Couriers reached the palace with rumors first. Then numbers. Then names.
They stumbled through the gates, boots caked in dirt, eyes ringed in the sleepless shade of gray that told all who saw them of the effort they had taken to arrive quickly.
Guards took statements and sent them up the stairs and by the time the first report hit the antechamber, the throne room was already filling. Nobles clustered in tight groups, faces drawn, voices low but loud enough to carry.
"The battlefield is losing too many…"
"Units are broken. Whole squads are gone…"
"They'll break our supply route next…."
"They won't need fire if the queen doesn't get out of her bed…"
Then someone laughed, quick and mean.
"She can't. Everyone knows it..."
"Wounded and with child? How long until the crown passes to a regent?"
"Which regent? Her fathers dead, not that the elders would support it and she has no heirs…they're still inside of her so unless they survive her death…"
"They'll need a proxy though, and doesn't depend on who still has troops when this ends."
Their heads leaned closer together as their treacherous plot seemed to grow larger.
"If the Alpha King offers terms, we should at least listen."
"The only terms he'll accept are likely to be bare…we should ask only for survival."
"Better to be a vassal than a ruin."
"Better to kneel than leave children fatherless."
At the edges of the hall, the soldiers heard all of it, but they said nothing. Their hands rested on the hilts of their weapons and their armor showed clear signs of fresh repairs. Refugees stood in plain clothes against the wall, shoulders set, and jaws tight as the nobles words grated at them..
The doors to the infirmary were two floors away from the throne room, but the argument started there.
Ann shoved the blankets down and swung her legs over the side of the cot. Pain flared along her ribcage and she breathed through it and found the floor with her feet.
A midwife pressed both palms to Ann's shoulders.
"No. Sit. You tear that open again and we'll lose more than blood."
Ann looked at the hands on her and then at the woman.
"Move."
A nurse tried again.
"The curse is purged, but the tissue isn't sealed. You'll collapse."
"What I need," Ann said, "is for the kingdom to see its queen stand. Otherwise those men down there will pull this place apart before Adam can take a second breath at the front line."
Ann slid the woman's hands off her shoulders.
"My body will do what I tell it to."
The door opened and Coral stepped in first, braid tucked under a plain cap. Eva followed, skirt hitched in one hand, the other full of paperwork. Both froze when they saw Ann upright.
"Absolutely not," Coral said firmly as Eva crossed the room quickly.
"You're not ready, Ann. Please, you need to take better care of yourself."
Ann braced one hand on the bedframe, the other pressed briefly to the bandage. "If I don't go, they'll decide the fate of my kingdom and its people without me. They'll try to make peace with the man who put a blade in me and they'll call it practical. They'll sleep just fine."
Coral's jaw flexed.
"Then let me go in your place and break a jaw for each whisper that uses the word practical."
"Tempting." Ann said as she found the space in her head that allowed her to look past the sensation of pain, "But they need me. Not fists. Me."
Eva's eyes were fearful yet resigned at the same time.
"You're carrying three lives. If you fall on that floor I will never forgive you."
Ann caught her wrist.
"You will if it holds the crown for them."
Brad swore quietly.
"Fine. Then we go with you. We'll walk on either side. If you sway, we drag you out. No arguments on the way back. You give me your word."
"You have it."
Coral fastened Ann's coat, smoothing the fabric over the bandage.
"No pride. You use my arm if you need it."
"Fine."
The midwife returned with clean cloths, pressing them into Eva's hands.
"If she bleeds through, cover it. Don't let them see.
"Thank you." Ann said as she held her gaze but the midwife didn't smile.
"You can thank me by coming back breathing."
They moved into the corridor and the two guards straightened without a word and took the lead. Coral kept pace on Ann's right. Eva matched on her left and Brad followed quietly behind so that he could catch her if she fell.
Every step filled her with pain, but she let it fuel her determination.She could count the cost later.
The antechamber outside the throne room was already full when Coral and Eva shouldered their way through the nobles and conversations died with their arrival.
By the time the guards at the doors drew them open, the last murmurs were still hanging in the air.
Inside, the panic had curdled into something like boldness. A lord by the dais held his place as if he owned the ground under his boots. Another had planted both hands on the throne's arm, as if testing its weight.
"...we must be realistic," the first said, his voice raised to carry. "The army is spent. The treasury is drained. If the Lycan King offers terms, it is our duty to accept them."
The doors slammed open and the sound cracked across the room, sending a ripple through the nobles as heads turned and hands quickly slid off the throne.
The guard at Ann's right took one pace forward and then stopped because she didn't need him to clear a path.
Ann walked in, her head held high and her royal mask firmly in place as she forced herself to ignore the pain. She would not let them see any weakness.