Location: Ducal Audience Hall, Palace of Armathane Time: Day 170 After Alec's Arrival
The day started as usual but today the upheaval continued.
It had started seven days ago, Palace maidens and stewards were dismissed.Two were arrested by ducal guard for treason and espionage. Guards were replaced. Tighter and more strict curfew in the palace complex.
The Ducal Council
The chamber was colder than usual.
Vaelora noticed it as she stepped through the eastern arch — no breeze, no windows open, no brazier left burning too long. Just silence and stone, and the echo of her own boots across the polished black marble floor.
Seven seats. A semi-circle of carved elderwood. One for each voice that had long presumed to speak for her duchy.
They were already seated when she entered. Some rose. Some did not. Custom dictated they acknowledge her arrival. Power had begun teaching them not to.
She wore no crown today — only a dark grey dress lined with polished steel thread and a narrow circlet at her brow. No jewels. No crest. Nothing but the seal of her duchy, fixed at her hip.
This wasn't a court audience.
It was an execution.
—
"Duchess Vaelora," came the voice of Councilor Rhen, eldest of the assembly. "We are honored by your presence. Shall we begin with the matter of taxation reform for—"
"No," she said, her voice not loud but firm. "We will begin by dismantling the very illusion that this chamber still rules."
Murmurs began immediately.
"Pardon?"
"Your Grace?"
"Dismantling what—?"
Vaelora stepped forward until the entire crescent of noblemen and their recorders could see her clearly.
"As of this hour," she said, "the Ducal Council of Midgard is dissolved as a legislative body. Your voting rights are nullified. Your voices reduced to consultative roles only."
Councilor Tellen, a squat, fidgeting man from the salt-harvesting families near , shot to his feet.
"You cannot mean this!"
"I do," she said, evenly.
"You need our signatures to enact—"
"I don't," she interrupted. "Not anymore."
"You would violate the Charter of Duval, the Council Rights of Year 712, and your own late father's decree!"
"My father built a duchy afraid of its own reflection. I will not." She paused. "And as for the Charter… it was written by men who feared succession. I don't."
"You're mad," someone muttered.
"No," she said. "I'm finished pretending."
—
A beat passed before Lord Halven finally spoke. He hadn't moved since she entered. He leaned forward now, knuckles pressed against the table's carved edge.
"Even if you strip voting authority," he said, calmly, "these men represent territories. Households. Counties. They can stall your infrastructure. Delay Ducal projects. Disrupt your supply lines."
Vaelora met his gaze directly.
"Only if they retain control of their lands and retainers. Which, after today, will no longer be assumed. I will be appointing ducal liaisons — men and women who report to me, not to tradition."
"You're replacing noble oversight?" he asked. His tone was not anger. Not shock. Curiosity.
"I am," she said. "Every failed steward. Every obstructive clerk. Every coward who has hidden behind family name while my cities decay."
Rhen rose as well, slower than Tellen but no less furious.
"This is a coup," he said, voice shaking. "A betrayal of generations."
"No," Vaelora said. "This is the debt coming due. For every year you've taxed the people dry without offering them security. For every child left uneducated. For every courtier paid with grain that should've fed soldiers."
"And who will enforce this madness?" Tellen spat. "Your foreign-born Lord Advisor?"
A few heads turned sharply.
"Say his name again," Vaelora said softly. "And I will remove your tongue by legal rite of ducal insult."
Tellen sat down.
Hard.
"You are welcome to remain and also permitted to give up your post for those willing."
—
There was no vote to take. No document to sign. Just silence.
And in that silence, one by one, the councilors understood.
It was already done.
Two stood and left the chamber without words. Vaelora let them go.
A third lingered near the archway, then looked back once — and bowed.
The rest remained, eyes down, hands tight.
Not loyal.
Just cornered.
📜 After the Council – Vaelora's Private Solar
The fire burned low. Her boots were off. The polished slate floor was cold under her heels, but she didn't move. She stared at the map unrolled before her — a new one Alec had drawn. It showed roads that hadn't been built. Fortresses that had not yet risen. Rivers that would soon carry ships that he intended to build.
She thought of the table.
Of Rhen's trembling hands. Tellen's sputtering rage. Halven's measured stare.
She had been firm. Resolved.
But not untouched.
There had been a cost.
She reached for the decanter, poured a half-glass of wine, and drank it with none of the ceremony her position demanded.
A duchess did not show fear.
But a sovereign... had none to show.
She walked to the mirror across the chamber — not for vanity, but for memory.
She remembered herself at sixteen.
Nervous. Slim. Raised on etiquette and feints.
She had survived a faithless husband, a dying court, a fractured land. She had raised Serina not with lullabies, but with strategies and warnings.
And now she had done what no duchess before her had dared.
She had broken the Old Table.
And tomorrow?
She would begin building the new one.
She looked over the day's minutes.
She had expected more anger. She had expected resistance. She had even expected someone to challenge her openly.
But they hadn't.
And that made her uneasy.
Because men who fear power fight it.
But men who plan to reclaim it… go quiet.
She reached for the wine but didn't drink it.
Instead, she whispered to herself.
"Alec… you better be right."