Chapter 16 The Aftermath
The Aftermath
Ido not stop running until the palace is gone. The corridors give way to night air, then gravel and grass, the cold biting into the soles of my bare feet. I do not slow or let myself think. I move the way I learned to move as a child who knew when to flee before permission could be denied.
The stables sleep uneasily. Horses lift their heads as I enter, breath steaming, ears flicking. I choose the first one that steps toward me, a dark mare with restless eyes. I do not saddle her. I do not speak. I climb, grip her mane, and press my heels into her sides.
She runs. The ground blurs beneath us as we tear through the night, past the last lights of the palace and into the trees. Branches scrape my arms. My dress catches and tears. I welcome it. Each sting reminds me I am real. Each bruise reminds me I am still breathing.
We break into a clearing where the forest opens wide and a lake lies waiting, black and smooth beneath the moon. I slide from the horse and stumble forward until my knees hit the earth.
And then I let it come. The power rushes out of me all at once, no longer contained. Light fractures the sky above the clearing, spilling outward in radiant waves. The air trembles. The lake shivers as if startled awake.
Pain gathers behind my eyes as warmth spills down my cheeks, thick and unmistakable.
Blood. I taste it when it reaches my lips and I do not bother wiping it away.
I scream. It tears free from me, raw and uncontained, everything I was never allowed to say given voice at last. The cruelty, the hands, the laughter.
The way my name was spoken like a burden, the way my body was treated like a debt.
And then the memory comes, the mountains rising around me. I am younger there, thinner, wrapped in a cloak that smells of wool and pine sap, my sister at my side, her steps light with impatience as the path winds upward, narrow and steep, until the world below falls away entirely.
Divara of the Five Mountains waits inside a low hut, the air heavy with incense and smoke. Her eyes are clouded white, unfocused, but when she turns her head it feels as though she sees straight through us. “Come closer,” she says.
My sister goes first.
Divara’s fingers brush Yvara’s temples, lingering, searching. Her mouth tightens. “You will be full of promises,” she says slowly. “Unkept. Offered and withdrawn. You will chase what was never meant to stay.”
Yvara laughs afterward. Too loudly. She says it means nothing.
Then it is my turn.
Divara’s hands cup my face. Her breath catches. “I cannot see all of your path,” she murmurs. “Something interferes. Something old.”
Fear coils in my stomach.
“But this much is clear,” she continues. “Because of you, a kingdom will be safe.” She pauses. “You will lead.”
My sister scoffs. “Which kingdom?”
Divara does not answer her. Instead, she turns her clouded eyes toward me and smiles, soft and knowing. “The fertility goddess has marked you,” she says. “Your body will not deny life. Your husband will have all that he seeks.”
I ask her what else.
She shakes her head. “That is enough.”
The memory shatters, snapping me back into the present as another surge of power tears from me and streaks across the sky. I choke, bending forward, coughing as blood drips from my lashes and darkens the ground.
I will lead a kingdom, not because Colsar beds me and not because I am traded, but because I endure. Because I remain.
I drag myself upright, shaking, and force the magic into restraint, into something that will not consume me.
This is not common power, I have always known that.
It does not behave like borrowed strength or learned trickery.
It lives in my bones, in my blood, answering to no one but me.
I do not know where I came from, but I know this: I am not as small as this kingdom wants to make me.
I think of the King, loud and watchful, his hunger barely concealed.
I think of the Prince, whose cruelty needs no disguise.
I think of my father’s stare at the wedding, already weighing the questions my unveiled face will raise.
I think of the Queen Dowager, who did not come, and of the ladies who smiled too sweetly as they whispered behind their fans.
And then my thoughts turn to Colsar, to the way he looked at me, to the moment he chose to wound.
Fuck him. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted to see if I would break.
A laugh tears free, wild and unrestrained, echoing across the water.
You cannot break what was forged in absence.
I lift my face toward the sky, blood drying on my skin, magic still humming faintly in the air above the clearing.
I am a Princess, even if no one here ever lets me be one.
Not because of a crown, but because the world has already tried to destroy me and failed.
My father will bow to me one day. He knows it. He felt it when the veil was lifted. When the questions began forming behind every polite smile.
As for Colsar, he may keep his women. It is better this way. He has spared me the humiliation of begging to be wanted. He has saved me from offering myself where I am only endured. I press my hands into the earth and breathe until my chest steadies.
You have a family that loves you, Eravic had said.
Yes. I do. Or at least, I believe I do. And belief is enough to keep me standing.
Until then, I will turn beauty into a weapon, survival into sovereignty, and let every man who mistook my silence for weakness learn exactly what it costs.
The sky above the clearing still glows faintly where my power touched it.
I smile.
This is only the beginning.