The Real Queen

Chapter 3: A new Identity

The forest had no mercy.

For days, I wandered through mud and cold, half-starved and half-mad, following the sound of running water because it was the only thing that still moved. My feet bled. My body ached. My soul… I wasn’t sure it was still there.

Every step was an echo of what I’d lost.

Mother’s laughter.

Father’s voice steadying the chaos.

Cruze’s grin the one that made any place feel safe.

Gone. All of it is gone.

Sometimes I whispered their names, afraid that if I didn’t, the world would forget them too.

And in the quiet, his name came unbidden.

Caladan.

The name felt like a knife that stabbed me with the deepest stab and caused the deepest wound.

How could love rot so quickly?

Before

There was a time when he was everything I dreamed of.

The first time I met Caladan, I was nineteen, tending the palace gardens my mother loved. He appeared like something pulled from a fever dream a fae prince in plain clothes, silver hair bound with leather, a dragon’s mark burning faintly on his wrist. He’d come to the human court as a gesture of peace, he said. I didn’t know then that peace is what kings promise right before they steal your world.

He asked for directions to the orchard and I pointed the way, too shy to meet his eyes. He’d smiled then, soft and impossibly kind.

“Do you always look down when you speak?” he’d teased.

“Only when I’m speaking to fae princes,” I’d said, surprising us both.

He laughed like he hadn’t laughed in a long time. And that laugh stayed with me for days after he left.

When he returned to the palace months later, he found excuses to visit the gardens. We’d talk for hours about everything and nothing his fascination with human art, my curiosity about dragons. He showed me a small scale once, glimmering blue and gold.

“From the youngest of them,” he’d said. “They only shed when they trust you.”

I had believed him then. About everything.

He loved my parents, too treated them as equals when no fae ever would. He and my father would share coffee in the library, arguing about politics. My mother adored him. Cruze admired him.

He made me believe that love could bridge entire species. That faith could survive magic and war.

And maybe, for a while, it did.

Until it didn’t.

Now

The first glimpse of the border village came at dusk. The human realm, Thalrien.

Smoke curled from chimneys. The scent of bread and rain drifted through the air. Civilization. Life.

I didn’t know whether to cry or collapse.

My reflection in the puddles was unrecognizable, my hair matted, my dress in tatters. I looked more ghost than a woman.

The gates weren’t guarded; they didn’t need to be.

I stumbled through the main street, clutching my cloak close. People turned to stare, whispering behind hands. No one approached.

Then a voice cut through the murmurs.

“Hey, hey, easy there!”

Two women hurried toward me, tall, strong, both dark-skinned and sharp-eyed. One wore her hair in a crown of braids, the other in a loose scarf. They moved like they’d seen war before, like nothing surprised them anymore.

“Gods,” the first murmured, catching me as my knees buckled. “She’s freezing.”

“Get her inside,” said the second. “Before the patrols come by.”

They half-carried me through narrow streets to a small cottage near the edge of town. Inside, it smelled of herbs, smoke, and something sweet.

A third woman sat at the table older, her gaze steady and unreadable. She didn’t move as the others guided me to a chair.

“Where’d you find her?” the eldest asked.

“Near the well,” said the one with the scarf. “Poor thing looks like she crawled through the underworld.”

The eldest, Moore, they called her studied me with unsettling calm. “And what’s your name, child?”

My lips parted, but nothing came. My name. My real name. It felt dangerous now, like fire on my tongue.

“Elia,” I almost said.

Queen of Aerithen. Wife of the fae king. The woman who burned with her family.

But I wasn’t her anymore. She had died in the flames.

“Martina,” I whispered.

Moore’s brows lifted slightly. “Martina, then. Where are you from?”

“South.” I forced the word out, my mind racing for something that sounded true. “A small village near the marshlands. Soldiers came… there was a fire.”

One of the younger women Metra, the one who’d caught me touched my arm gently. “You’re safe here now. We’ll get you food, a place to rest.”

Safe.

The word made me want to laugh and scream at the same time.

But I nodded instead. “Thank you.”

Selene, the other sister, poured a cup of broth and pressed it into my hands. “You can stay here a while,” she said. “Plenty of work to be done. And we don’t ask questions we don’t want the answers to.”

I met her eyes. There was something there a flicker of understanding. Like she recognized the hollow look of someone who’d lost everything.

“Thank you,” I said again, meaning it this time.

"Just don't cause any trouble" she said as she turned

"I promise I won't" I said and meant it.

That night, lying on a straw mattress under a thin blanket, I listened to the village outside. Laughter. The crackle of distant fire. The occasional hiss of fae patrols as they passed.

The war was over.

The sisters moved about quietly, speaking in low tones. I wasn’t meant to hear them, but grief has a way of sharpening the senses.

Metra, set down a kettle and whispered, “Do you think we’re in danger?”

Moore, the eldest, didn’t look up from her stitching. “No one would dare attack what now belongs to the fae.”

The words landed like a blade in my chest.

Selene sighed, her tone bitter. “So we’re prisoners, then. Just not the kind locked in cages.”

“Watch your tongue,” Moore warned. “This village, this entire region, is no longer human territory. The war the fae king won wasn’t against another fae kingdom.”

She looked toward the window, her voice dropping low and steady.

“It had been against us.”

My breath caught.

Us.

Humans.

Thalrien.

My kingdom. My home.

The war wasn’t between fae courts. It was between Caladan and my people. The man I had loved, the one who kissed my hands and promised me peace he had been killing my kind while whispering of unity.

I pressed a hand to my mouth to keep from making a sound. The room spun.

Selene poured tea, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe it. The fae king, ruling Thalrien. I never thought I’d live to see humans bow to one of them.”

“Careful,” Moore murmured. “The walls listen now.”

I stared at the flames, the realization hitting harder than any blade.

Caladan hadn’t just betrayed me.

He had conquered me.

Later, after the sisters went to bed, I sat awake, staring at my hands. The firelight painted them gold the same hint color in his eyes along with the amethyst when he’d said he loved me.

He has the most beautiful eyes. I would recognize them anywhere.

I could almost hear his voice again, that soft, careful tone he used when the court whispered against our union.

“You are my bridge between worlds,” he’d said once, brushing my hair from my face.

“And what if they burn the bridge?” I’d asked.

“Then I’ll stand in the fire with you.”

But he hadn’t. He’d left me there to burn alone.

I don’t remember when I started crying, only that I didn’t stop until my throat hurt.

I thought of my mother’s hands, my father’s voice, Cruze’s laughter and all the people who would never know what really happened.

They would call it victory.

They would call him king.

And they would call me gone.

But I wasn’t gone. Not yet.

I wiped my face and looked toward the window. Beyond the mist, the faint glow of Aerithen’s distant spires touched the clouds.

He thought I was dead.

He thought he’d buried me with the rest of Thalrien.

Good.

Let him believe it.

Because one day, when he least expected it, he would look into the eyes of the woman he’d killed and she would make him remember.

The fae ruled everything now.

And Caladan my husband sat on the throne built on human bones.

I turned my face into the pillow, biting down on a sob. My body shook until it hurt.

But beneath the grief, something darker stirred.

Not just pain. Not just loss.

Purpose.

Cruze’s voice came again, quiet but unyielding: Promise me, you will survive. Promise me you’ll avenge us.

“I will,” I whispered into the night. “I swear it.”

I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when.

But one day, Caladan would see me again.

And when he did he would understand what it meant to betray a woman who has nothing left to lose.