The shift was slow enough to look unplanned, too quick to catch. Her shoulder slipped from the support of the pillows; silk tangled around her hip. By the time her hand jerked out as if to grab something, there was nothing to catch.
She fell.
The sound of her body meeting the polished floor was not loud, but in that still room it struck like a drum.
Her cheek touched cold stone. She let herself lie where she landed, one arm crooked awkwardly under her, the other stretched out, palm up. Her hair spilled across the floor, hiding the clear calculation in her half‑closed eyes.
Her breathing changed. Shorter. Uneven. Just enough.
No one rushed to her.
The kneeling knights behind the Eldest Princess remained in place, heads bowed. Yet small betrayals crept into their stillness: a throat that swallowed too hard; fingers that dug into a fist against armor; a pair of eyes that lifted a fraction, saw the fallen girl and the raised hand above her, then snapped down again.
Even the Beast Knight did not move. His jaw clenched once, a flash of muscle under the helmet's edge, but his boots stayed rooted to the threshold.
The Eldest Princess stood where she was, arm half‑raised. For a long moment, she did not seem to know whether that arm had been meant to strike, to threaten, or simply to adjust her sleeve. The magic had already guttered out, leaving nothing to prove either way.
"Fourth," she said at last. The word came out thinner than before. "Enough of this. Get up."
Elara's fingers twitched faintly against the stone, then went still. Her lashes fluttered once. Her face, pressed to the floor, looked almost translucent in the filtered light.
Silence stretched. The picture fixed itself: the most powerful princess in the palace standing, the most useless one on the ground at her feet, and two neat lines of armor watching without moving.
"Fourth," the woman tried again, lower now."stop acting dead."
The air answered before Elara did.
Pressure rolled into the room like a stormfront—no light, no sound at first, only the sudden sense that the walls had drawn closer. The candles along the walls dipped, their flames bending as if bowing. The glass in the high windows gave a soft, collective shiver.
This magic did not tangle delicately at fingers or wrists. It pressed on the back of the neck, on the spine, on the instinct to kneel.
One of the younger knights' backs buckled a fraction. His forehead nearly touched the floor before he caught himself, breath coming short. Others sank lower without meaning to, armor shifting as if the stone itself demanded it.
Elara stayed where she was, cheek on the cold, watching a drop of wax slide down a candle in front of her. She did not need to turn her head to recognize the weight of that presence.
When the voice came from the doorway, it did not have to be loud. The room carried it for him.
"How," the Emperor said, every word landing with the finality of a verdict, "dare you."
The pressure that came with his words was worse than before.
It rolled through the chamber like a second heartbeat, heavy and slow, pressing every spine toward the floor.
Armor scraped stone. The already‑kneeling knights bent lower until some were almost lying flat. The Beast Knight's head dropped so far his forehead nearly touched his knee. No one breathed loudly. The room had forgotten how.
The Eldest Princess did not fall, but the line of her back wavered. Her half‑raised hand slid down to her side, fingers curling into her skirt, knuckles white.
Elara stayed where she was, cheek against the cold stone. From that angle she saw only boots: the Emperor's, dark and polished, stopping between her and her sister. The hem of his robe cut the room in two.
He didn't speak again at once.
Silence stretched. It was not empty; it was a blade held just above skin. The air hummed faintly, as if the walls themselves remembered whose voice had last shaped them.
Power, she thought, is most obvious in what it does to other people.
No one dared to move. No one dared to look up and see his face.
After a long moment, the Emperor took one step forward.
The pressure in the room deepened. Fine cracks spidered through a tile near Elara's hand, stone complaining softly under the weight of his aura. A candle close to the wall guttered and went out, its thin trail of smoke flattening, pushed sideways by a force that wasn't wind.
Elara's body shivered once. She let it look like fear. In truth, she was measuring—how far his presence reached, how tightly it wrapped around the blood of his children. Her chest felt heavy, not because of emotion, but because every cell that carried royal magic wanted to bow.
The Emperor stopped beside her.
He did not crouch. He did not lower himself at all. But a thread of cold power uncoiled from him and brushed over her like water. It left a tingling path along her temple, pausing for a heartbeat where the bruise lay hidden under her hair.
Checking. Cataloguing. He did not need his hands.
Her lashes trembled once, then stilled. She kept her breathing uneven, shallow. Let the picture hold.
Across from her, she heard the soft rustle of expensive silk: the Eldest forced herself into a deeper bow.
"Father," she said. Her voice was carefully steady. "This daughter greets Your Majesty."
Only now. Not when he first arrived. Late, for him—but still earlier than anyone else's courage.
The Emperor did not answer her greeting.
"Rise," he said instead.
The command was not directed at her. The weight of it settled on the knights. Armor shifted as they straightened just enough to kneel properly again, spines stiff, heads still bowed. No one dared to stand.
Only then did he turn his head toward his eldest daughter.
"Elara lies on the floor of her own palace," he said. His tone was flat, without anger, without anything. "Explain."
He had not raised his voice, but the words left no room to hide.