I. The Girl with Silent Storms
Rain painted the windows of Rosegate Asylum in slow, languid strokes. Inside, Elira sat by the pane, knees pulled to her chest, eyes vacant. She was a tempest in disguise, her mind a maze of voices, memories she couldn’t trust, and emotions too sharp to hold.
Elira had been admitted two years ago after a violent breakdown. Diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, she lived in the fog between hallucination and reality, between unbearable despair and fragments of joy.
Every doctor treated her like glass—fragile, dangerous. Until him.
Dr. Alaric.
He walked into her world wearing midnight-colored suits and an expression too composed for his age. He was different—not because of the way he looked at her, but because he saw her.
“It’s raining in your eyes again,” he said one day during their session.
She didn’t respond. But she remembered.
---
II. The Doctor with a Secret Throne
Alaric wasn’t just a psychiatrist. He was the hidden heir of Eldremont, the veiled city-state ruled by ancient bloodlines and tradition. His family had faked his death to protect him from political assassination when he was ten. Raised in exile, he had returned under a new name—Dr. Alaric Vane—to hide in plain sight.
Becoming a psychiatrist had not been the plan. But he found solace in helping broken minds, a reflection of his own fragmented past.
He hadn’t meant to fall for a patient.
But Elira’s madness was beautiful, like a symphony on the edge of chaos. She wasn't just a case to be studied—she was a mirror of everything he tried to bury.
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III. Sessions Turn Into Shadows
At first, it was professional. Elira spoke in riddles, half-truths. But with time, Alaric saw patterns in her chaos. She spoke of red skies when anxious, of a “man with a wolf heart” when scared. She called him that once.
"You’re the man with the wolf heart," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because you act like you have no hunger, but your eyes… they devour."
Alaric froze. She saw more than she should.
Their sessions turned longer. He brought her books. She painted him strange, dark portraits. And slowly, her hallucinations waned.
Until he touched her hand.
It was unintentional, a graze while passing her sketchbook. But her fingers closed around his like chains.
“I know you,” she said, eyes wide. “Not from here. From the before.”
Chills ran down his spine. She couldn't know. Could she?
---
IV. Whispers and Bloodlines
A month later, Elira’s condition stabilized. She started having lucid days. She asked to walk outside. She smiled.
And she fell in love.
It was not soft, not innocent. It was wild. Dark. She told him she dreamed of drowning in his arms, of tasting his heart. Madness still lived in her, but it was in love now too.
Alaric tried to resist. It was unethical. Dangerous. But love is not moral.
They kissed in the old greenhouse, her hands tangled in his hair, his lips crushing years of silence from her mouth.
That night, he dreamed of her wearing a crown of thorns, standing beside him on Eldremont’s obsidian throne.
He told himself it was the guilt.
But the dream returned.
---
V. The Unmasking
One night, the asylum was cloaked in fog when masked men stormed in. They were looking for Alaric.
“Elira,” he whispered, waking her from her room, “we have to go.”
She didn’t ask questions.
In the chaos, he revealed everything—the throne, the danger, the reason he hid.
“And me?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“You’re the only thing that makes sense.”
They fled to the abandoned castle outskirts. There, with her hand in his, Alaric admitted what neither dared to say aloud.
“I love you,” he said. “More than my crown. More than my name.”
She cried. Not from fear—but from knowing she wasn’t insane to have seen his truth.
---
VI. The Dark Truth
But fate has claws.
Elira’s disorder had always shown her pieces of truths and lies. But one truth hid beneath it all, buried in forgotten memory.
She had once been the daughter of a noble rebel, executed for trying to overthrow Eldremont’s monarchy—Alaric’s family. She had watched her father die.
The trauma had shattered her mind.
She remembered it all the night she saw Alaric’s family crest—a golden serpent around a bleeding rose.
“You,” she gasped. “Your father killed mine.”
Alaric fell silent.
He didn’t deny it.
He only said, “I was ten.”
That night, Elira disappeared.
---
VII. The Garden of Knives
He found her a week later in the ruins of the chapel near the asylum, her fingers bleeding from carving roses into stone.
“I want to forgive you,” she said, “but my heart keeps drowning in blood.”
“I will give up everything,” he said, kneeling. “The crown, the city, my name. Just let me be with you.”
Her eyes softened. “Even kings must bleed to be worthy.”
She kissed him, and it tasted like ash.
They made love in the chapel ruins, under broken stained glass that colored them red and violet.
In that moment, they were only Elira and Alaric. No past. No kingdom. Only love—tragic, impossible, real.
---
VIII. A Crown for Her Madness
Alaric renounced the throne.
News spread that the prince was dead, though only a few knew the truth. He bought a house near the edge of Eldremont, quiet and unseen. He lived with Elira, tending gardens and writing books.
She painted every wall. Some days she danced. Other days, she screamed at ghosts. But Alaric stayed.
When her madness flared, he held her tighter.
When she asked if he regretted it, he said, “You’re my kingdom now.”
---
IX. The Final Winter
But darkness doesn’t rest forever.
One winter night, Alaric fell ill. A rare blood disease—genetic, incurable.
Elira begged every doctor, every priest.
He only smiled.
“I don’t need a long life. I just needed you.”
He died in her arms during the first snowfall.
She didn’t cry.
She dressed him in black, placed a paper crown on his head, and buried him in the rose garden they had grown together.
---
X. The Last Monarch
No one saw Elira for years.
They say the garden still blooms unnaturally.
Some claim the new prince of Eldremont received a painting—a girl in a blood-red dress holding a skull like a lover.
Others whisper that Elira walks the ruins, whispering to the wind, wearing a crown of thorns and roses.
They say madness took her completely.
But the truth?
She became queen of her own dark realm.
And every year, on the day snow falls, she kisses the earth and says, “I loved a king once. And he chose me.”
Even in madness, love never dies.
