Royal guards were disarmed and chained despite their training and their oaths, their weapons taken and their hands bound with the same cold efficiency applied to everyone else. The Queen was restrained, though she offered no resistance beyond the rigid tension that locked her body like a drawn bowstring, her silence more damning than any outcry.
The King was approached last of all, and it took more wolves to close the distance to him than it had for anyone else; the hesitation came not because he physically resisted—his hands remained at his sides, his posture still carrying the weight of a crown that no longer protected him—but because of what he represented, because even here and even now, authority did not vanish cleanly. It had to be taken piece by piece, and taking it from a king required acknowledgment of what was being done, a deliberate breaking of something that had once seemed unbreakable.
