Free Web NovelChapter 181: The Great Families
Back in the capital, Princess Didi knew something had gone wrong the moment she looked down into the palace courtyard.
Carriages filled it end to end, far more than the usual flow of nobles and petitioners. She recognized the crests on the doors as she counted them, and her unease climbed with every one she placed.
Every Great House in the kingdom had sent a coach, and not the lighter ones their heirs rode around in. These were the grand ceremonial coaches a house only rolled out when its patriarch rode inside.
The patriarchs themselves had come, every last one of them, and on the very same afternoon. Heads of the Great Houses did not travel to the palace in person for anything less than a coronation or a war.
Didi had grown up inside this court, and she could count on one hand the times all the Houses had gathered under a single roof. None of those rare gatherings had ever ended in anything but blood or upheaval.
She didn’t need anyone to explain what had dragged them out of their territories at once. Her father had just handed the last unclaimed region in the kingdom to one unknown man, and every House out there had wanted that land for itself.
The unknown man was Hajin, which meant every angry House in that courtyard was here about him in the end.
Her hands tightened on the windowsill before she made herself let go. Hajin was off clearing some gate, with no idea the most powerful families in the kingdom had converged on the capital over his name.
She left the window and made for the upper gallery above the grand hall. The noise of the court usually carried up to meet her there, and today there was almost none of it.
From the railing she could see them gathered below, the heads of every Great House standing in loose, watchful clusters. Not one of them was seated, and none looked anything close to calm.
A herald’s voice rang out to announce the arrival of the King. Every patriarch in the hall turned toward the throne at once, and Didi felt the whole room pull tight like a drawn bowstring.
The King came through the doors at the far end, and his power rolled into the hall ahead of him. It pressed down on everyone at once, and along the walls the lesser nobles sagged where they stood, some gripping the wall behind them to stay on their feet.
Didi understood this entrance for exactly what it was, a message far more than an arrival. Her father was no fool, and he knew precisely why every Great House had descended on his palace at once.
Flooding the room with his power was his answer to all of them, delivered before a single word left his mouth. He had not come to negotiate, and he had no intention of backing down from any of them.
For most of the room, that alone would have ended any defiance. Her eyes went straight to the Flint patriarch, Hajin’s father, before anyone else. Sure enough, he stood stiff under the pressure, his jaw clenched and sweat already gathering at his temple.
He was the weakest head in the room, and the King’s mana made sure everyone could see it.
The rest of the heads standing in that hall told a completely different story. They stood through the King’s pressure as if it were nothing more than a draft, not one of them shifting so much as their weight.
Every one of them was a monster in their own right, each one ruling a region of the kingdom and answering to no one above the crown.
Two of the figures standing unmoved were women, and Didi knew both of them by reputation alone. One stood draped in deep red, ageless and severe, a beauty that did nothing to soften the cold in her eyes.
The other looked far younger, all easy smiles and pale gold hair, which somehow made her the more unsettling of the two. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
None of the other four gave the King so much as a flicker of unease. They watched him cross to the throne with the calm of people who had nothing to fear from him. For all his power, the King had walked into a room that would not bend.
The King settled onto the throne without any hurry, letting the silence stretch a moment longer than was comfortable. Then he spread his hands, and the smile he wore was almost warm.
"My lords, my ladies," he said, his voice carrying easily across the hall, "to what do I owe the honor of all five Great Houses at my door on the same afternoon?"
He had to know the answer already, and the question landed like a match dropped into oil.
The hall broke open all at once, every bit of that held-back tension snapping loose. Several of the heads started in before the King had even lowered his hands, their voices climbing over each other within seconds.
"That region has sat unclaimed for forty years," one of the older heads snapped, stepping forward, "and you would hand it to a nameless commoner over the Houses that have bled for this kingdom?"
The woman in deep red never once raised her voice, which somehow cut through the noise harder than any of the shouting. "We were not consulted," she said simply. "A sixth House does not appear on the board because the crown wishes it so."
Two more heads spoke over her, one demanding the grant be struck down outright, the other asking just who this Hajin was supposed to be.
From the gallery, Didi watched the most powerful people in the kingdom shed every scrap of their court manners in the space of a breath. This was the exact storm her father had gambled on stirring up, and somehow Hajin sat right at the center of all of it.
Through it all, the King simply sat back and let them rage, that faint smile never once leaving his face. He looked less like a man under siege and more like one watching a plan come together exactly as intended.
The King let the shouting run on a few seconds longer, until whatever patience he’d been wearing finally thinned.
He neither rose from the throne nor raised his voice to do it. He simply pushed his power out a second time, and this wave came with an edge the welcome had not carried.
The noise died in an instant, every voice in the hall cut off at the root.
"I received you," he said, one hand settling flat on the arm of the throne, "when every one of you turned up at my palace unannounced, on the same afternoon, demanding my time. That was a courtesy, and one I am already beginning to regret."
His gaze moved slowly across the gathered heads.
"And now you stand in my hall and bicker like children over a patch of land. Grown men and women, heads of the oldest Houses in the kingdom, squabbling like it’s the last scrap of bread left on the table."
He leaned forward then, the last of the smile gone from his face.
"I am the King of this kingdom," he said, letting each word fall on its own into the silence. "The land is mine to give, and the titles are mine to grant. So tell me, which of you believes I need your permission to do as I please inside my own borders?"
Not a single one of them answered the question he had laid down. Even the strongest heads in the room understood that it had only one safe answer, and that giving any other edged far too close to treason.
From the gallery above, Didi eased back from the railing, her own tension uncoiling a little. Her father had not raised his voice once, and yet he’d just backed the most dangerous people in the kingdom into a corner with a single question.
The silence held for a long beat, and then the woman in red tilted her head, entirely unbothered. Whatever she was about to say, Didi already knew it would not be an apology.
