pass, spine straight, expression calm, heart still beating too fast from the confrontation and from Ecclesias' unflinching support.
As the room emptied, Kael appeared in the doorway, posture a shade tighter than usual.
"Majesty," he said to Ecclesias, then to Soren, "there is something you should see."
He held out a folded piece of parchment, sealed in wax with a lesser house's sigil. On the outside, in neat script, a harmless address.
"It was intercepted by the outer guard," Kael said. "Routine inspection. The courier ran when questioned."
Ecclesias took the letter, broke the seal, and read. His jaw tightened. He held the page out so Soren could see it too.
Polite phrases. Careful ink.
Beneath them, an invitation to "discuss concerns about the Queen's growing influence" at a private gathering. Hints that if His Majesty could not be separated from his new consort, perhaps "other responsible voices" might be needed to "guide" the realm. Nothing treasonous on the surface. Everything poisonous beneath it.
Stripped of courtesy, it said one thing: gather those who disliked the queen, test how far they could push him away from Ecclesias, and, if that failed, decide what to do about a consort the king refused to give up.
Soren read it once. Then again, slower. His grip on the parchment hardened until the edge crumpled. When he spoke, his voice was calm; the anger had gone cold.
"They move quickly," he said.
"They were already moving," Ecclesias replied. "The coronation simply gave them a reason to hurry."
He looked at Soren then, not as decoration, not even only as risk, but as someone whose decisions would now matter as much as his own.
"Well," Ecclesias said, tone almost light. "They wanted to test the Velvet Blade."
Soren lifted his gaze from the ink to meet his eyes. The exhaustion of the last days, the ache in his muscles, the new weight of study and duty—all of it folded into a single, clear line of resolve.
"Then," he said, "perhaps we should show them what happens when they reach for it."
For a moment, the council chamber, the intercepted letter, the whole murmuring palace narrowed to that shared understanding.
Outside, the realm kept whispering.
Inside, the first real fracture had appeared.
And this time, Soren was not only the risk they fretted over.
He was the one holding the edge.