[Kira’s POV]
I was prepared to hate her.
Lady Elara Thornwood of House Thornwood, a name I'd never heard attached to any scandal or scheme, which in court politics usually meant the schemes were simply better hidden.
She was surely another schemer. Another manipulator with a pretty face and patient ambitions, another woman who'd weave herself into my brother's life until she held enough threads to strangle him with them.
Another Seraphine, because that was what courts produced—predators wrapped in silk who fed on trust and called it loyalty.
I dressed for our first meeting the way I dressed for battle—armored in royal composure, every instinct sharpened to a blade's edge.
She entered without ceremony. Simply walked in—practical stride, sensible shoes, a dress that was well-tailored but conspicuously unadorned—and bowed with the precise depth protocol required.
Not a fraction deeper, which would have been flattery. Not a fraction shallower, which would have been a challenge. Just correct.
"Your Majesty." Her brown eyes met mine with a directness that caught me off guard. No deference, no fear, no trace of the careful politeness nobles deployed like shields. Just steady, intelligent attention. "I've heard a great deal about you."
I waited for the flattery. It didn't come. She simply stood there, composed and unhurried, as though the statement required no embellishment.
I couldn't help myself. "Good or bad?"
"Both," she said. "Because the truth usually contains elements of each, and anyone who tells you they've heard only wonderful things is either lying or hasn't been paying attention."
Something unfamiliar cracked across my face—a genuine smile, the kind that arrives without permission. "That's refreshing. Most people at court wouldn't dare say both to the Silver Queen's face."
"Most people at court find deception less exhausting than I do," she replied, with a dryness that reminded me unexpectedly of Malik.
"There's enough of it here without me adding to the supply. I'd rather be honest and occasionally uncomfortable than charming and perpetually performing."
That was the moment I stopped expecting the mask and started watching for something else entirely.
Over the weeks that followed, Elara became an unexpected fixture in my life. We shared informal teas, conversations that started with politics and wandered into territory I hadn't expected.
She offered sensible advice about managing Lord Ashworth's faction without me asking for it—practical, strategic, delivered without any hint that she was positioning herself as indispensable.
I waited for the slip. Cataloged every conversation, tested her with carefully placed confidences that would have been valuable to anyone playing political games.
She never took the bait. Never pushed for secrets, never angled for advantage. She made me laugh—genuinely, unexpectedly, with observations about court absurdities that bypassed my defenses entirely.
And she never once treated me as anything other than an equal, which was perhaps the most disarming thing of all.
The longer I spent in her company without finding the hidden architecture of a scheme, the more I began to entertain the terrifying possibility that there was no scheme—that Elara Thornwood was simply a good person navigating an impossible situation with more integrity than anyone had a right to expect.
"I like her," I told Malik that night, curled against his chest. The admission felt like stepping onto ice. "And I think I might eventually trust her, which is either the smartest or the most dangerous thing I've done since taking the crown."
"What does your gut say?"
"My gut says she's good for Damon. That she's exactly what he needs—someone honest, someone patient, someone who won't play the games that broke him. If he'd let himself see it instead of treating her like an enemy he hasn't decoded yet, he might actually—" I stopped, because the word felt too fragile to say aloud.
"Be happy?" Malik finished quietly.
"He's so scared. Seraphine damaged him so deeply that he can't look at kindness without searching for the knife behind it. And Elara is kind—genuinely, stubbornly kind in a way that doesn't demand anything in return—and I can feel him wanting to trust it and being terrified of what happens if he does."
Malik pressed his lips to my hair. "She's not Seraphine."
"No. She's not. And Damon deserves to be happy, even if he's convinced himself he doesn't."
I closed my eyes and reached through the twin bond, pushing warmth toward my brother. I felt him receive it. Felt his resistance rise first, automatic and bristling.
Then, beneath the resistance—fear, raw and trembling, tangled with a hope so desperate it made my throat ache.
He was trying so hard to kill that hope. Trying to smother it before it could grow roots, because roots meant vulnerability and vulnerability meant Seraphine and Seraphine meant devastation.
But hope, I was learning, was harder to kill than either of us expected. It survived the darkest places. It grew in the cracks of the most fortified walls. And sometimes, if you were very brave or very lucky, it grew into something strong enough to hold your weight.
I curled closer to Malik, and let the sound of his heartbeat carry me to sleep.