Time did not heal the palace. It merely rearranged the wounds.
Seasons shifted outside the high windows—silver-leafed spring giving way to the long gold of summer—yet inside the palace, everything felt suspended in a state of unfinished mourning. The Queen's chambers remained sealed. Not by decree, but by silence. No servant volunteered to clean them. No minister suggested repurposing them. Even the boldest courtiers avoided the corridor entirely, as if her absence had become a presence of its own.
I noticed these things because I watched everything now.
I had learned to.
My father began to recover in ways that were subtle enough most would miss them. He stood longer during councils. He ate more than a few mouthfuls at meals. His voice, once hollow, regained a faint firmness when issuing commands. But the cost was visible in the lines that deepened around his eyes, in the way his hand would occasionally tighten around the armrest of his chair, as if steadying himself against memories that surged without warning.
When he faltered, I was there.
Always.
I read documents aloud when his eyes tired. I stood behind him during audiences so that the court would see continuity, not collapse. When his breathing became shallow in the night, I sat beside his bed and counted each rise and fall until sleep reclaimed him. No one instructed me to do this. No one thanked me for it either. But duty did not require recognition. It required endurance.
The kingdom had begun to adapt to the Queen's absence, but adaptation was not acceptance. Factions hardened. Loyalists clung to the memory of her lineage, insisting that her blood alone legitimized the crown. Others spoke openly now—too openly—of her failure, of her betrayal, of whether the throne could ever truly be whole again.
Her name became a weapon.
I learned which ministers used it carefully and which wielded it recklessly. I memorized faces, tones, pauses. Politics was not taught in books; it was learned in glances and silences, in who spoke when grief entered the room and who waited until it left.
My siblings coped differently.
The eldest buried himself in training, pushing his body to exhaustion as if pain could drown out humiliation. Another withdrew entirely, refusing court appearances, shrinking away from whispers she could not escape. They were not weak. They were simply children forced to process abandonment in ways that did not involve holding a kingdom upright.
I did not resent them.
I could not afford to.
Instead, resentment found a different shape.
It began as rumors.
A merchant returning from the outer territories mentioned a half-elf child seen traveling with a beastwoman. A soldier spoke of a settlement far from any border where a high elf woman lived without escort, without sigil, without apology. The details were inconsistent, blurred by distance and exaggeration, but the core remained the same.
She was alive.
She was not hiding.
She had built a life.
I did not ask questions when these rumors surfaced. I did not react. But I remembered every word. At night, alone, I reconstructed the fragments into images I did not want but could not stop imagining.
Her laughter, unburdened.
Her steps, unhurried.
A child at her side who did not bear our name.
The thought lodged itself into my chest like a shard of ice.
Father did not hear these rumors. Or if he did, no one allowed them to reach him. The council was careful now. Protective. Fearful of undoing the fragile progress he had made. I understood their caution, but I also understood its cost.
Truth does not disappear when unspoken.
It waits.
One evening, as the sun bled red across the horizon, I found Father standing alone on the eastern balcony. He leaned heavily against the stone railing, eyes fixed on the forests beyond the capital. The wind tugged at his cloak, lifting it just enough for me to see how thin he had become.
"She used to stand here," he said quietly, without turning. "She said the view reminded her that the world was larger than duty."
I said nothing.
"She was not wrong," he continued. "But she forgot that duty is what allows the world to remain standing."
His fingers tightened on the stone. I stepped closer—not to interrupt, but to be present.
"I do not blame her," he said, and the words struck harder than any accusation could have. "Blame corrodes what little remains."
I wanted to speak then. To contradict him. To say that blame was not corrosion, but clarity. That some acts deserved to be named for what they were.
But I was a child. And he was my father.
So I remained silent.
That night, I understood something fundamental: his love for her had not died. It had simply changed into something quieter, heavier, and far more dangerous. Love unreciprocated did not vanish—it turned inward, becoming weight.
And weight breaks things.
The next rumor arrived not as gossip, but as confirmation.
A formal report crossed the council table, originating from a border outpost. It detailed the existence of a child of royal blood living beyond the kingdom's reach. The mother was unnamed, but the description left no doubt. High elven features. Royal bearing. No attempt at concealment.
There it was.
Proof.
I read the report before anyone could stop me.
My hands did not shake.
My heart did not race.
Instead, something settled into place, cold and precise.
She had not only left. She had replaced us.
The child's existence was not merely evidence of betrayal—it was permanence. A future shaped without us. A legacy split in two.
I folded the report carefully and placed it back on the table before the ministers noticed my presence. Later, alone, I allowed myself exactly one breath to acknowledge what I felt.
Not jealousy.
Not grief.
Recognition.
This child would never be allowed to fade into obscurity. Even if the kingdom rejected her, even if her name was never spoken aloud, she would exist as a reminder of what had been abandoned.
And reminders are dangerous.
Father continued to recover. Slowly. Painfully. He resumed issuing decrees. He held audiences without needing to sit midway through. The court praised his resilience, his strength, his devotion to the realm.
They did not praise the reason he endured.
That was acceptable.
I did not need recognition. I needed preparedness.
I began studying succession law, inheritance customs, precedents buried deep in the archives—cases where royal blood complicated stability. I learned how kingdoms fractured not from invasion, but from unresolved legitimacy. I learned how wars began long before the first blade was drawn.
I learned that blood remembers.
And so do children.
The illegitimate daughter—though no one dared call her that aloud—became a shadow in my thoughts. I did not hate her yet. Hatred required proximity. What I felt was something colder, more structural.
She was evidence.
She was consequence.
And one day, she would stand in the same world as me, shaped by the same absence, but loved in ways we were not.
That imbalance mattered.
The Queen's return was not yet spoken of, but it lingered at the edges of every conversation. Loyalists prepared for it quietly. Opponents hardened their positions. The kingdom moved as if bracing for a storm no one dared name.
And I stood at the center of it all, a child carrying the awareness of an adult, bound by loyalty to a father who still loved the woman who broke him.
I did not forgive her.
I did not seek understanding.
I prepared.
Because when consequences do not fade, they return.
And when they do, someone must be strong enough to face them.
Even if that someone is still a child.