Chapter 278: Careful On Your Way Back
Leon was fifteen. He didn’t want to think too hard about the consequences. He only knew everyone was looking at him with awe and approval.
Their father had always been an unusual man, even among the storied lineage of the Lion Kingdom’s consorts. Where most noble husbands were content to wield their quiet influence behind the scenes, he had never been satisfied simply occupying the role of the Queen’s beloved. He had an unshakable conviction that their matriarchal traditions—powerful as they were—could be something more.
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He spoke often, sometimes to Leon and sometimes to no one in particular, about the injustice that seeped through the fabric of their society in smaller, quieter ways. It is not that men are powerless, he used to say, but that they are never seen as capable of holding power without suspicion.
Men were more prone to anger, unpredictable, hormonal, and they should definitely not be wielding power, they say.
It wasn’t that the kingdom never crowned kings. But those rare men were only elevated when no suitable woman could be found. A last resort. A compromise. Never a first choice.
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And then—he fell ill. The fever came swift and cruel, and within days, the man who had once seemed as constant as the sunrise was confined to his bed.
No one knew what words passed between him and the Queen in those final hours. But after his breathing stilled, and after the Queen emerged from the darkened bedchamber with tears drying on her cheeks, everything changed.
She called the court together, with the scent of incense from the funeral still clinging to her gown, and declared that the throne would pass not to Catalina—the daughter she had raised from birth to inherit it—but to Leon.
Some said it was madness born of grief. Some whispered that he had bewitched her heart so completely she had abandoned reason itself. But the Queen never faltered in her explanation, "If anyone has a problem with this, they can challenge me."
Leon drew in a shaky breath. "Mother told me this ten years after he passed... On the day he died," he began slowly, voice low. "She said that it was father’s wish... For me to become the king."