Once the queen had finished scrawling the final line with that crimson quill, she leaned back ever so slightly, her face unreadable. The parchment in her hand looked soaked through, the letters glistening faintly as though they pulsed with a life of their own. Without a pause, without hesitation, she folded it tightly, crumpling the sheet into her palm until it was no more than a crushed bundle. Ian’s eyes narrowed in confusion as she turned, walked to the small brazier set by the corner of the table, and tossed the ball of paper into the fire. The flames licked greedily at it, devouring it in seconds, leaving nothing but ash swirling upward.
Ian blinked, unable to process what he had just seen. "Wait...why did you do that?" he asked, stepping forward, his tone mixed with disbelief and irritation. "You spent all that time writing, you even cut yourself to do it, and then you just burn it?" His brows furrowed as he stared at her, trying to make sense of what looked like sheer madness.
The queen finally turned toward him, her eyes steady, calm, and gleaming with something deeper than ordinary understanding. "The message has already been delivered to them, my lord," she said, her voice smooth and soothing. "By the time the flame consumed it, the words were already transcribed across the parchment each of them keeps hidden in their chambers. It is written there already, waiting for them, clear as the day... only their eyes could read it."
Ian stared at her blankly, the explanation flying past him like wind through branches. He scratched the back of his head, exhaling sharply, a thousand questions forming in his mind but colliding too quickly to come out. The idea that burning something here could make it appear elsewhere felt like sorcery beyond his grasp, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. In the end, he simply muttered under his breath, shaking his head slightly, "I don’t... I don’t understand." He let the subject drop, his chest tight with unease. The queen had no intention of clarifying further, and he had no strength to push against her certainty.
Instead, his curiosity slipped in another direction. He drew closer to her table, his gaze fixed on the faint embers in the brazier, then turned his eyes back to her. "How many of them are there?" he asked suddenly, the question almost surprising himself as it left his lips. His voice was quiet, but it carried the edge of someone bracing for a revelation. "How many of these... people, these queens or whatever, actually believe in me and this bloodline you keep talking about?"
The queen regarded him with a calm smile that held no warmth, only the quiet assurance of truth. "Six," she replied, her tone neither grand nor theatrical, but heavy enough to make the word feel like stone. "Six kingdoms that still hold faith in the bloodline of the imperial line. Six queens who keep their allegiance sworn in silence, waiting for the moment to rise when the rightful heir returns."
Ian froze. His lips parted, but no words came at first. The thought weighed down on him with unexpected gravity. He had expected maybe two, or three at most, some small, scattered fragments of loyalty in a land he barely understood. But six kingdoms? Six queens? The sheer scale of it made his stomach twist.
"Six..." he repeated at last, almost whispering, as if speaking the number aloud would make it more real. His mind scrambled to picture it: entire realms, their people, their rulers, all tethered to him through a bloodline he had never asked for. It was staggering, overwhelming, far beyond what he had imagined when he first stumbled into this palace. He rubbed his temple slowly, trying to wrap his mind around the enormity of it.
"Six queens, six kingdoms... and they all believe in me?" he asked again, his voice shaking with surprise, though he knew by her tone there was no jest in what she had said.
The queen stood there silently, her gaze locked on him, and the truth of her words hung in the room like smoke that refused to dissipate.
And Ian could do nothing but stand in that heavy silence, his heart beating faster, his thoughts spiraling as he realized just how deep he had been pulled into a destiny he had never chosen. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novelꞁire.net