Chapter Ten Release Date

Hey all!!

I realized I've posted a progress update on the Tumblr blog, but forgot to do so here!

So to catch you up, I've been hard at work with the chapter, which is currently 35k words, and I estimate it'll be around 40k by the time I've finished it. The chapter focuses heavily on the Crown's development and their growing romance with their love interest, while taking a quick break from all the politics. Courtly intrigue is still present, but this chapter is more of a breather after all the events from the coronation chapters!

Here are the sections that I've already completed:

• The Crown's timeskip training and tutoring lessons (15k including variations)
• R and A's main story scenes, political (4k)
• R and A's romantic scenes (8k - 4k each including variations)
• D's POV & D-related romance content (4k)
• X's POV & X-related romance content (4k)

What is left to complete:

• Interviews of potential court candidates, including a political decision (~1k)
• Court meeting, including political decisions and outcomes (~3k)
• A scene with Kham, dependent on previous choices (~1k)
• A scene with Yekbûn and/or others, dependent on previous choices (~1k)
• A few codex entries (~1k)

I've cut out a bunch of the political/tutoring scenes that I'd written earlier, as it ended up bloating the chapter somewhat.

I wanted CH10 to be more focused on the Crown's development and the building romance, rather than all the political strategizing that already happened in CH9. There's enough subplots going on as it is, so I had to make a choice on which ones are most pressing at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, there's still a good chunk of it present!! Just not as heavily featured as in the previous chapter.

Release Dates

For the release dates, I'm still well on track to send my beta readers the draft at the end of January/at the start of February. If that succeeds and they have enough time to proofread it, my estimated release dates would probably look something like this:

• Public release: February 28
• Ko-fi early access: February 26
•  Patreon tier 1 early access: February 24
  
• Patreon tier 2 early access: February 21
  
• Patreon tier 3 early access: February 14 💕

Regardless of possible delays, I feel fairly confident in stating that Patreon early access, regardless of tier, will be in February! Ideally the release dates will be even earlier than this, but I don't wanna stress myself and my betas out lmao

As always, thanks for all your patience and support 💖