The palace knew before anyone said anything.
That was the thing about places that had been inhabited long enough by enough people — they developed a sensitivity to absence the way skin developed sensitivity to cold. Something was missing and the walls knew it and the corridors knew it and the staff that moved through both knew it in the particular way of people who could not point to the specific thing that had changed but could feel the change in every room they entered.
Elara was gone.
Nobody announced it. Nobody posted a notice or called a formal assembly or used any of the mechanisms that palaces used to communicate significant information. It simply moved through the outer wall the way true things moved — quietly, finding every available channel, arriving in places before anyone had consciously sent it there.
By the first morning the kitchen staff knew.
