⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀From the Coronation Register:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Junon crossed the Hall of Measures in twenty-seven steps.

For most of her life, Junon had crossed ceremonial rooms too quickly.

En. Twei. Thren.

The syllables belonged to no language the First Court admitted to knowing, yet her tongue carried them like inheritance. At nine, she counted to keep from running. At fourteen, to conceal that she still wished to. Tutors eventually taught her the pace of a sovereign body, still, the numbers always arrived before she did.

Var. Vey. Sesh.

The Hall of Measures opened around her. Morning entered through the high windows in long, colourless bands. Beneath each step, the marble answered softly before surrendering the sound to the vaults. Gauze hung between the pillars, rising whenever the great doors moved, then descending so slowly the hall appeared to breathe.

Three shallow braziers burned overhead, their smoke invisible until it crossed the light. There it became silver—a ribbon, a vein, the brief anatomy of something unseen—before vanishing again. Resin sweetened the air with the dark memory of forests. Cedar smouldered beneath it, dry and bitter.

Her mantle seemed white only from a distance: ivory in morning, parchment in shadow, elsewhere the grey of paper that had nearly remembered a shape of fire. Inside its innermost seam, beyond any witness, ran a single crimson thread. She had insisted upon it herself.

An hour earlier, the First Attendant had raised a silver dish before her.

“The lamps will deepen the colour beneath your eyes.”

“I know.”

“They may say you look tired.”

“But I am tired.”

Cool rose wax passed beneath Junon's eyes.

“That is not what the painters will keep.”

Junon frowned slightly, watching her face distort upon the curved silver.

“Then they won’t paint me properly. ”

The dish lowered. Her face disappeared.

Ahead, the guards lowered their spears, iron striking marble. Once, such sounds had hurried her, travelled the hall in perfect succession, through stone and leather and bone, every closing door, every approaching heel, every summons that possessed the shape of pursuit.

The throne waited at the end of the hall. So did the crown. So did twenty-seven measures of stone between the child they had found and the woman they intended to name.

Sevren. Aith. Neyn.

Beneath the incense, the cold marble, the patient weight of cloth, the child continued counting.