Disgust did not arrive all at once.
If it had, the Prince might have recognized it for what it was and questioned it, examined it the way scholars examined old texts, turning it over until meaning softened at the edges. But it came the way rot did—slow, quiet, growing in places no one checked until the smell was impossible to ignore.
It began with watching.
He watched the council bow with the same mouths that whispered. He watched nobles speak of stability while their eyes slid, inevitably, toward the wing where the Queen had been placed like an inconvenient relic that could not be thrown away. He watched servants stiffen when the other child passed, kindness becoming obligation, obligation becoming distance.
He watched himself learn to feel nothing about it.
At first, he told himself it was restraint. Discipline. The thing his father had taught him when grief still left room for instruction. You do not react to everything you feel, the King had said once, voice hoarse but steady. Some feelings are meant to be carried, not displayed.
So the Prince carried them.
He carried the image of his mother returning without apology.
He carried the sound of his father's breath at night, shallow and uneven.
He carried the sight of the other child standing alone, always alone, like an unanswered question everyone agreed not to ask.
And slowly, what he carried changed shape.
He began to feel it in small, ugly moments.
When a lord bowed too deeply and said, "Your Highness," with the wrong emphasis, the Prince felt his mouth tighten. When a councilwoman spoke gently of forgiveness without once looking at the King, something in him recoiled. When servants spoke of bloodlines and legitimacy in voices meant to sound neutral, he felt a sharp, private satisfaction at how carefully they avoided certain words.
He learned to hate the carefulness.
High elves, he had been taught, did not reveal their true names lightly.
A true name was not a label. It was a binding. To give it was to place trust in another's hands, to accept that they could call you not just to attention, but to truth. Among their people, true names were spoken only in three circumstances: before the altar, before death, or in absolute trust.
Everything else was title.
Prince.
King.
Queen.
He clung to that tradition like a blade.
He noticed how often people avoided names now, how titles replaced what they were unwilling to face. He noticed that the Queen's name was never spoken in his presence, not because it hurt him, but because it made others uncomfortable. He noticed that the other child was announced, always formally, always distantly, as if giving her a name might make her real in a way they did not want to confront.
Good, he thought.
Let them keep their distance.
Names were for people who belonged.
His father never spoke her name either.
That hurt more than the shouting would have.
The Prince trained harder.
Steel did not whisper. Steel did not equivocate. When he struck, it answered honestly, ringing or resisting, never pretending to be something it was not. His instructors praised his control, his precision, the way he never wasted movement.
They did not see how each strike carried something else with it.
Contempt sharpened his focus.
Disgust steadied his hand.
He found himself thinking in divisions he had never consciously chosen.
Us—those who stayed.
Them—those who left, returned, hovered.
He hated himself a little for how easily the line formed.
One afternoon, as he crossed the inner courtyard, he saw the other child sitting beneath a tree, hands folded, posture too still for someone her age. She looked up when footsteps passed, hope flickering before she smothered it.
The Prince felt something twist in his chest.
Not pity.
Resentment.
Because she was a reminder.
Because her existence forced the world to accommodate a choice his mother had made without consequence. Because people spoke of mercy now, as though mercy were something owed, not earned.
He walked past without slowing.
Behind him, someone said softly, "Princess."
The word tasted wrong.
That night, in his chamber, the Prince sat alone and thought about names.
He thought about how his father had spoken his true name once, only once, during a night when grief had broken through restraint and honesty had slipped out with it. He thought about how that single moment of trust had anchored him more firmly than any oath.
He wondered if the Queen remembered her true name.
He wondered if she had given it away as easily as she had given everything else.
Disgust settled fully then, no longer something forming, but something established.
It was not loud.
It did not burn.
It hardened.
And in the quiet of his chamber, the Prince made a private decision that would shape everything that followed.
He would never speak her true name again.
Nor would he grant that privilege to the child she had brought with her.
Titles would suffice.
Distance would suffice.
If the world insisted on pretending this fracture could be smoothed over with careful language and political patience, then he would be the one thing it could not soften.
He would remember.
He would endure.
And one day, when names were finally spoken honestly again, it would not be in forgiveness.