Chapter 6 - The Shattered Crown
"Silence!"
Caelan’s roar shook the massive stone foundations of the citadel, rattling the plates on every table. He vaulted over the high table, drawing his broadsword with a screech of steel that made the bravest warriors in the room flinch. The golden aura of an enraged Alpha King surged around him, oppressive and lethal.
"Another word from any of you, and I will execute the council for treason right here on this floor!" Caelan bellowed, stepping in front of Sirsha to shield her from the jeering crowd.
Lord Morgran didn't back down, emboldened by the presence of his armed guards stationed around the perimeter. "You can kill us all, Caelan, but a mute cannot rule! The laws of the Moon Goddess cannot be rewritten by a king blinded by lust!"
Sirsha stood behind Caelan, watching the broad expanse of his back. Her chest ached with a profound, suffocating sorrow. They were right, wasn't it true? She couldn't speak. She was an omega, a nobody, a curse upon the throne. She had brought war to the man who had defended her.
Slowly, with trembling fingers, Sirsha reached up and unpinned the heavy silver circlet resting upon her brow—the symbol of her tentative station as Luna.
She stepped around Caelan before he could stop her, holding the silver crown out toward the assembly.
"Sirsha, no," Caelan whispered, his fierce expression cracking into pure agony as he reached for her. "Don't you dare."
She gave him a heartbreaking, melancholic smile—a tiny, fleeting curve of her lips that communicated everything her voice could not: Thank you for fighting for me. But I won't let them destroy you.
Before Caelan could grab her wrist, Sirsha placed the silver crown down on the edge of the dais.
Then, she turned and walked away.
"Stop her!" Lord Morgran sneered. "She realizes her place at last!"
"If anyone takes one step toward her, I will take every head in this room!" Caelan roared, his voice cracking with a raw, terrifying despair. He didn't care about the crown, the council, or the kingdom anymore. He lunged past the table, ignoring the stunned gasps of the dignitaries, and sprinted down the aisle after her.
But by the time Caelan burst through the heavy oak doors into the corridor, the hallway was completely empty.
Sirsha was gone.
Panic unlike anything the Northern Realms had ever witnessed consumed the Alpha King. Within minutes, the grand banquet hall erupted into absolute chaos. Foreign ambassadors fled in terror, realizing the kingdom was on the brink of civil war, while the high council scrambled to secure the citadel gates.
High up in the shadows of the third-floor balcony, Lady Isolt watched the chaos unfold with a sickening grin of victory.
"Stupid, broken girl," Isolt muttered to herself, turning to slip down the servants' stairwell. "You should have stayed in the kitchen."
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Little did Isolt know, as she descended into the damp, shadowy stone corridors of the lower service level, the temperature around her began to drop precipitously. Her breath plumed into white clouds in the torchlit hallway.
The stone walls of the citadel began to hum—not with the angry, destructive magic of the night of the trial, but with a deep, mournful, resonant vibration that sounded dangerously like a gathering storm.
