Chapter 6 --6
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.