ARIANNE POV
By the seventh day, I was certain I was about to go out of my mind. The yelling outside, instead of subduing, became more aggravated. Day and night they scream beneath my window, and I know Ivan is doing his best to stop it, but the people are relentless. It didn't help that the councils and the rest of the kingdom already agreed to my dethronement.
I haven't seen Ivan all week, and it wasn't that he wasn't trying. He would slip into the chambers late at night, thinking I was asleep, but I could hear the heaviness in his steps, feel the weight of his decisions in the air. He would stand over me sometimes, probably debating whether to wake me, to speak to me. But he never did. He never said the words I feared were coming.
The silence between us was worse than the yelling outside.
