The Crown Beneath the Skin

Chapter 1: The Girl with the Hidden Throne

“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: