The Eldest Princess's fingers clenched tighter in her skirt. "She… lost her strength, Your Majesty," she answered. "When this daughter arrived, Fourth Sister was already—"
The Emperor's gaze slid once to the empty space by the doors where her knights used to stand, then to the red uniforms of the beastmen just visible in the courtyard outside. He did not look for long. The path of his eyes was enough.
"Already," he repeated. "After my knights disappeared from their posts, and my collared guards were moved into their place."
The room seemed to close around those words. The knights did not move, but Elara could feel the tiny shock tightening their shoulders.
She had not known exactly what the glom showed, but she had counted on this: in any world, rulers with enemies invested in good eyes and fast messages.[1] A girl on the ground and the favored princess above her—that would have flown faster than any bird.
"Fourth Sister has been… different, since she woke," the Eldest tried again. "She dismissed loyal men I placed for her safety. She spoke of beasts as if they were—" She cut herself off.
"As if they were more useful than those who question their mistress," the Emperor finished for her.
He let the sentence drop, then returned his attention to the figure on the floor.
"Elara," he said.
The sound of her name in his mouth was strange. In this world, it was *Yue Lian* who belonged to him. But the weight was the same as any CEO saying a project code he owned: cool, distant, expecting results.
Elara let her fingers twitch. Just once. Then, slowly, she drew a breath that scraped at the edges, as if climbing back from somewhere deep.
She did not open her eyes fully. Only enough that she could see the dark blur of his shape.
"Your… Majesty…" she whispered, letting the words catch in her throat.
The pressure around her eased by a fraction. Not gone—never gone—but pulled back from crushing to merely heavy.
"Can you stand," he asked, "or has my palace become so dangerous that a child cannot sit up without collapsing?"
The words were mild. The room flinched anyway.
Elara forced her arm to move. It shook, which suited her well. She planted her palm on the floor and pushed herself up a little, enough to get her shoulder off the stone. Her head swam—for a moment, not entirely pretending. The earlier hit against the bedframe had done its job too well.
Good, she thought distantly. Real data reads truer than any act.
She kept her eyes lowered, looking at her own hand instead of his face.
"This daughter was… careless," she murmured. "I did not expect… visitors so soon after waking."
No accusation. No mention of raised hands, sharp magic, or missing knights. Just one small fact: she had just left her sickbed.
The Emperor's robe shifted beside her, the faintest sound of fabric. "And yet," he said, "you found the strength to reorder my guards."
Elara's lips parted, then closed. She allowed a small, confused frown to appear between her brows, as if she herself did not fully understand what she had done.
"I… only asked who listened to me," she said softly. "If that disturbed the balance Eldest Sister has kept for me, then this daughter will accept punishment."
The way she said it put the word *kept* in the wrong place—lightly suggesting that her sister had been keeping more than just balance.
The Emperor was silent for a few heartbeats. The air around him tightened again, then smoothed. He had heard it.
"Elara," he said at last, "since when do you care who listens to you?"
It was almost a curious question. Almost.
She could feel his eyes on her, weighing the change: the princess who used to hide behind charity work and strange tools now speaking of obedience and posts. In another life, a venture capitalist might have looked at her this way after a sudden shift in strategy.
"Since I woke and realized how many ears in my palace belong to someone else," she thought. Aloud, she only let her shoulders curl slightly in.
"Since… yesterday," she answered. "When I fell. When I opened my eyes, I… saw more than before."
A simple statement. In a world of magic, it could mean many things.
The Emperor made a low sound that could have been interest, could have been doubt.
Then, without warning, he extended his hand.
Power crackled along the air, visible this time: a faint pattern of red‑gold lines, like veins of molten metal, flashed across the stone under his feet and up the nearest pillar before fading. Every collar on the beastmen in the courtyard gave a small, synchronized pulse of light, responding to his bloodline as if greeting a master.
The fox‑eared guard Elara had nodded to earlier stiffened, ears flattening under the invisible call. His tail went still. For a second, every collared soldier in view looked less like a man in uniform and more like a weapon in a rack, recognized by the hand that owned it.
So this is the root of it, Elara noted. Not just fear. Design.
"Fetch the imperial physician," the Emperor said, without raising his voice. "And the record keeper for the surveillance gloms that passed this corridor in the last two hours."
Two orders. One for her body. One for the truth.
The knights answered as one, fists to chests. "Yes, Your Majesty." None of them dared to stand until he added, "Go."
Boots clattered as two men broke from the line and backed out on their knees before turning. The others stayed kneeling, as if nailed to the floor.
The Emperor's gaze moved once more between his daughters.
"Until I have seen what my eyes have seen," he said, "no one will move a single man in or out of this palace wing."
His power did not flare this time. It didn't need to. The sentence itself was a lock sliding into place, heavy and final.