The Secret of Princess Elara

Prologue – The Silence Before the Storm

For months, the Palace of Edrington had been quieter than anyone could remember.

Not in the way tourists noticed—there were still state banquets, balcony waves, and carefully choreographed smiles. But behind the stone walls, in the corridors where history seeped from every painting, something heavy lingered. A tension, a waiting.

Rumors had begun in the tabloids, as they always did.

Why was Princess Elara missing from so many public events?

Why had Crown Prince Rowan and his wife, Princess Amara, grown thinner in recent photographs, their smiles a little tighter, their eyes a little dimmer?

At first, the palace brushed it all aside.

“The princess is focusing on her studies.”

“She prefers privacy at her age.”

“Nothing unusual. Just a normal royal childhood.”

But the whispers kept coming.

A charity event postponed at the last minute.

An official portrait delayed indefinitely.

A school appearance canceled with no explanation.

There were mentions of “routine checkups” and “family time,” but no one could shake the feeling that beneath those placid phrases, something was very wrong.

Then, on a gray morning in late autumn, the woman known as the steel backbone of the royal family did something she had never done before.

Princess Helena spoke.

And nothing in the Kingdom of Arendale would be the same again.

 

Chapter 1 – Helena Breaks the Rules

Princess Helena had never liked fuss.

While other royals seemed to glide effortlessly through galas and red carpets, Helena preferred mud-splattered boots and early morning inspections of military units. She had earned a reputation as the “no-nonsense royal,” the aunt who attended more engagements in a year than most did in three.

She did not give emotional interviews.

She did not leak.

She did not crack.

Which was why, when a handful of senior royal reporters were summoned to a discreet drawing room on the east side of Edrington Palace, they assumed this was about logistics: perhaps a new initiative, perhaps a clarification on a schedule.

It was not.

Helena stood at the far end of the room, framed by a tall arched window. Her posture, as always, was straight, but there was something strangely fragile in the way her fingers curled around a folded piece of paper.

The reporters took their places. No cameras, no palace spokesperson, no teleprompter.

Helena did not look at the notes in her hand when she began to speak.

“This is long overdue,” she said.

The room seemed to freeze.

Her voice carried clearly, but there was an unfamiliar tremor beneath the steel.

“This is a deeply personal matter,” Helena continued, “and it concerns someone very dear to me. To us all. Princess Elara.”

A pen clattered from a journalist’s hand to the floor and rolled noisily across the tiles. No one bent to pick it up.

Helena went on.

“For over a year, our family has been walking through something we hoped we could manage in private. We believed we were protecting her. But there comes a point where privacy is no longer protection. It becomes a burden. One no child should have to carry.”

She paused.

The silence stretched.

“Elara has a life-altering condition,” Helena said. The words seemed to cost her. “It is not fatal. But it is serious. It is unpredictable. And she has been enduring it—largely in silence.”

A breath caught in the throat of one of the reporters. Another lowered his head, suddenly very aware that this was not a briefing.

This was a confession.

Helena’s voice wavered only once.

When she said Elara’s name.

The reporters would later say they had never seen her like that—shaken yet composed, furious yet heartbreakingly gentle. For a woman who had built her reputation on stoicism and duty, this was more than unusual.

It was unprecedented.

And more than anything, it was deliberate.

She knew what she was doing.

And she knew exactly what it would ignite.

Chapter 2 – The Hidden Pattern

The world heard Helena’s statement before the King did.

Not because she meant to blindside him, but because by the time the palace advisers realized what she intended, it was already too late. The reporters had received her words. The wires were primed. Within minutes, the story was everywhere.

“PRINCESS HELENA REVEALS PRINCESS ELARA’S ‘LIFE-ALTERING’ CONDITION”

“SECRET BATTLE INSIDE EDRINGTON: A LITTLE GIRL’S PRIVATE PAIN”

Helena had not given details, and yet the lack of specifics only fueled speculation.

Was it physical? Mental? Something visible? Something hidden?

The palace, as usual, declined to elaborate.

But behind closed doors, the truth had been known for some time.

It had started with small things.

A missed harvest festival here, a canceled Christmas appearance there. Excuses were given—Elara had a cold, Elara was tired, Elara was focusing on school. All plausible. All ordinary.

Except they weren’t.

Because every absence shared a quiet pattern.

They aligned perfectly with secret trips outside the capital.

Not to the usual private hospital used by the royal family, but to a discreet clinic far out near the border, run by specialists in rare neurological and behavioral conditions.

Even palace staff didn’t have the full picture. Travel was booked under false names. Cars left at odd hours. Medical teams were sworn to absolute secrecy. Those arranging the logistics were given scraps of information, never enough to see the whole.

But patterns have a way of revealing themselves to those who pay attention.

And there were always those watching.

One lady-in-waiting recalled seeing Princess Amara return from one such visit, her makeup washed away, her eyes rimmed with red.

Around the same time, Crown Prince Rowan—usually the embodiment of calm—began to show cracks. He snapped in meetings, left briefings abruptly, canceled appearances with little notice. Those who worked closely with him described it as watching a dam begin to strain under water it could no longer hold.

Elara herself began to notice.

She was nine.

Old enough to compare.

To see what her brothers could do easily that she could not.

To feel the glances when she paused mid-sentence to search for words that wouldn’t come.

To notice that sometimes her hands shook when she was tired, or that loud noises made her vision blur and her thoughts scatter like frightened birds.

She didn’t have language for it.

She only knew she was different.

Different in a way no one would explain.

“Why do I miss things?” she asked Amara once, after they declined yet another invitation for her to join a children’s charity event.

“You need rest,” Amara said gently. “Your body works a little harder than other people’s. That’s all.”

“Then why don’t we say that?” Elara asked.

Amara’s heart cracked.

Because the world won’t be kind, she wanted to say.

Because there are people who will turn your difficulty into entertainment.

Because we are trapped in an institution that doesn’t know how to hold vulnerability, only how to hide it.

Instead, she said, “Because this is our business, not theirs.”

It was the answer she had been taught to give.

And with every repetition, it felt a little more like a lie.

Chapter 3 – The Secret in the Blood

The breakthrough—or the breaking point, depending on how one viewed it—came with a test.

On a rain-slick evening nearly a year before Helena’s statement, a specialist from the Helven Institute in the mountains arrived at Edrington under heavy discretion.

He was introduced not by name, but by title alone.

Neurogeneticist.

His job was to put together pieces that others had politely ignored.

There had been too many small signs for too long. The tremors. The sensory overwhelm. The difficulty with concentration. The unpredictable bouts of fatigue that left Elara pale and trembling for hours.

“It might be nothing,” Rowan had told himself.

“It might be stress,” Amara had insisted.

“It might be more,” the royal physician had warned.

The tests were done privately, away from the main royal wing. Elara endured needles and scanners and long series of questions with a bravery that made the nurses ache.

The results came back two months later.

And with them, the first crack in a story that stretched back generations.

Elara carried a rare recessive gene associated with a neurological disorder that affected cognitive processing, motor control, and sensory regulation. It was not immediately fatal. But it was progressive in some cases. And most dangerously, unpredictable.

In some patients, the symptoms plateaued and remained manageable.

In others, they worsened gradually over time.

Elara’s case was still in its early stages.

There was no way to know which path she would take.

The geneticist, however, was certain of one thing: the gene had not appeared out of nowhere.

It was inherited.

Which meant at least one of her parents was a carrier.

Further tests confirmed it.

Rowan.

The Crown Prince, future King of Arendale, carried the same recessive mutation.

He did not show obvious symptoms.

But that didn’t matter.

What mattered was what it meant.

For Elara.

For her brothers, Prince Gabriel and Prince Leo.

For any future child born into that line.

For the monarchy itself.

The geneticist’s report, delivered in plainer language than he was accustomed to, put it bluntly:

“There is a non-negligible risk that this condition may present, in varying degrees, in multiple descendants. Early monitoring is advised. Full transparency within the family is strongly recommended.”

Transparency.

The word might as well have been a threat.

Because transparency had never been the monarchy’s way.

Chapter 4 – The King and the Shadow

King Aldric had never intended to be a cruel man.

He had grown up under the shadow of a father who believed emotions were private weaknesses and public stability was the only virtue that mattered. He had watched his own mother cry behind gilded doors, then compose herself before stepping into the light.

By the time he reached the throne, Aldric had convinced himself that the best way to protect his family was to protect the image of the crown.

People trust what they cannot see clearly, he’d been told. Mystique is a shield.

So when he was handed the report on Elara, with its talk of hereditary risk and potential decline, he did what he had always done when confronted with something that threatened the institution:

He compartmentalized.

“We will deal with this quietly,” he told Rowan and Amara in their private sitting room. “Elara will receive the best care. Nothing will be spared. But we must be extremely careful about what the public learns.”

“Careful?” Amara repeated, her voice brittle. “She’s a child, not a scandal.”

“I know that,” Aldric said.

But did he?

Rowan sat rigid, the report half-creased in his fist.

“Does Gabriel… Does Leo…” He couldn’t finish the question.

“We don’t know yet,” the royal physician admitted quietly. “Testing will be needed. But there’s time. Right now, Elara needs stability, not panic.”

“Stability?” Amara echoed. “She can barely get through a school day some weeks without collapsing. She thinks she’s failing. She thinks she’s weak. And we’re pretending everything is fine for the cameras.”

Aldric’s expression hardened.

“We cannot let this define her publicly,” he said. “If this becomes her story, it will consume her. Headlines. Pity. Analysis. She deserves privacy.”

“What she deserves,” Amara shot back, “is honesty.”

He didn’t respond.

In the days that followed, decisions were made.

Quietly.

The testing for Gabriel and Leo would be scheduled—later.

Elara’s public appearances would be scaled back, shuffled, disguised as scheduling conflicts.

A small team of private nurses would be assigned.

Everything would be done, Aldric insisted, with her best interests at heart.

But each choice, made in the name of protection, built another brick in a wall between truth and the people the royal family claimed to serve.

And Helena watched that wall rise with growing fury.

Chapter 5 – Catherine of Edrington

Princess Amara had once believed she could handle anything.

She had married into the royal family with open eyes. She knew the cost. She knew the scrutiny. She knew, in theory, what it meant to raise children in a world where their faces would be plastered on papers before their baby teeth even fell out.

She did not know what it meant to watch her daughter apologize for being tired.

She did not know what it meant to watch her daughter’s hands shake while she tried to hold a fork.

She did not know what it meant to tuck her daughter into bed after yet another missed event, only to hear a quiet, devouring question:

“Would people still like me if they knew?”

In the early days, Amara had held herself together.

She went to engagements.

She smiled.

She worked.

She threw herself into early childhood mental health campaigns, into fundraising for children’s hospitals, into initiatives for invisible illnesses.

It was her way of screaming without making a sound.

But as Elara’s condition fluctuated, as the tests grew more frequent and the nights longer, Amara began to fray.

One night, after a particularly brutal call from the clinic, she found herself in the private gardens of Edrington, barefoot, pacing the cold grass under a moon that felt too bright.

A security guard at the far end of the lawn looked away politely.

Inside, Rowan sat alone in the study, the report spread out on the desk like a battlefield map.

Elara’s specialist had just informed them that while her condition was still manageable, there were signs it might be evolving more quickly than they’d hoped.

“Her episodes are more frequent,” the doctor had said. “She’s struggling to regulate sensory input. This will require more frequent rest, more support, more adjustments.”

More.

Always more.

Rowan had thanked him, hung up, and stared at nothing for nearly ten minutes.

For a man who had been trained all his life to make decisions under pressure—war zones, disasters, diplomacy—this was the one field he was utterly unequipped for.

His daughter’s brain.

His daughter’s future.

His potential fault.

The next morning, Rowan was due at a major economic summit.

He canceled at dawn.

Officially, it was a “scheduling shift.”

Unofficially, it was the first time in his life he simply could not stand up and pretend nothing was wrong.

Inside the palace, people noticed.

They noticed more when Amara failed to appear at a charity luncheon later that week.

“She’s unwell,” the spokesperson said.

They didn’t specify whether it was her body or her heart.

Chapter 6 – The Confrontation

Princess Helena had always been fond of Elara.

There was something in the girl that reminded her of herself—a stubborn streak, a quick wit, a refusal to simply smile and nod when something didn’t make sense.

In the early months of Elara’s health journey, Helena visited often.

Always quietly.

She’d arrive without photographers, sometimes with a book, sometimes with nothing but time.

On one visit, she found Elara sitting on the floor of her room, surrounded by half-finished drawings.

“What are these?” Helena asked.

Elara shrugged, eyes down.

“Maps,” she said.

Helena knelt, ignoring the protests of her aging knees.

“Maps of what?”

“Of… me,” Elara murmured. One drawing showed a brain, roughly sketched, with little lightning bolts in certain areas. Another showed a stick figure with shaky lines around its hands. Another was just a jagged scribble, dark and thick.

“This is when it feels bad,” Elara said, pointing to the last one. “Loud. In here.” She tapped her head. “And here.” She pressed a hand to her chest.

Helena felt something twist inside.

“Does talking help?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” Elara said. “But they don’t like it when I talk about it too much. They get… smaller.”

“Smaller?”

“They look like they’re shrinking. Like they want to go into the walls.”

“Who?”

“Mama. Papa.”

Helena’s jaw tightened.

That night, she confronted Rowan and Amara in their sitting room.

“You can’t keep this up,” she said without preamble. “She knows something is wrong. She feels it. Your silence is not protecting her. It’s isolating her.”

“We’re doing our best,” Rowan said, eyes dark.

“Your best is killing you,” Helena replied. “And it’s teaching her that her pain is something to be hidden.”

Amara’s composure, already fragile, snapped.

“What do you want us to do?” she cried. “Hold a press conference? Put her medical records on a website? She cannot walk down a school corridor without cameras waiting. How do we explain this to millions of strangers when we can barely explain it to ourselves?”

Helena didn’t answer immediately.

“By telling the truth,” she said at last. “On your terms. Before it leaks on someone else’s.”

“You think we haven’t tried?” Rowan asked. “Father shut it down. His advisers think even acknowledging this will ‘destabilize confidence’ in the monarchy. As if a child’s health is a political liability instead of a human reality.”

Helena’s eyes burned.

“Then I will speak,” she said.

Amara stared.

“You can’t,” she whispered.

“I can,” Helena said. “And if I don’t, this will break you. It will break her. And I will not stand by and watch another generation suffer because we are too afraid of the truth.”

Rowan shook his head, torn between terror and relief.

“Helena…”

“I am not asking for your permission,” she said gently. “I am asking for your trust.”

Chapter 7 – The King’s Fury

When King Aldric found out what Helena had done, it was already too late.

Her statement was on every news feed, every speaker, every headline. Clips of her solemn face and shaking voice were being replayed across the kingdom and beyond.

He summoned her immediately.

She walked into his private study with the same unhurried stride she used for everything, as though she were arriving at yet another routine briefing.

It was anything but.

“How could you?” Aldric demanded as soon as the door closed. “How dare you speak without my approval?”

Helena did not flinch.

“The truth doesn’t wait for permission,” she said.

“This isn’t about the truth,” Aldric snapped. “It’s about stability. You have thrown the entire institution into chaos. You think headlines about the heir’s sick daughter strengthen us?”

“People will not turn on us because we acknowledged that a child is ill,” Helena replied. “They will turn on us because we lied about it.”

“We did not lie.”

“We hid,” she said. “It amounts to the same thing when everyone can see the holes.”

He paced, hands clenched behind his back.

“You could have come to me,” he said tightly.

“I did,” Helena replied quietly. “You told me it was ‘a family matter.’ That silence would ‘protect her.’ But it was protecting you. Your image. Your illusion of control.”

Aldric stopped, shoulders rigid.

“You are reckless,” he said.

“And you are afraid,” Helena replied. “Afraid that if people see you as human, they’ll stop believing in you as a king.”

He slammed his hand on the desk.

“This conversation is over,” he said.

“For your sake,” Helena said, “I hope not.”

She turned and left, leaving behind a king torn between anger and the slowly dawning realization that perhaps, just this once, she might be right.

Chapter 8 – The Leak

Helena’s statement was only the first blow.

The second came from a place no one had expected.

A confidential medical report, meant for only a handful of eyes, appeared on the encrypted inbox of one of Aldric’s senior advisers.

No sender.

No trace.

Just a file.

He opened it.

Then he wished he hadn’t.

It was from the same neurogeneticist who had first diagnosed Elara. It was an updated assessment, compiled after months of observation and additional tests.

The initial understanding of her condition, it stated, had been too optimistic.

What had been classified as a “manageable, potentially non-progressive disorder” now showed early indicators of gradual neurological decline.

The report did not say she would deteriorate rapidly.

It did not guarantee worst-case scenarios.

But it no longer sat comfortably in the realm of “manageable.”

It had shifted into something more ominous.

It contained one line that hit like a hammer:

“There is now moderate concern that Princess Elara’s condition may lead to increasing functional limitations over time. Continued secrecy could significantly impact her emotional well-being and self-perception.”

But that wasn’t all.

The report included a recommendation.

Gabriel should be evaluated immediately.

Not later.

Not “when things calm down.”

Now.

The adviser brought the file straight to Aldric.

Within hours, Rowan and Amara were called in.

The meeting that followed would haunt them for years.

They sat around a small table, the report between them. The curtains were drawn, as if the daylight itself were a threat.

Rowan’s hands trembled as he read.

Amara stared at a single sentence until the words blurred.

“How long have you had this?” Rowan asked the physician.

“Only a few days,” the doctor replied. “We needed to confirm the patterns. We did not want to cause panic prematurely.”

“Prematurely?” Amara echoed. “Do you think we haven’t been panicking for months?”

Aldric’s face was gray.

“Who leaked this?” he asked.

No one had an answer.

But the implications were clear.

If this report found its way outside the palace, the story would no longer be just about a struggling princess.

It would be about a monarchy with a potentially fragile lineage.

About a future king who might, himself, one day face similar challenges.

About a crown built on the myth of invincibility, suddenly forced to confront its frailty.

“It’s a family reckoning,” murmured Queen Celia quietly.

Her eyes met Aldric’s.

“And a public one,” she added.

Chapter 9 – The People’s Response

The Kingdom of Arendale had never seen anything quite like what followed.

The news that Princess Elara had a serious, life-altering condition was met not with the mockery or disdain Aldric had feared, but with something far more powerful.

Compassion.

Ordinary citizens left flowers at the palace gates—not with demands, but with messages.

For Elara, with love.

You are not alone.

We’re proud of you, little star.

Children drew pictures of princesses with walking sticks, wheelchairs, sensory headphones. They mailed them to Edrington with crayon-scrawled notes.

“You can still be a princess even if your brain is tired,” one read.

In city squares, candlelight vigils sprang up. People prayed, or simply stood in silence, thinking of a child they had never met, whose pain had somehow become a mirror for their own unspoken griefs.

Church bells rang.

Schools observed moments of silence.

On social media, the hashtag #StandWithElara spread like wildfire.

Doctors wrote thoughtful threads about neurological disorders in children.

Parents shared their own stories of raising kids who navigated the world differently.

For the first time, many saw the royal family not as a distant, untouchable entity, but as a family fighting a battle that millions knew too well.

The pressure on the palace shifted.

No longer were people demanding perfection.

They were asking for honesty.

And that, perhaps, terrified Aldric more than anything else.

Chapter 10 – The Statement

It was Rowan and Amara’s turn to speak.

They had resisted for as long as they could.

They feared, more than anything, that putting Elara’s story into words for the world would somehow trap her in it forever.

But as letters poured in, as candles burned night after night, as speculation threatened to outpace truth, they realized Helena had been right.

Silence was no longer protection.

It was a weight.

So one evening, a simple video appeared on the official royal channels.

No fanfare.

No teaser.

Just the Crown Prince and Princess of Arendale sitting side by side on a small sofa in a softly lit room.

Amara spoke first.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice wavered, then steadied. “Thank you for your kindness, your messages, your understanding. We have read so many of them, and we are deeply moved.”

Rowan’s hands were clasped, white-knuckled, but his gaze was steady.

“Elara is our sunshine,” he said. “She is funny, stubborn, endlessly curious. She loves horses and painting and asking every question that has ever been asked by any child in history.”

Amara’s lips curved faintly.

“For some time now,” she continued, “Elara has also been facing challenges that most children her age do not. Her brain processes the world differently. Sometimes that makes things harder. Sometimes it makes things overwhelming. Sometimes it makes her see things more beautifully than we ever could.”

Rowan glanced at her, eyes shining.

“Her condition is serious,” he said. “It requires ongoing medical care. It will shape her life. It does not define her.”

Amara nodded.

“We have made mistakes,” she said quietly. “In trying to protect her, we closed ourselves off. We allowed secrecy to add to her burden. For that, we are sorry.”

Rowan inhaled.

“We will do better,” he said. “We cannot promise to share everything. Elara deserves privacy. But we can promise to be more open. To acknowledge our humanity. To show that even in a palace, families hurt. And they heal.”

Amara looked into the camera, eyes soft but fierce.

“If you are a parent watching this, if your child struggles, if you struggle, please know this: you are not alone. We see you. We stand with you. And we are learning, just as you are, how to walk this road with love.”

The video ended without music.

Just a simple fade-out.

By morning, it had been watched millions of times.

Many cried.

Some whispered that the monarchy had finally stepped into the century everyone else was living in.

Helena, watching from her residence, allowed herself a rare smile.

Chapter 11 – Helena, Defender of Truth

If Helena had worried the public would condemn her for breaking protocol, she needn’t have.

They embraced her.

Newspapers dubbed her “the Defender of Truth,” “the Aunt Who Refused to Stay Silent.”

Talk shows, usually cynical about royal affairs, spoke of her with respect.

“She did what was right, not what was easy,” one commentator said.

“It’s the first time I’ve felt the royals actually trusted us with something real,” said another.

Inside the palace, praise was quieter.

Aldric did not apologize.

But he stopped criticizing.

He began, slowly, to listen.

At a small family gathering weeks later, he pulled Helena aside.

“I still think you were reckless,” he muttered.

“I know,” she said.

He hesitated.

“But I also think,” he added, barely audible, “that I may have been cowardly.”

Helena looked at him for a long moment.

“Fear isn’t cowardice,” she said. “Only what you do with it.”

He huffed.

“Always the philosopher,” he grumbled.

She smiled.

“Always the king,” she replied.

They left it there.

It was not forgiveness.

It was not full reconciliation.

But it was a start.

Chapter 12 – The Future

The monarchy did not collapse.

It did not dissolve under the weight of a child’s diagnosis.

It changed.

Quietly, at first.

Plans for Elara’s future were rewritten. She would not be expected to perform the same relentless public schedule as her brothers. Her education would be tailored, her space respected. Her duties, if she chose to take them up one day, would be shaped around her, not the other way around.

Constitutional scholars met with palace officials behind closed doors, discussing how to adapt expectations without rewriting the line of succession.

The conclusion was simple and profound:

The crown could remain.

The myth of invulnerability could not.

Gabriel and Leo were tested.

Their results were not shared.

Rowan and Amara decided that whatever the answer, they would address it when and if they needed to, not as a theoretical horror lurking in the shadows.

Public appearances changed too.

Elara appeared less often.

But when she did, it was on her terms.

Sometimes she wore noise-dampening headphones during parades.

Sometimes she left events early, with a small wave, no explanation needed.

Sometimes she wasn’t there at all.

And the people understood.

They had, after all, asked for honesty.

With it came the responsibility to accept imperfection.

At a small charity event two years later, Helena stood to give a speech. Elara, now eleven, sat in the front row beside Rowan and Amara, a sketchbook open on her lap.

Helena spoke not of duty or legacy.

She spoke of children.

Of their right to be flawed.

Of their right to be seen.

She ended with a simple line.

“We are not weaker for being honest,” she said. “We are only weaker when we pretend we are not human.”

Elara looked up.

Her hands shook, just a little.

She drew a small crown in the margin of her page.

Not perfectly.

But it was hers.

 

Epilogue – What She Becomes

Years later, historians would point to this period as the turning point.

They would say it was when the monarchy of Arendale stopped being a mirror and started being a window.

They would say that the old ways cracked when a princess spoke of a little girl’s pain, and instead of turning away, the nation leaned in.

They would say that Princess Elara, though never destined for the throne, reshaped it more than any coronation ever could.

As for Elara herself—

She would grow.

She would falter.

She would laugh.

She would rage at her body and love it and resent it and accept it, sometimes all in the same hour.

She might choose, one day, to step more fully into public life.

Or she might choose a quiet existence, far from cameras, close to things that made her feel steady.

Whatever she became, she would do so under a sky that now held the truth instead of the weight of everyone else’s denial.

On a crisp winter afternoon, many years after Helena’s first statement, Elara stood alone at one of Edrington’s balconies, looking out over the city.

Below, the people moved like tiny currents in a vast river. Some glanced up, recognizing her. Some didn’t.

She didn’t mind either way.

Behind her, the palace hummed with its eternal routines.

Ahead of her, the air was cold and sharp and honest.

She smiled.

Not because everything was fine.

But because, for the first time in her life, everything was real.

And that, she thought, might be enough.