The morning after Aarav's fever broke, the apartment was silent.
Too silent.
It wasn't the peaceful hush she had always longed for after a long shift — it was heavier, emptier. Like the pause between heartbeats.
Maya sat on the edge of her bed, watching sunlight creep across the floorboards. Aarav slept beside her, his breathing soft and steady, his small chest rising and falling beneath his blanket. He was safe. He was alive.
And she had never felt so hollow.
The phantom pain pulsed beneath her ribs, where the arrow had struck in that other world. She lifted her shirt to check, half-expecting to find blood. There was nothing — no wound, no scar. Just her skin.
But it hurt. Gods, it hurt.
In her mind, the kingdom still burned. She saw the smoke curling over marble walls, heard the clash of steel and the screams of the dying. She saw the general's betrayed eyes, her people's prayers unanswered.
They had called her savior. And she had abandoned them.
"Mama?"
The word was so small, so human, that it shattered her thoughts.
Aarav blinked awake, rubbing his eyes. "Did I miss school?"
Maya smiled — a brittle, trembling thing. "You're sick, baby. You need to rest."
He nodded and curled into her lap. "I had a bad dream," he mumbled. "You were gone again."
Her breath caught. She pressed her lips to his hair. "I'm here now."
It was all she could offer. It was all she had left.
The hours blurred.
She made soup. Aarav napped. She scrolled through work messages she didn't answer. The world moved around her, but she felt detached, like someone had replaced her bones with glass.
In the bathroom mirror, she barely recognized herself.
There was a steadiness in her posture that hadn't been there before, a trace of regal bearing she couldn't shake. Her eyes looked older, heavier. Like they had seen wars no one else could imagine.
And behind that reflection, for the briefest heartbeat, she saw the queen — her other self — staring back.
The queen didn't blame her. She didn't scream or rage. She just looked.
Disappointed.
That night, after Aarav had fallen asleep, Maya sat alone at the kitchen table. The city hummed beyond the window. Her phone buzzed with missed calls. The silence pressed against her skin.
She traced her finger across the table's worn surface and whispered, "I chose right."
The words felt fragile, uncertain.
"I chose right."
It should have felt like victory. It should have felt like peace.
But it didn't.
Because the truth was more complicated — and far crueler.
She had chosen love. But she had also abandoned lives that depended on her. She had saved her son. But she had condemned her kingdom.
And part of her — the part that had stood tall in torchlight and commanded armies — still ached for the life she'd left behind.
She hated herself for that.
But she couldn't deny it.
Before she went to bed, she checked on Aarav one last time. He was fast asleep, face flushed with health, breathing even.
She brushed his hair gently from his forehead and kissed him there.
"I'll always be here," she whispered. "Always."
She didn't know if she was making a promise — or an apology.
The phantom crown still weighed on her as she turned off the light.
It wasn't just gone. It had burrowed into her. And she suspected it always would.