Chapter 244 --244
"No," she said. "But I want you available. In the connecting room. If I need you, the door opens."
The Third Consort nodded. "And after the meeting."
"After the meeting," Elara said, "we’ll have a different conversation about what your situation looks like going forward." She paused. "You’ve been in this palace seventeen years because of an arrangement that no longer exists. The Emperor who made that arrangement is dead. The information you were holding is no longer a secret." She looked at her. "You’re not a hostage anymore. What you are is someone who has seventeen years of palace knowledge and a demonstrated capacity for keeping difficult things intact under pressure." She paused. "That’s worth something. If you want it to be."
The Third Consort was quiet for a moment.
Something moved through her expression that was quieter than relief and more complicated than gratitude and landed somewhere between them where there wasn’t a clean word.
"I’ll be in the connecting room," she said.
She stood and went through the side door without further comment.
---
Elara spent the remaining hour working.
Not on the meeting — she had run the meeting’s possible trajectories multiple times through the night and had arrived at a range of responses for each one. More preparation would not improve the outcomes. What needed doing in the meantime was the seven remaining items on her administrative list, and she worked through four of them before Mahir knocked twice on the door frame — their signal, established without discussion, that something was about to begin.
She capped her pen.
Straightened the documents.