“Ughhh. I swear, if I hear one more boring harp song I’m gonna scream.”

Syairenne sat at the edge of the velvet balcony, legs dangling dangerously over the stone, staring down at the endless courtyards of the palace like they were made of paper. The moon looked pretty, but even that was starting to annoy her. Everything was too perfect. Too polished. Too quiet.

“Why does everyone act like being here is some dream?” she muttered. “It’s just a giant cage with expensive curtains.”

She pulled her braid over one shoulder and leaned her cheek against the cool marble pillar. Somewhere below, nobles were still dancing. The scent of rosewater and melted wax drifted up, and Syairenne felt like she was suffocating in silk.

She needed air.

Not the perfumed, candlelit, ‘Princess of Iridesa’ kind. The real kind. The messy kind. The kind that didn’t taste like responsibility and polite smiles.

So she slipped off the balcony, barefoot.

Her steps were light, practiced. She’d snuck out of royal events so many times, it might as well be tradition. Through the shadow halls, past the throne room where her name would never echo, she crept toward the west gardens.

“Let me be something else tonight,” she whispered, like the stars were listening.

Outside, it was finally quiet. No music. No court gossip. Just wind, grass, and the moon glowing like it actually cared.

She sat by the fountain and stared at her reflection in the water. She didn’t look like a threat. She didn’t look like a queen. She looked… tired. “I feel like there’s something inside me no one sees,” she said aloud to no one. “And if they did, they’d probably be scared.” Then she laughed softly. “Hell, I’m scared of it too.” There was something building inside her. Not magic. Not madness. Just something.

A pull. A spark. A weight.

It had started weeks ago, ever since that night. The night of the festival. The boy. The look. The way her world tilted, even just for a second. She didn’t talk about it. She wouldn’t. What was there to say? He came. He saw her. He left. That’s it. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. And now, everything inside her felt... off. She wasn’t sad, exactly. Just… done. Done pretending. Done waiting for people to understand her. Done being quiet.

“I’m not made for this,” she whispered, pulling a petal from a black rose and letting it fall into the water. “Not this palace. Not these parties. Not this version of me.” Something inside her was shifting. And deep down, even if she wasn’t ready to say it out loud… She knew she was about to do something reckless.

Something loud. Something real. Something that she could never imagine she would. As it began to make her life shifted but wasn’t falling apart.

And what she was becoming… would change Iridesa forever.

But that night, in the stillness between candlelight and midnight, something shifted.

A whisper at her window.

A page missing from her journal.

A feeling in her chest she couldn’t explain like the beginning of a storm wrapped in silk.

She sat up, wide awake. Listened.

Nothing.

Yet she couldn’t shake it.

The quiet wasn’t empty tonight. It was watching her.

And for the first time, a strange little voice in her mind didn’t ask “Who am I?”

It asked:

"what if it's already begun??"

“Syairenne. Where are your shoes?”

The voice came from somewhere behind her—proper, sharp, tired.

“Probably where I left them,” she mumbled, not turning around.

“Lady Elira saw you sneaking out of the Winter Hall. Again. Do you know what people are saying?"

Well, Lady Elira is someone appointed by the court to oversee Syairenne’s refinement, stood poised like a portrait, never missing a single misstep.

Syairenne rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. ‘She’s odd.’ ‘She’s distant.’ ‘She’s not behaving like a proper daughter of Iridesa.’” She stood from the garden fountain and stretched like a wild cat, barefoot, crownless, and completely over it.

Her maid, well... technically her handler, sighed in that deeply disappointed, royalty-approved way. “You’re seventeen. The nobles are watching. You should be—”

“—smiling, silent, stitched into silk? Yeah. I’ve heard the speech.”

Syairenne wasn’t trying to be difficult. She just couldn’t keep pretending anymore. Not when her chest felt too tight all the time. Not when her mind was louder than the court musicians. Not when everything inside her kept saying, this isn’t it. This isn’t who you are. She wasn’t the perfect daughter of a highborn house. She didn’t want to marry a charming, half-boring lord from a neighboring kingdom. She didn’t want to smile through dinners filled with lies and agendas.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to make things. Break things. Touch the stars. Fall in love and actually mean it.

She wanted... freedom.

That night, she locked herself in her room with ink-stained fingers and a half-eaten pear, sketching things she wasn’t supposed to dream about.

A crest. A name. A realm that didn’t exist—yet.

Velmoré.

It came to her like lightning. Elegant, powerful, sharp around the edges. It sounded like royalty, but also like something forged by a girl who had survived her own silence. And she didn’t want to just wear a crown. She wanted to build it. From pieces of herself no one had ever bothered to look at. From the pain she never cried out loud. From all the nights she stayed up staring at the ceiling, whispering things to the moon no one would ever hear.

She started small.

A journal, hidden beneath the velvet cushion in her window seat. She wrote rules, laws, colors, sigils. She wrote speeches she'd never get to say in the real world. She designed dresses that weren't made to please nobles, but to tell stories.

And most importantly, she wrote her name.

Not as a daughter.

Not as a disappointment.

Not as a half-formed version of the girl people wished she was.

She wrote:

'Syairenne, First of Her Flame. Sovereign of Velmoré.'

It felt ridiculous.

It felt real.

Of course, no one knew.

To everyone else, she was still just "that girl." The one with the eyes too quiet. The one who danced like she had somewhere better to be. The one who never quite smiled the way princesses were trained to. And they kept talking. Whispering.

"She's been strange lately."

"Do you think she was cursed?"

"Maybe she’s just heartbroken, poor thing."

She heard every word. She didn’t flinch. But gods, if only they knew. She wasn’t heartbroken. She was rising. And if there was a curse at all—it was that she’d finally stopped pretending.

The boy?

Yeah. She thought about him sometimes.

His voice. The way he looked at her like he saw something she hadn’t shown anyone else. The way he made her believe that maybe just maybe she could be loved without shrinking. But love isn’t real when it runs. And he ran. No explanation. No closure. Just gone. He didn’t deserve a kingdom in her memory. So she buried him. Right under the first stone of Velmoré.

Weeks passed. Then months. She stopped attending banquets altogether. She claimed illness, and the court believed it—because what else could they say?

She wasn’t sick.

She was 'becoming'.

And one night, as she stood alone on the palace roof, wind in her hair, heart humming with something new, she whispered—

“I’m not a princess. I’m not someone’s daughter. I’m not here to decorate someone else’s story.”

She looked up at the stars, raised her hand slowly, and traced the air like it mattered.

“I’m building a kingdom. And they won’t even see it coming.”

"You are late, again."

The voice sliced through the garden like a blade made of etiquette and disapproval. Syairenne didn’t even have to look up to know who it was. She simply rolled her eyes and reached for another grape from the silver platter beside her.

"Ughh I was exactly on time," she said, popping the fruit into her mouth. "According to my own schedule."

Lady Elira exhaled through her nose—barely audible, but enough to signal that she had filed this rebellion under "Repeat Offender."

"You were expected in the East Hall an hour ago. The council wished to rehearse the ceremonial bow."

Syairenne leaned back on the velvet daybed in the garden alcove, letting the sun touch her skin.

"I already know how to bow. I’ve been doing it since I was five."

"And yet you still manage to do it with a trace of sarcasm, every time."

Syairenne smirked. "Talent."

Lady Elira--Syairenne’s ever-watchful handler, assigned by the court to smooth her rough edges—remained silent for a moment, as if calculating whether this argument was worth her breath. Finally, she stepped closer, hands folded so tightly her knuckles turned white.

"You are to attend tonight’s court dinner. No slipping out. No excuses. The High Lords of Vermere will be present."

That name caught Syairenne’s attention, just barely. Vermere. That was his land. Not that she cared. Not really. Not anymore.

"Is Lord Caelen attending?" she asked casually, plucking a rose petal and pretending it wasn’t a loaded question.

Elira’s pause was brief but noticeable.

"The Lord Heir of Vermere will not be attending. His younger brother, Lord Thorne, will represent the house."

Syairenne said nothing. She felt something twist quietly in her chest, then fade into nothing.

"Noted," she said.

She stayed in the garden long after Elira left.

The palace walls glowed gold in the late sun, and the sounds of servants preparing for the evening echoed faintly in the background. Somewhere, a lute was being tuned. Somewhere, goblets were being polished. Somewhere, her name was being spoken with hope and disappointment in equal measure.

She stood and paced slowly through the maze of white roses, her fingers brushing the petals like they could tell her what to do.

What *was* she doing here? Pretending. Dressing up. Eating with people who smiled like they knew everything about her, when they knew nothing at all. They didn’t know about the dreams. The aching. The fire.

And they definitely didn’t know about the boy with the storm-colored eyes.

...****************...

The memory came back without warning.

The festival. The candles. The masks.

He had taken her hand without knowing who she was. And for one night, she hadn’t been the Princess of Iridesa. She had been *someone*. Free. Breathable. Seen.

He had smiled at her like she was the only real thing in the room.

She never got his name.

She only knew he vanished before sunrise, like a dream she’d convinced herself was real.

Except he *was* real. And for weeks, she had searched with her eyes, scanning the halls, the guests, even the guards, wondering if he was watching her the same way.

But nothing. No sign. No clue. No face to match the memory.

And now, his house would send someone else.

Good, she told herself. Safer that way.

But safe didn’t feel like what she wanted anymore.

...****************...

"Your Highness?"

The voice belonged to Yvanne, her handmaiden and the only person in the palace who dared to speak to her like a person.

"Yes, Van?"

Yvanne held out a gown of deep amethyst, trimmed in black velvet and silver threading.

"Lady Elira has chosen this for tonight. I can… pick another, if you prefer."

Syairenne took it in her hands. It was beautiful. Regal. Cold.

"No," she said softly. "It’s fine. Just... give me a minute."

Yvanne nodded and slipped back into the corridor, closing the door behind her.

Syairenne stood before the mirror, gown in hand, and looked at herself. Not just her face, but *herself.*

There was a storm brewing behind her eyes.

Not rage.

Resolve.

She was tired of wearing the right colors and saying the right things. Tired of sitting still while the world decided who she was supposed to be.

Tonight, she would wear their crown. Smile their smile. Say their lines.

But tomorrow?

She might just burn it all down.

And somewhere—beyond the walls of Iridesa, beyond gowns and polished silver and duty—the storm-colored eyes still lived in her memory.

She didn’t know if fate would bring him back.

But something told her this story wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.