The Northern proposal did not arrive with fanfare. It was a heavy, wax-sealed document delivered by a silent envoy in the grey hours of the morning. It lacked the flowery language of the previous month's correspondence; this was a draft of a finality.
By noon, the contents had leaked through the council like slow-acting poison.
The document was precise. It confirmed the acceleration of the wedding—now less than a moon away. It set the expectation of an heir within two years of the union. Most lethally, it introduced succession priority language that explicitly favored "any issue born of the Northern Queen."
If signed, the document would effectively create a countdown for Elias's relevance. Stella's child would become the primary heir, a blood-claim that could be weaponized to bypass any authority Elias held. It was no longer about a third person in a marriage; it was about the systematic erasure of a co-sovereign from the future of his own kingdom.
