The palace was quiet in the way it was only ever quiet before large things.
Not the ordinary quiet of late hours when the day had simply finished and the people in it had gone to their rest and the silence was the silence of nothing in particular happening. This was a different quality entirely — the quiet of a place that knew something was coming and had gone still in the specific way of things that could feel weight before it arrived, the way air went still before a storm not because the storm had started but because something in the atmosphere had already registered its approach and was holding itself differently in response.
Elara felt it when she walked the corridor back to their chambers.
The palace feeling it. The stones of it, the banners, the particular quality of the torchlight that seemed to burn with slightly more intention than usual, as if even the light understood that tonight was the last tonight before everything changed and was choosing to be present for it.
