Short Story: The Throne Room

Finally, she walks in.

And, like all other times I’ve seen her, I forget how to breathe.

Not that I show it. I’m carved from stone, sitting on this throne, wearing this crown, playing this role. It’s a part I was born into, a script I’ve rehearsed since childhood. But then she enters, and the weight of it all shifts.

She’s composed. She always is. Dark eyes, steady and unreadable. A posture that speaks of control, of power, of a lifetime spent standing tall when the world wanted her to bow.

She is so beautiful. My god, she has me. I’m so drawn to her.

Does she feel it too?

It’s dangerous to think so. Dangerous to think of her at all.

Yet here she is. And here I am.

The room is full, advisors, warriors, diplomats. A tangle of politics and pretense. The kind of gathering where words are weapons, where alliances are weighed in glances and gestures. I should be listening. Should be calculating. Instead, I track the movement of her hands as she pulls back the hood of her cloak, revealing the dark braid that falls over one shoulder.

I’ve thought about that braid before. More times than I should.

My advisors speak. Her advisors speak. The same old game. But beneath it, something else hums.

Something I can’t ignore. And something, I’m certain, she can’t ignore either. She has to feel it the way I do. She has to!

There’s a moment, small, fleeting, when she steps closer. It’s nothing. A shift in the dance of politics. A necessary movement to reach for the map between us, to trace the contested borders with her fingertips. But she is too close now.

Closer than she has ever been.

Closer than she should be.

My hand moves without thought. Just a fraction. A small shift, a risk I shouldn’t take.

And then,

Contact.

A brush of fingertips. Light. Barely there. But real.

I stop breathing.

And she does not move away.

The world tilts, just for a second.

Does she know what this means? What she’s allowing?

I could pull away. I should.

I don’t.

Neither does she.

The discussion continues around us, everyone oblivious to our fingers touching. But here, in this space between us, the unspoken is shouting at us.

I press my fingers just slightly against hers. The smallest pressure, a silent question.

She doesn’t pull back.

Instead, she lets her fingers shift, just enough. Just enough to tell me she is here, that she is aware, that she is choosing not to sever this thread we’ve so dangerously woven between us.

A thousand thoughts crash into me.

What would happen if anyone noticed? If our people knew? If we weren’t standing on opposite sides of an endless divide?

How could we possibly be together?

I don’t know. But the future is impossibly far away.

Right now, there is only this.

A stolen moment. A shared secret.

I let my hand linger as long as I dare. It is reckless. It is foolish. It is everything I have ever wanted.

Then, movement. A shift in the room.

She steps back, her hand slipping away. The air between us feels colder for it.

But before she turns, before she resumes the mask she wears so well, she flicks her gaze to mine.

And she knows I have feelings for her.

And she has feelings for me in return.

I school my face into something neutral. But inside, the fire has already started. And I cannot put it out. Not anymore. I must see her alone.

Even if it starts a war with the whole world.