Chapter 330 --330
The knock came without warning.
Elara didn’t look up right away. She had learned, over the years, to treat interruptions like clues. The sound of a knock could tell you a lot — how confident someone was, whether they were alone, whether they were nervous. This knock was confident. Two people, she guessed. They’d knocked at almost exactly the same time, the way people do when they’ve spent so long working together that they’ve stopped noticing they move in sync.
She put down her pen and looked up as the door opened.
Mahir and Ken.
She had been expecting them — not today specifically, but soon. She had known it was coming the moment she started tearing apart the palace’s old, comfortable arrangements. The beast knights weren’t stupid. They’d been watching her, same as everyone else, all of them asking the same silent question: *What exactly is she, and what is she going to do with us?*
They greeted her. Correct words, proper bows. But their eyes were moving — scanning the room quickly, professionally, the way soldiers do when they walk into an unfamiliar space. They were noting that she was alone. No attendants, no guards. Just Elara, sitting at her desk with a pile of documents, in a room that was quiet enough to have a conversation nobody else would hear.
She watched them realize this.
Then Ken spoke — or maybe it was both of them at once, they had that quality sometimes.
"What — you’re not going to kill us, Your Highness?" A small pause. A careful smile. "Or should I say, Your Majesty?"
Elara looked at them.