*if you have not completed the story, this contains spoilers from book 3*
Alright, this is a special request short story of Eberon finding love after he became king ❤️
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Walking the streets of a city like Thanantholl in the aftermath of the War of Death and Madness was a heart-shattering affair. The battle that savaged the cobbled stones and ancient trees would live on as a ghost in the hearts of the autumn court king after the visible structures were repaired. But my role today was not to lament what was, but to focus on the future that could be.
"We should make it there by midday meal if we continue at your gracious pace, your majesty."
I whipped my head around to stare at the fox-folk secretary who had been assigned to follow me on my tasks. Short, and wider at the hips than the shoulders, she made for a striking shape for a fae creature. With a bored mask on her face and her large, pointed ears sweeping back from her wavy brown hair, Rala kept the poise of her position as the king's assistant but the underlying, cutting insinuations of a female perturbed. Only the hint of her tail swishing behind her betrayed her annoyance. I think. Even after a month I still couldn't read her.
"Is my pace not suitable to your schedule, Rala?" I drawled.
"The pace of your esteemed gracious majesty could never be anything other than impeccable, King Eberon of Thanantholl and the Autumn Court."
Sarcasm. It had to be sarcasm, only the sly thing hadn't slipped up once in the weeks I'd know her. When Varthas pushed me onto the throat to claim a kinghood I'd refuted more than once at that stars-forsaken meeting, he cursed me. Cursed me to a life of servitude to these lands, of stewardship over these people, and worst of all he cursed me to working with this insufferable fox.
Instead of replying, which I knew would only end in more fluffed up words of pomp and circumstances from my infuriating secretary, I sighed through my nose and continued to Pearl Street. Perhaps slightly faster than I had been going before.
The bell above the shop door chimed merrily, not for an instant betraying the ravaged shelves and splintered counter of the store within. The window that had once been a masterpiece of stained orange glass in the layered pattern of maple leaves was an irreplaceable icon of Pearl Street. A bare, translucent pane now sat humbly in its place.
"My king." The nymph within the shop stopped her task of sanding the boards of the new countertop to bow.
"No, no please don't." The role was too fresh, too raw. When Baeleon died I was as lost as the rest of the Autumn Lands, and we were all still reeling from it.
"Don't be so humble, majesty King Baeleon the-"
"Hush, you," I snapped at Rala, then sighed. "Please take note of the damage on the shop and add whatever details of the bookkeeping remain of inventory."
"Of course," she said in that haughty way of hers.
Turning back to the nymph, I cleared my throat. "I'm sure you've heard form the other shops, but now that the citizens have been placed in housing, temporary or otherwise, I'm attempting to rekindle the commerce of the city. It is your hands, your craftsmanship, and your lifeblood that you pour into your work that has always made Thanantholl what it is. We need our artisans back."
