"Your Majesty, please ascend. This is already ten days since the death of your imperial father. This is already the longest the throne has sat empty since the passing of the founder king himself…"
The voice behind Damon was strained. Whoever it was, he was desperate since he had been pleading for the better part of an hour and was beginning to suspect that his words were landing on deliberately deaf ears.
Damon was sitting on the grass.
Not on a bench, mind you. Not on the carefully arranged garden furniture that had been placed at aesthetically pleasing intervals along the winding paths.
On the grass, directly on the winter-browned lawn, his plain clothes gathered dirt and dead leaves. He faced the sunset, which was bleeding gold and rose across the western sky, and he did not turn around.
His clothes were even plainer than what he had worn to meet Cecilia yesterday. That outfit had been unremarkable. This one was…
