The Unclaimed Seat | The Ashborn Crown Ch. 9
Seralia is quietly shut out of every table—until Kaelric offers her his. What begins as courtesy pulls him into a bond he can no longer fully control.
The next stretch of Council continued without disruption, the flow of discussion shifting from territorial adjustments into more granular allocations and oversight. The urgency beneath the language had softened into the steady rhythm of governance.
Kaelric remained where he was, but the awareness of Seralia lingered. Her attentiveness on the proceedings which defied expectations. And each time his attention brushed upward, she met it. He suppressed that awareness with the same precision he used for everything else.
Eventually, speakers concluded their points and notes were recorded. The Flight Lord dismissed the chamber for the midday interval and the formal structure dissolved into the looser movement of individuals seeking food, rest, or conversation. Kaelric moved with the crowd to the buffet set up in the large chamber just across from the Council Chamber.
He moved with intention through the crowd, collecting a tray and selecting his food with mechanical precision. By the time he approached the seating area, the room was nearly full. Tables had been quickly claimed. Groups formed naturally as people sat with their own Courts and alliances. Kaelric scanned the room once, noting the available spaces.
Only one small table remained set in a far corner. Small, with two chairs and no occupants. Not marked. Not reserved. He moved toward it without hesitation, set his tray down adjusted the chair, and sat. Then he noticed her.
Seralia stood in the middle of the room, tray in hand. Her gaze moved across the room until it landed on an open seat nearby. She approached. Then, before she could sit, someone leaned forward and placed a hand lightly on the seat. A subtle gesture that the seat was already taken.
She nodded and turned around to reassess the situation and moved to the next table. The chair was already claimed with a similar gesture before she could reach it. Again she paused. Again she adjusted. Table after table. Each time she approached, she was gently yet unmistakably directed. The pattern was clear. She was being excluded. Five tables. Five rejections.
Kaelric observed it all, the first bite of his food on his fork, still hovering midair, with a growing tension he would not allow himself to name as each rejection layered on the last, forming a pattern that seemed almost deliberate.
She scanned again, slower, more deliberately. Conversations carried on. People were welcomed at the tables that had rejected her and others she hadn’t approached. Trays clinked. Laughter surfaced in brief, contained bursts. Yet, she still remained without a place. Finally, she shrugged and picked up her fork and began eating as she walked to the edge of the room, away from Kaelric and his table, not even looking his direction.
Kaelric set down his fork and pushed his chair back without hesitation and rose, leaving his tray on the table. He crossed the space between tables with his long strides. As he approached her, Seralia turned around. She looked a bit confused when he stopped a short distance from her. For a brief moment, he said nothing. Then, with quiet formality, he inclined his head slightly. “You may sit with me.”
At the table, Kaelric returned to his meal with measured precision. Only after a few moments of thoughtful chewing, did he turn his attention toward her. “Tell me about your family.”
Seralia didn’t hesitate. “My mother stayed home with us,” she said, her voice even, unforced. “She raised me and my siblings. My sister, and my brothers. I’m the youngest of four.”
Kaelric did not react outwardly. “And your father?”
She paused just briefly, as if choosing how to frame it, then continued, “He’s a navy officer.”
Kaelric absorbed it in silence, the information adding itself to the internal structure he had already begun constructing without conscious permission. “Is he stationed far from home?” he asked, tone still measured but less detached.
Seralia considered the question for a moment before nodding slightly. “He’s away a lot, yes. We don’t always see him often, but when he is home, he tries to make up for it.” Her tone held no complaint, just acknowledgment of the reality of her family’s life.
Kaelric’s fingers tightened faintly against one another, then relaxed again. “And your mother?” he asked after a moment. “She raised four children alone?”
“She had help,” Seralia said simply. “But yes. She handled most of it. She’s… very steady.”
Kaelric inclined his head slightly and looked at her more carefully.
The conversation continued. To anyone watching, it would read as a High Warden maintaining a conversation with a young guest, composed and slightly distant. Seralia spoke animatedly about her family and small details from home.
But the longer they spoke, the more the bond pressed, threading through gaps in his discipline, finding places control was not meant to be tested. Each time she leaned forward slightly, each time her voice softened on a word, each time she looked at him with that unguarded directness, something in him responded. He adjusted his posture once to reach out to her without thinking, then caught himself. His fingers flexed subtly against the edge of the table, grounding himself in anything that would keep him from crossing a line that he knew, with absolute certainty, he should not cross.
Seralia did not appear to notice. Or if she did, she did not react to it. She simply continued speaking, asking questions in return, her tone easy, curious, open in a way that made the space between them feel closer than it should have been. That lack of resistance in her, more than anything, was what made it dangerous. And the bond responded to that absence with increasing intensity.
The meal ended and the room shifted again as people rose to return to their duties. Kaelric stood from his chair. Seralia rose as well and moved with him, aligning her pace naturally with his as they followed the crowd from the dining hall.
The corridor leading back toward the Council chamber was quieter now as people had found their places. Kaelric kept his hands at his sides and his expression controlled, despite the tension between his discipline and what the bond was demanding as Seralia simply walked beside him, occasionally glancing toward him. That was enough to tighten something in him again. They reached the staircase leading up toward the gallery levels. The flow of people naturally split here as those returning to the chamber continued moving straight ahead and those seated in the gallery climbed the stairs.
Kaelric stopped. Seralia stopped, too. For a moment, neither spoke. The space between them had condensed into something hard to ignore. He looked toward the stairs. Then, without invitation, a thought. Bring her to the chamber. Seat her where she belongs. The Crimson Scale Consort’s seat. A seat empty since his wife, Lyrisse, died nearly half a millennium ago. Yet the thought felt natural. His hand flexed at his side, once. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly as he forced the thought back down, reasserting the boundary that should never have been approached in the first place. This was not a decision that could be made in impulse. This was structure. Power. Authority. And she was not there. Not yet.
Kaelric inhaled slowly, then exhaled with equal control, forcing his mind back into alignment with reality rather than the pressure of the bond. When he spoke, his voice was steady, formal once again. “You should return to the gallery,” he said. “The next session will resume shortly.”
Seralia looked at him, studying him for a brief moment. She nodded, then turned toward the stairs without hesitation.
Kaelric stood at the bottom of the staircase, watching as she began to ascend. Each step she took carried her further away from him. He stood still until she reached the point where the she disappeared from his view. Only then did he turn and walk onto the Council chamber floor.
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