The busride home was too quiet.
Valeria's capital glowed beyond the tinted windows, streets polished and perfect, as if nothing had happened inside Crestwood Academy that day. As if a man hadn't screamed. As if fire hadn't bent to a prince's will.
I sat in the back seat, hands folded neatly in my lap, my face calm.
That was the first rule of survival.
Appear normal.
The principal's words echoed in my head no matter how hard I tried to silence them.
If the world finds out… they will not negotiate. They will dissect.
I understood now why everyone had lied so easily. Why my classmates smiled on the news. Why the head maid's power had rewritten memory without resistance.
Fear made excellent ink.
By the time the bus stopped in front of our house, I had already decided.
I would comply.
At least on the surface.
My mother greeted me at the door with a warm smile, the scent of apple pie clinging to her clothes. I hugged her longer than usual, holding onto the solid reality of her heartbeat.
They could take memories.
They could not take this.
Later that night, alone in my room, I opened the document the principal had given me. The approved version of the truth. Every sentence polished, harmless, empty.
I memorized it.
Word for word.
Then I closed it and opened my diary.
Not to write rebellion.
To record facts.
Dates. Expressions. Who spoke first. Who avoided my eyes. Which guards flinched when the crown prince entered.
Compliance did not mean ignorance.
At the palace, Prince Kaelith Altherion watched the same broadcast replay for the fifth time.
Everything had gone according to plan.
Too perfectly.
The students spoke as instructed. The media nodded and moved on. International observers sent routine acknowledgments.
Yet something unsettled him.
The girl had not broken.
She had bent.
That was worse.
"She agreed to cooperate," the head maid reported calmly. "No further resistance."
Kaelith's fingers tightened against the armrest.
"She will not expose us," the maid continued. "She understands the cost."
He believed that.
And still.
"Keep watching her," he said. "Quietly."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
When the call ended, Kaelith stood and walked to the tall windows overlooking the capital. Somewhere out there, Elena Winter was sitting in her room, pretending her world had not cracked open.
She had chosen survival.
So had he.
That made them alike in ways he did not yet want to name.
In her bedroom, Elena closed her diary and turned off the light.
She had done everything they asked.
Said everything they wanted.
But as she lay in the dark, one thought refused to leave her.
If forgetting is mercy… why does remembering feel like a sentence?
Far away, beneath a crown built on blood, Prince Kaelith asked himself the same question.