Before she was Aurora, before the name stirred whispers and awe — she was simply the child of a slave. And before that, there was Elisa.
Elisa was a girl brought among the bounty from the last war. She was the quiet one, the kind who moved with bowed head and silent steps. Her place was in the shadows of the palace, just another servant girl with calloused hands and soft eyes, folding linens and cleaning floors that never stayed clean. But even shadows sometimes catch light and one day, he noticed her.The King.
He wasn't supposed to. Kings didn't look twice at girls like her. Yet he did, not with affection or love, but with hunger.
It was after a royal feast. Laughter, wine, perfume, and arrogance drenched the halls.
The Queen was drunk on flattery. The King wandered — like a wolf full of meat but still wanting blood.
Elisa was alone in the narrow corridor behind the great hall, gathering spilled, wine-soaked napkins when she heard heavy footsteps.
She turned. The King blocked the only exit.
"Your Majesty," she whispered, bowing so deeply her forehead almost touched the floor. "Forgive me, I will leave—"
"Look at me," he ordered, voice thick with wine.
"I… shouldn't, sire."
A slow smile cut across his face. "Disobedience? From you?"
"No, Your Majesty," she trembled. "I only meant—"
"Come here."
She stepped back.
His smile vanished. "I said come here."
Her fingers shook around the folded linens. "Please… I need to finish my duties."
"You have a new duty tonight."
He reached for her wrist.
"Please, Your Majesty—no—"
Her plea died against his hand as he shoved her into the shadows of a deserted chamber. The torches flickered. Her heartbeat thundered. Tears burned her eyes.
"Your Majesty," she cried, voice cracking, "I don't want this—"
His grip tightened. "You don't get to want."
When it was over, he pulled away as if she were dirt caught on his sleeve.
He didn't look at her.
Didn't speak to her.
Only adjusted his robes and headed for the door.
"Your Majesty…" she whispered, broken. "Please don't leave me like—"
He finally glanced back, expression hollow.
"Forget this ever happened."
Then he left.
And the darkness swallowed her whole.
No one asked what happened that night.
No one dared.
Months later, Elisa's belly betrayed the secret.
She worked slower. Ate more. Grew pale.
Whispers circled her like vultures.
Queen Isadora noticed.
She cornered Elisa in the linen chamber, eyes sharp as daggers.
"You look ill," the Queen said lightly. "Or perhaps… expectant?"
Elisa froze. "No… no, Your Majesty, I—"
"Do not insult me with lies." The Queen's voice dropped to a hiss. "Whose child is it?"
Elisa swallowed hard. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" The Queen stepped closer. "A servant girl doesn't forget such things."
"I swear—I swear on my life, I—"
Her vision blurred. Her knees buckled. Darkness swallowed her.
She fainted at the Queen's feet.
By morning, her secret was no longer hers.
"She's with child," the Queen announced, voice slicing through the palace. "And not by any servant. She carries my husband's sin."
The King tried to pacify her with gold, jewels — anything to silence the storm.
But her wrath needed a victim.
So Elisa's punishment began.
The Queen didn't kill her outright — it would have caused whispers, and Isadora hated whispers more than sin. Instead, she worked her. Elisa was no longer assigned normal chores. She was tasked with the impossible: scrubbing the stables at dawn, hauling water from the well at noon, polishing marble steps by sunset. All while pregnant. All while exhausted.
The Queen watched her labor with quiet satisfaction, hoping to wear her thin — to break her body until it broke the baby within.
"She'll lose it," Isadora whispered to her ladies-in-waiting. "It won't survive. Nature handles filth."
But nature had different plans.
Elisa went into labor on the cold stone floor of the laundry room. She had been wringing out soaked sheets when the pain came like fire — sudden, tearing, unstoppable. No midwives were summoned. No one cared. Only one other servant, a trembling girl named Miri, stayed with her. The rest pretended not to hear the screams echoing off the palace walls.
"You're doing so well," Miri cried, wiping her brow. "Please, stay with me—please—"
With a final, brutal cry, the child slipped into her trembling hands.
Thunder cracked outside.
Aurora was born with the sound of thunder and the scent of wet stone. Her first cry was sharp, defiant — too loud for a newborn, as if announcing her arrival to a world already bent on forgetting her.
Elisa smiled weakly. "Aurora…" she whispered. "My… dawn…"
Miri rushed to fetch water, wiping the blood from Elisa's legs and cleaning the tiny, trembling child. By morning, the news had already seeped through the palace like spilled ink: Elisa had given birth.
Queen Isadora's fury was instant and bitter. She had expected the girl to die in labor, not to survive it. Not to bring a child into the world.
Her anger sharpened. She ordered Miri seized, whipped until her back was raw, and thrown into prison for daring to help. She wanted to kill Elisa outright, but even Isadora knew the King would not allow a servant's death without a "reason."
So she created one.
She summoned one of the palace servants who once worked alongside Elisa in her chambers. Under threat, the girl obeyed, sneaking into the servant quarters and slipping a royal gold trinket beneath Elisa's sheets.
Moments later, the Queen raised an alarm.
Guards stormed the servant wing. They overturned beds, scattered linens, and found exactly what Isadora wanted them to find. Elisa was dragged out trembling, insisting she had never stolen anything.
No one believed her.No one dared.
And everyone in the palace, every servant, every guard, even the King himself knew the true reason for the punishment. But silence was safer than truth.
Queen Isadora's verdict was merciless.
She demanded Elisa be tied to a post in the center of the palace grounds and executed by arrows. And the newborn killed alongside her.
Elisa gasped, collapsing to her knees, begging only one thing "Please… spare my daughter… please…"
But the Queen's heart was stone.
The King intervened at last, his voice tight with guilt. "The child is innocent. She will not be harmed."
Elisa was bound to the wooden pole, wrists stretched, head bowed. The court gathered in a tense, hungry silence. A single archer stepped forward, bow trembling slightly in his grip.
Elisa's last breath was a whisper. The arrow flew.
She died instantly and her two-day-old daughter was left behind, motherless under a sky still rumbling with distant thunder.
And only then, with Elisa's blood staining the stones, was the Queen's anger finally satisfied.
They let Aurora live… but not as a princess.
She was registered as a servant — no title, no protection, no claim.
She grew up where her mother died, the servants' corridors. She always felt eyes on her. She looked different. Her hair grew white as snow from the moment it sprouted, a soft silver that glimmered in sunlight. And her eyes — too blue, too deep, like frozen lakes. The Queen hated it. Evelyn, her daughter, hated it even more.
"Why does she look like that?" little Evelyn once asked sharply. "She looks like a witch."
Magnus, her elder brother by two years, was quieter. He didn't taunt Aurora with words — he simply ignored her, as one ignores a stone on a path.
Aurora scrubbed floors at seven. Washed chamber pots at nine. She didn't attend lessons like the royal children. Instead, she watched from the corridors, peeking in on tutors speaking of histories and maps, her hands red from lye soap.
The King never acknowledged her. Once, at thirteen, Aurora crossed his path while delivering herbs to the royal physician. She dropped into a bow so deep it hurt her knees. He walked past her like air.
Her heart beat fast, not with fear, but with that foolish hope children carry, that maybe, just maybe, he'd look. Say her name.
He never did.
Evelyn and Magnus grew into beauty and strength, the perfect heirs. Evelyn was radiant with chestnut curls and a tongue like a sword. Magnus was strong-jawed and soldier-trained, already leading the royal guard in his youth. They were praised in banquets, loved in villages, their names sung by bards.
And Aurora? She was a ghost in their story. The "servant girl" who looked too much like starlight and sorrow.
Yet she never grew bitter. She learned to keep her head down and listen. She read old books by candlelight, stolen from library shelves at night. She fed stray cats behind the palace kitchens and tended the rose garden when no one watched. There was softness in her — not weakness, but grace, the kind that survives when everything else has been taken.
Still, the Queen's cruelty never stopped.
She once ordered Aurora to kneel outside in winter rain for an hour, claiming the girl had spoken back. Another time, she had her whipped for accidentally staining Evelyn's lace sleeves with ink. The lashes left scars on her back that never faded.
Yet no matter what was done to her, Aurora kept growing.
And the more she grew, the more people noticed.
Whispers began among the kitchen boys and stable hands.
"She's too pretty for a servant."
"Did you see her eyes? Like frost."
"I heard she's the King's blood."
Those whispers never reached Evelyn's ears. They didn't need to. She felt them — the way people glanced at Aurora too long, the way visiting nobles stuttered when they mistook her for a lady. And that drove Evelyn mad.
"You're nothing," Evelyn spat once. "No matter how you look, you're filth. Born from filth."
Aurora didn't respond. She never did. But in her heart, a silent fire stirred.
Then came the news that shook the kingdom.
It was morning, golden and cold, when a blood-stained messenger stumbled into the castle gates. He rode a half-dead horse and carried the seal of a fallen duchy — a neighboring kingdom now burning.
The name on everyone's lips: Velmora.
King Aldric of Velmora, ruler of the iron-blooded North, had begun a campaign. Ruthless, unstoppable. Known for crucifying lords and dragging queens by the hair. He had conquered three provinces in a fortnight, leaving villages razed and soldiers gutted.
The King called an emergency council.
The council chamber had never been this silent.
The air, usually filled with the rustle of robes and confident chatter, now held only the low creak of wood and the occasional thud of a boot shifting beneath the long, arched table. Candlelight flickered against stone walls, casting restless shadows on the Lords of the Realm, each one cloaked in tension. They had heard the reports. They had seen the smoke curling on the horizon — the smoke of Velmora claiming yet another kingdom.
Lord Halbrecht, Duke of the Northern Border, broke the silence first.
"He will come for us next," he said grimly.
Murmurs erupted — hurried whispers of fear and denial.
"Velmora wouldn't dare—"
"We have strong men—"
"The Queen of Eddenbrook said the same thing last month. Now she sleeps in ashes."
At the head of the table, King Rael leaned forward, fingers steepled, knuckles pale. His crown, polished and heavy, seemed to weigh more than usual.
Lord Gareth leaned in. "What are we to do, Your Majesty? King Aldric may be young, but he's every bit as ruthless as his late father. No one has predicted his next move. No mercy. No pattern. Just conquest."
Even Chancellor Ronwyn, usually calm and calculating, tapped his fingers nervously.
"We must act quickly," said Gareth. "If we delay, the wrath will fall not just on our army but on our people. And if we choose war, we all know we're not ready. Our walls are old, our troops scattered, and we've been at peace too long. We will lose."
Prayers and murmurs filled the room.
King Rael's voice cut through it.
"Then what do you suggest, Ronwyn? Bribery? Aldric doesn't strike me as a man who can be bought with gold."
Ronwyn straightened, hesitating—the dangerous kind of hesitation.
"Not gold, Your Majesty," he said. "A bride."
The chamber froze.
Even the Queen, seated in her private corner beside the king, straightened suddenly. Her jeweled fingers stopped their slow drumming. Evelyn, too, blinked sharply, her posture stiffening. The idea wasn't just unexpected — it was bold, nearly unthinkable.
"A bride?" Lord Halbrecht repeated. "No kingdom has ever offered a wife to King Aldric."
"For good reason," Gareth muttered. "Those who displease him don't return. They say he killed his first wife — and as for the others…" He shook his head.
"The stories of King Aldric were legend. That he drank from goblets still wet with blood. That he ruled from a throne made of bones. That he kept wolves, not dogs." Another lord added.
"So we risk our daughter's life?" Gareth pressed.
Ronwyn didn't flinch. "I understand the danger. But if — if — he accepts her, if we succeed where no kingdom has dared, imagine what that alliance could mean, we gain something no kingdom has managed. Velmora's protection. Other kingdoms' fear. We would never be vulnerable again."
The room, to everyone's surprise, began to shift. What moments ago had seemed outrageous now hung in the air like a dangerous kind of hope. Protection. Alliance. Power.
Then Magnus spoke.
"And by 'a bride'… do you mean my sister?" His black eyes locked onto Ronwyn.
Silence followed.
"Evelyn," he added sharply. "Is that who you suggest we throw into the mouth of a beast?"
The Queen's eyes narrowed, observing.
"Absolutely not," Magnus growled. "She is not just a princess, she is this kingdom's treasure and she is not expendable."
"We didn't say—" Ronwyn began.
"You didn't have to." Magnus pushed back his chair and stood. "I will not allow Evelyn to be given to that monster. Let Velmora come. We'll die on every hill before we offer her."
There was an awkward, unspoken agreement in the room. Many of the lords respected Evelyn, and Magnus's brotherly love to her was known. But the fear of Velmora still lingered.
Ronwyn inhaled slowly. He hesitated again, then looked directly at the King.
"Then perhaps… we offer the hand of the second daughter."
The silence that followed was so thick it could be sliced with a blade.
Then whispers broke instantly, rising in confusion.
"Second daughter?"
"The King has only one—"
"You don't mean…"
The Queen's expression was unreadable, but her eyes gleamed. Evelyn's lips curled in sudden understanding.
Ronwyn continued.
"It is no secret. The King has another daughter. Her birth may have been… unconventional, but the blood in her veins is no less royal."
King Rael's jaw tensed. "There must be another way."
The Queen finally spoke.
"But there isn't," she said, rising to her feet. "This is our opportunity, Your Highness. If the universe has offered us a way to save our kingdom, who are we to refuse it?"
"You would offer that girl—" the King snapped.
"That girl is barely more than a servant," the Queen shot back, then softened her voice with crafted grace. "But this sacrifice would give her life meaning. And think of the villagers. Would we let them burn because of sentiment?"
The King looked to his council. Some lords avoided his eyes. Others nodded.
He closed his eyes, as if praying the words would not be his.
"Prepare the wedding seal," he said bitterly.
The chamber was dismissed. The doors creaked open, and the lords filed out, silent and grim. No trumpets rang. No cheers followed.
Later… in the Queen's Chambers....
Evelyn brushed her hair with sharp, irritated strokes. "So that's it," she muttered. "We marry off Aurora. And if Aldric falls in love with her? What then?"
"He won't," the Queen said, pouring herself a drink.
"You don't know that, Mother," Evelyn snapped. "Men are fools. She has that cursed white hair, those strange blue eyes. What if he favors her?"
From the corner, Magnus laughed dryly.
"Only if she survives her first night in Velmora. With the kind of wives Aldric keeps, Aurora will be lucky to wake up breathing. You think she'll walk into that den and come out queen?"
He stood, staring out the window. "Aldric doesn't love. He destroys."
Evelyn giggled wickedly. "Then let her be destroyed."
"To think I was planning on having her executed, who knew she would be this useful," the Queen said, grinning.
"Guess death was already looming over her," Evelyn replied.
Together, they laughed — highborn, untouched, safe.
Meanwhile…
At the far end of the palace stables, Aurora knelt in mud and hay, scrubbing stone with a coarse brush. The scent of manure clung to her dress. Her fingers were raw, knuckles cracked.
The horses neighed softly, steam curling from their nostrils. One nudged her shoulder gently, but she didn't look up. She was too focused, too used to the filth — too unaware.
She did not know that her fate had already been decided.
That soon, she would be called to wear a silk gown and walk into the jaws of a kingdom that devoured queens.
She did not know she would become the bride of a king feared by all.
All she knew was the sting of lye soap and the coldness of stone.
And the silence — the silence that comes before a storm.
And then, an old servant woman who had been watching her quietly for some time spoke.
"Your mother didn't die giving birth to you, child, as you were told. She was framed… and killed by the Queen."
Aurora froze. Mama Gwen rarely spoke, and when she did, it was always the truth.
"What?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Mama Gwen repeated the words, steady and unwavering.
Aurora felt her knees weaken, her blood pounding in her ears. Framed… and killed?