Chapter 69: They Want Her Ready

Elara:

For several seconds, I could do nothing but stare at the space beyond the open doors while Lorien’s words echoed inside my head.

Your home.

The words sounded absurd. Almost cruel in their simplicity.

My home had been a small house in Florida. It had smelled like my father’s coffee every morning and my mother’s lavender candles. It had Felix’s shoes lying carelessly near the entrance because he had always been too lazy to put them away properly. It had photographs on the walls, old furniture, scratches on the dining table, and years of memories packed into every corner.

That house had been destroyed along with my family less than a month ago. And now this enormous mansion, hidden somewhere in the mountains of a supernatural realm I had never even known existed, was apparently supposed to be mine.

I couldn’t decide what I was feeling. Shock, disbelief, anger, grief - perhaps all of them had collided inside me at once, leaving me unable to choose even one emotion to hold on to.

I remained standing outside the entrance instead of stepping inside, my fingers tightening at the hem of my uniform blazer as I finally took a slow, deep breath. Then I turned toward Lorien. "Why did you bring me here?" I asked quietly, my voice sounding far steadier than I felt.

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, perhaps realizing that I had no intention of entering on my own, he turned and walked inside.

I watched him disappear farther into the mansion before letting out a frustrated breath. Great. Apparently, I was expected to follow him even when he refused to answer a perfectly reasonable question.

I stepped over the threshold, and the moment I did, the enormous doors swung shut behind me with a soft, almost mechanical click. I instinctively turned around, staring at them for a second before looking back into the house.

The mansion looked completely different from the outside now. What had seemed almost dark and abandoned from beyond the gates was suddenly glowing with warm golden light. Lanterns mounted along the walls had apparently awakened through some spell the moment we entered, illuminating every corridor and corner without a single visible switch.

The architecture was equally strange. There were ancient-looking stone pillars and carved wooden panels alongside modern furniture, enormous glass windows, elegant lamps and sleek pieces that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the twenty-first century. It was royal without being excessively decorated, ancient without looking outdated, and somehow both intimidating and beautiful at the same time.

I slowly followed Lorien through the entrance hall, my footsteps echoing softly against the polished floor. Every few seconds, my eyes caught another detail that made me wonder what kind of life my biological parents planned for me to build something like this.

Paintings covered parts of the walls, though I couldn’t recognize most of the people in them. There were sculptures, old bookshelves, decorative weapons and enormous vases filled with flowers that looked too fresh to have been arranged naturally. Everything was immaculate, almost as though someone had been maintaining this place all these years despite the fact that its rightful owner had been missing for two decades.

Eventually, Lorien stopped near a set of enormous glass windows overlooking the side garden.

I slowed behind him and looked outside, only then noticing the dark clouds gathering along the distant horizon. They were thick and heavy, rolling slowly across the mountains as if a storm was approaching. The first faint flash of lightning illuminated the clouds far away, though the thunder hadn’t reached us yet.

Neither of us spoke for several seconds.

Then Lorien finally broke the silence. "The Regents want you to learn about your real identity, your family, and the history of the royal house alongside your academy education. You need to understand Starfall’s politics if you are going to assume the position waiting for you."

My eyes snapped to him immediately.

Of course.

There it was.

The Crown Princess.

The title these people had been throwing at me since the night they dragged me away from everything I knew. And they hadn’t even waited a month before deciding they needed to start preparing me for whatever royal role they had already planned out.

I looked toward the storm outside, my jaw tightening.

I hadn’t even finished learning which buildings existed inside Moonveil Academy. I was still struggling to understand magic, elemental powers, efficiencies, familiars, werewolves and an entire supernatural society that had somehow existed right alongside the human world without my knowledge. I was still grieving my family. I still woke up from nightmares of that night. And these people wanted me to learn how to be a princess.

But what bothered me even more was why they seemed so desperate.

I wasn’t stupid enough to believe the Regents simply wanted their royal family back because they missed having a monarchy. These people had ruled Starfall for past two decades. They held political power, wealth, influence and authority. They had no reason to willingly surrender any of that to a twenty-year-old girl who had grown up believing she was human.

No sane group of rulers would hand their power to someone they had barely known for a few weeks.

Which meant there had to be something else. Something they weren’t telling me. And that thought bothered me far more than the crown ever could.

I was still lost in my thoughts when Lorien spoke again. "From now on, you can use your weekends to learn about your family and Starfall’s political structure. Someone will be arriving shortly to begin teaching you. As for the schedule, you can decide when and where you want those lessons. I don’t intend to take your entire weekend away from you."

I scoffed before I could stop myself. "How thoughtful." The sarcasm was impossible to miss.

I expected him to ignore it. But he didn’t. When I looked up, Lorien was already walking toward me.

One moment he had been several feet away. The next, he stood directly in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head slightly to meet his eyes. His expression was no longer the calm, detached one he had worn throughout the drive.

"How long," he asked quietly, "are you going to hold that evening against me?"