The door slammed shut behind her.
No warmth.
No hesitation.
Just her voice echoing like a ghost.
"Get ready for your coming-of-age ceremony."
I stood there, breathing like I had just surfaced from deep water.
My eyes drifted back to the mirror.
The boy in the reflection stared back at me.
Not yet the man who burned.
Not yet the monster they made.
He didn't know what was coming.
But I did.
I was an illegitimate son.
The queen hated me for it.
And the court followed her example like dogs.
Since I wasn't born to her, I wasn't meant to exist.
No eye contact.
No sound to my steps.
No speaking unless spoken to.
No laughing.
I learned how to disappear in plain sight,
To move like a ghost.
My father had once called me his son.
My dear father—he was all I had.
But he died when I was five.
A quiet illness, they said.
Too quick for medicine. Too convenient for mourning.
His funeral lasted less than a day.
No procession. No eulogy.
Just cold stone and silence—
as if the crown was eager to forget him.
I remembered his hands—calloused but warm.
The way he would lift me like I weighed nothing, and say—
"No one can unname you, not while I breathe."
After him, there was no one.