Chapter 53: Court of Thorns
The great council chamber of the Palacio Real had once been a place of ceremonial posturing—marble columns, velvet banners, and the dull drone of nobles discussing lineage and land rights. But today, it was tense with the sharp scent of ink, damp cloaks, and old fury.
Prince Lancelot sat at the head of the chamber on the Regent’s elevated chair, hands folded, gaze steady. He wore his usual navy coat, but today the silver trim had been replaced by a stark red braid on one shoulder—a silent symbol of emergency authority granted to him by King Edric months ago.
Opposite him sat twenty-four members of the High Council: dukes, marquises, bishops, and lords who had once ruled their territories like miniature kings. Now, they faced a man barely in his twenties who had taken their fiefdoms and mapped sewer lines through them.
"Your Highness," began Duke Hernando de Vicalvaro, rising from his carved chair, "we have convened under urgent terms. The extent of your infrastructure programs, while laudable in health, have raised serious questions regarding governance, funding, and royal consent."
"Consent?" Lancelot echoed, voice smooth. "From whom?"
A murmur rippled across the table.
"The nobles of this land," replied the Archbishop of Zaragoza, steepling his fingers. "Those who have upheld order through generations. It is unbecoming of a regent to impose industrial dominion over age-old estates without deliberation."
Lancelot tapped the table twice, a signal. Alicia stood from the side and placed a folio in front of each councilor. Inside were waterborne disease statistics—pre-reform and current—across Madrid and its expanding wards.
"Read them," Lancelot said. "The streets of Lavapiés no longer reek of rot. The infant mortality rate has dropped twenty percent in six months. That’s what your estates refused to do for two centuries."
"And yet it was not your place," Duke Alvar of Valencia barked. "You mobilized army engineers without parliamentary review. You dug trenches beneath land you do not own."
"I own this land in the name of the Crown," Lancelot replied evenly. "The king granted me regency. And the laws I act under were signed by his seal."