Mabella's POV "Everything is as ready as it can be," Fred told me, setting the final checklist on the table with a quiet thud that somehow carried more weight than it should have. He looked tired but satisfied, the kind of tired that came from weeks of turning chaos into order, the siege scars still faint in the lines around his eyes even though the red markers had been gone for what felt like a lifetime now.I looked at the checklist, pages and pages of tight, precise handwriting covering delegations, seating, security rotations, feast menus, rehearsal times for the seven stages of the ceremony. Two weeks had somehow become ten days. The palace hummed with a different kind of tension these days—not the sharp edge of survival, but the steady pulse of something being built right. "Elan is gone," I said, my voice quieter than I expected as I traced a finger down one column of names."Left at dawn," Fred confirmed, leaning against the edge of the table. "The escort confirmed clear bor
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