The archives of the Southern Palace were not designed for comfort. They were a cavernous vault of damp stone and the dry, sweet scent of centuries-old parchment, lit only by the flickering glow of a resonance lantern at the center of the desk.
Elias had been there since before the first bell.
He was no longer reviewing reconstruction maps. Instead, he sat surrounded by the skeletal remains of the kingdom's history: marriage treaties from the Third Era, precedents for sovereign override during co-regencies, and the dusty, iron-bound volumes of succession law.
He was not looking for a loophole to stop the marriage. He was looking for the blade that would keep the marriage from cutting him out of the world he had built. He was a man building a fortress of logic, stone by stone, until the walls were high enough to withstand the Northern tide.
