Just finished "The Protector of Raelin"; very well done short story; the protagonist thrust immediately into a dramatic predicament, and it concludes with a fitting end. The journey was great; your scene setting and descriptions helped set the mood pretty well, and I loved the dialogue between the kings.
I might snip a few things; not everything needs to be explained. The war-room, for example, felt a bit like a random side note. It'd make sense to include it only if they were to run into it later and she could see how the lines on it had changed, as a course of Raelin losing the war. Or "the great hall, which wasn't that great, the dining hall was much bigger, but it was the name of it and it stuck."; just feels like a run on thought that doesn't add much to the current, high intensity chase that's the main focus of the scene.
Other pieces can be rewritten: "An iron candle holder had crashed to the floor. When her father had pulled aside the curtain it had caught and caused it to fall." I get what you're saying here, but using 'it' for the curtain AND the candle holder in the same sentence is just bad grammar.
I might have rewritten this to be a compound sentence too: "When her father had pulled aside the curtain, it had caught on an iron candle holder, causing it to fall."
(I'm sorry if this is nitpicky but I'm literally in an English 300 Grammar class this semester and things are just sticking out to me because of it)
I'm not totally sure I followed the escape attempt. They were running through the castle, and sure the enemy had barged through and began searching everywhere, but how does that lead them back to a room 50 feet up? I thought they were headed to a dungeon to escape, and that would have had to be below the castle. Unless there happened to be a dining hall and kitchen several floors up within the castle, but then they couldn't be right next to the front doors the enemy finally broke through. I also find it hard to believe
Charlotte was a bit conflicting. She seemed very bright for a young girl of unspecified age, and yet there were a few times I thought "Surely if she was this bright, she'd know what the soldier's unmoving body meant he was dead before it was moved, right?" A bit inconsistent.
I also just knew in my gut that there would be a surprise twist in the last episode. What it was, I couldn't be sure, but for a short story titled "The Protector of Raelin," there were few people left to be that protector. That said, I didn't dislike the fact that magic was a part of the story, I just so wish it had been alluded to or mentioned earlier. Allon suddenly using magic to stop Lachoneus's attack was unclear until Charlotte's thoughts spelled it out too.
If there were something about all this I would change, maybe it would be addressing what kind of magic Charlotte had earlier, say when she discovers an injured soldier and can't master her magic over life essence to save him in time, instead of just finding him dead already? Going from a girl who wants to heal and rescue the men fighting for her to a sorceress/mage who just rips the life out of any and all enemies at any distance, only to be left with longing and regret that that is all she can do (not bringing life back) could be a similarly powerful/impactful realization to her realizing she's not the powerless child everyone always thought she was.
It'd be awesome to see you give this a rewrite after so long, since it's been about as long for you writing this as it was for me writing my first web-novel. We might not be able to see it so plainly, but our growth as writers can be pretty great without us knowing it