The news reached every corner of the palace before the last of the nobles had even been escorted out. Servants whispered it to one another in passing, guards relayed it in hushed tones at their posts, and by the time the royal physician had been summoned to the king's chambers, there was not a soul within those walls who did not know that Zeriel had collapsed at his own table.
The physician, a lean and serious man who had served the crown for over two decades. He had seen the king's health decline over the years, had watched it happen gradually and with a quiet dread he had never voiced aloud. Zeriel had not been well for some time. That much was plain to anyone who knew where to look, though the king had taken considerable care to ensure that most did not. But even accounting for that, even knowing what the physician already knew of his condition, nothing had prepared him for what he found when he examined the king that night.
