Meredith
The crown pressed heavy on her brow, but tonight it was memory, not gold, that weighed her down. Sleep eluded her. She closed her eyes, and the past rose like smoke.
Flashback — The King's Burial
The bells had tolled only once before the coffin was lowered.
Meredith remembered the courtyard lined with guards, the nobles draped in mourning black, the hush that clung to the air like frost. Her father's face had been pale, waxen, his body hidden beneath layers of silk too quickly sewn.
Whispers slid through the ranks of courtiers: No investigation. No inquiry. Too sudden. Too clean.
But the lords bowed their heads, and the priests muttered prayers, and her father—king, protector, judge—was gone before she could even ask why.
The circlet passed to her that very hour. No answers, only duty.
She had wanted to scream, You buried him too quickly. What are you hiding? But the silence of the court swallowed her voice whole.
Flashback — The Exile of Prince Kael
Another story, told in hushed tones around firelight.
Kael, the young prince of the northern isles, betrayed by his own blood. An uncle who whispered treason into the ears of nobles, who painted Kael as ambitious, dangerous, a shadow over the throne.
The boy-turned-warrior driven into exile, his name blackened, hunted by assassins from blade to poison cup.
He survived not by crown or court, but by steel and cunning. Each scar across his body bore witness: they had tried to erase him, and failed.
When the uncle's reign collapsed under rebellion, Kael did not return. He wandered, a sword-for-hire, a leader without a kingdom. Until fate—or ambition—delivered him to her.
Flashback — The Decree
She felt the memory as vividly as the gallop of the horse beneath her.
Bound at the wrists, her body jolting with every stride, Meredith had clung to the mane as Kael's arm held her steady. The wind tore at her hair, the castle walls drawing nearer with every hoofbeat.
And through the chaos, she heard the whispers: her father's decree.
Whosoever rescues the princess shall rule in her stead.
A proclamation made months earlier, buried beneath ritual and ceremony, dismissed by most as a riddle or a jest.
But Kael had seized it as truth. By blood and blade, he had carried her back—and in doing so, carried the throne with him.
She remembered the chill in her stomach, the crushing certainty that her fate had been written not in choice, but in law.
Present
Meredith opened her eyes to the candlelit chamber, the crown still burning against her skin.
Her father, buried too soon. Kael, exiled too cruelly. Decrees and betrayals, whispers and schemes. Their kingdom was not a tapestry of honor, but a knot of secrets.
And now she was tangled in it, the knot tightening around her throat.
From the war gallery below, she heard Kael's voice carry—a command sharp as steel. He was consolidating power, stone by stone, decree by decree.
Meredith pressed her palm flat against the tome of arcana at her side. If history offered no justice, perhaps magic might.
But for now, she would stand beside him. For his triumph was her survival.
And for every secret buried, she would dig deeper.