Kaelen's pov
I sat very still when I heard this.
The guard next to me said, "Thank the gods. Maybe whoever comes next will be better."
I did not say anything. I was doing math in my head. Calculating. Rearranging. If the king was dead, then my target was dead. My purpose, the one I had built my whole life around for five years, had died with him.
For a week, I did not know what I was.
I ate when food was put in front of me. I slept when my body gave out. But inside, there was nothing. Just empty space where my reason for living used to be. Five years of training, of waiting, of becoming someone else, all of it pointed at a man who was now in the ground. I had aimed my whole life at a target that no longer existed.
Then the news came that his daughter would take the throne. That Elara, eighteen years old and newly crowned, was the Queen of Dravara.
