The Empty Seat | The Ashborn Crown Ch. 10
He denied her place at his side before the Council. Her absence made the cost impossible to ignore.
During the short mid-afternoon recess, the chamber loosened into quiet clusters of movement and conversation. Seralia found him where the main hallway funneled into quieter corridors. He was sitting on one of the benches lining the corridor, attention on a nearby exchange as she approached.
She stopped a short distance from him, waiting until he acknowledged her. He turned but did not immediately speak, taking the time to ground himself in the smallest act of control before turning his attention fully to her. When he did, his expression remained neutral, but now it carried an added edge of restraint that had nothing to do with protocol. “You are not required to seek me out during recess,” he said, the words lacking any force of dismissal.
Seralia tilted her head slightly, studying him, apparently unbothered by his formality. “I wanted to,” she said simply.
Kaelric’s gaze held on her for a moment. “You were not instructed to come here,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “You said I could sit with you.”
A reminder. Not a challenge. The tension beneath his restraint tightened as he reacted to her proximity. She was close enough now that the pull was immediate and undeniable, pressing at the edges of his discipline with quiet insistence.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
Seralia didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she stepped slightly closer, just enough that the distance between them was no longer neutral. “I wanted to see if you would send me away.”
“And if I do?”
“Then I’ll go,” she said without hesitation.
He held her gaze for a moment longer than before, then gestured slightly to the seat next to him on the narrow bench. “You may sit.”
She stepped closer, and sat next to him on the bench. Despite trying to put distance between him, she still was lightly touching him. For a moment, neither spoke.
Kaelric exhaled slowly, controlled. “You should not be wandering unaccompanied,” he said, though the words lacked the edge of reprimand.
Seralia’s expression didn’t change. “Then don’t let me,” she replied, as if it were the simplest answer in the world.
***
By the time Kaelric left after Council recessed for the evening, something already felt wrong. Seralia simply was not there.
Kaelric moved through the public spaces, checking the places she ought to be. The dining hall first. The evening meal was being set out and attendees were beginning to gather. There was no sign of her at any of the tables, nor any trace of her among the groups formed into clusters.
He moved on to the informal gathering areas where people linger, holding more personal exchanges. Each pass confirmed the same result: there was no sign of her. Not only that, but no one appeared to be concerned by her absence or to be searching for her.
Seralia had vanished completely. He did not ask after her. Instead, he moved through the remainder of the evening.
He returned to his quarters readied himself for sleep, organizing his thoughts and attempting to disengage from the demands that had occupied his day.
He removed the outer layer of his formal wear and attempted to settle into the routine that would normally bring his mind into alignment for sleep.
It did not work. His thoughts remained fixed, circling Seralia and the fact he couldn’t dismiss his attraction to her through discipline alone. He remained still for a time, eyes closed, attempting to force himself into slumber, until stillness itself became indistinguishable from strain. Eventually, he opened his eyes and walked to the window, staring out at the lights of the city beyond the palace.
He had lived long enough to know the difference between impulse and reality. This was a misaligned biological response that would correct itself with time and distance. He simply needed to wait it out.
He exhaled slowly. And one unbidden thought formed: where is she now? He shut it down immediately. It wasn’t his concern. It could not be his concern. Wherever she was, she was safe. Where she was meant to be. Protected. Not alone.
His breath caught as the image of Seralia, a human woman barely out of girlhood, alone somewhere in a palace filled with dragons. Unprotected. His chest tightened hard enough to hurt. No. She is fine. She has to be. He turned from the window, closing his eyes. And immediately she was there. Something his mind refused to let go of. The way she had looked at him. The way the bond had flared when she leaned closer.
He did not settle, thinking about it. The echo of his footsteps against polished stone formed a metronome to his restless thoughts as he paced the length of the room. It had taken more control than he dared admit to restrain himself from taking Seralia with him into the chamber and seat her in the Warden Consort’s place at his side. Every fiber of him wanted to have her take her place beside him, even though it would have been politically reckless. Instead, he seated himself alone and watched her as she sat in the gallery following the proceedings, as her proximity pressed at the edges of his control.
At the time, that restraint had been necessary. Now it felt like absence. No, more like a wound, a raw and persistent pulse beneath his ribs that refused to quiet. He imagined what it would have been like to have her there, to feel the subtle weight of her presence anchoring him in the chamber. And he could recall the precise effort it had taken not to turn. Not to look at her. Not to acknowledge, before the Council itself, what she meant. Because if he had looked, he would not have stopped there.
And then, almost involuntarily, he allowed himself a single acknowledgment: the discipline, the control, the unbroken line of duty no longer mattered in the face of her absence. The moment she was not at his side, all of it had become hollow. Kaelric exhaled sharply, a sound he did not bother to suppress. She was gone.
And now, in the quiet of his quarters, that containment felt less like discipline and more like something withheld. His fingers flexed once at his side before stilling again, the smallest betrayal of the control he was still attempting to maintain. He had done what was required.
But only now, away from the chamber, away from the eyes of the Council, he realized the extent of what she was to him. His mind went to the only questions that mattered, the ones he avoided even in war councils because they admitted vulnerability. If this progresses, how do I protect her? If I refuse it, what does refusal truly cost me? Cost her? And if fate has finally cornered me, what does honor demand?
And as he watched orange ribbons form across the lightening ink of the distant horizon, somewhere in his chest something ancient and absolute had already decided that the fact she was not there at his side was unacceptable.
