Chapter 16 Extra
(Saintess Lilia – the night after the parley)
Lilia sat alone in the royal medical tent, white gown still streaked with Rin's blood, hands wrapped around a cup of willow-bark tea she hadn't tasted.
The camp outside was chaos: Cedric had locked himself in the command pavilion with a bottle of northern fire-whiskey and was screaming at anyone who came near. The Royal Blades responsible for the shot had vanished (officially "deserters," unofficially dragged into the snow with slit throats).
But Lilia couldn't hear any of it.
She could only see the moment the maid threw herself in front of the arrow meant for her.
She had expected death.
She had rehearsed it for years.
Because Lilia remembered.
Not the way Rin did (from another world, from pages), but from inside the story itself.
She had been eight years old when the goddess first spoke in her dreams: golden light, gentle voice, the same words every night.
"You are chosen, little one. You will be the saintess who saves the kingdom. You will love the prince. You will be loved by all. And the villainess, Evelyn de Clermont, will try to kill you for it. But you must forgive her. You must always forgive her. That is your role."
Night after night, year after year, the dream never changed.
When she woke at twelve with the saintess's mark glowing on her collarbone, the temple took her.
When she healed her first dying child at thirteen, the kingdom crowned her saviour.
When she met Prince Cedric at fourteen and felt the first scripted flutter in her chest, she smiled exactly the way the dream told her to.
She had never once questioned it.
Until the day Evelyn de Clermont was supposed to slap her at the academy and instead a quiet maid stepped forward and took an entire inkwell to the chest without flinching.
That was the first crack.
Then came the library.
Then the masquerade.
Then the arrow that should have ended the story (and didn't).
Tonight the dream had come again, but the golden light flickered.
The goddess sounded… uncertain.
"The villainess has strayed," the voice whispered. "The maid interferes. The script frays. You must bring them back, Lilia. You must make the prince love you again. You must make Evelyn hate you the way she is meant to. Only then can the kingdom be saved."
Lilia had stared into the golden haze and asked the question she had never dared before.
"What if I don't want to?"
The light had dimmed. For the first time, the goddess had no answer.
Now, in the silent medical tent, Lilia set the untouched tea aside and opened the small locket she wore beneath her gown.
Inside was a miniature portrait (painted when she was ten): a black-haired girl with crimson eyes, smiling shyly at the artist.
Evelyn.
Taken the summer before everything went wrong, when Lilia (still just the daughter of a minor baron) had spent a month at the Clermont northern estate as a playmate for the duke's daughter.
They had been friends.
Real friends.
They had built snow castles and stolen honey-cakes from the kitchens and promised to write every week when Lilia went home.
Then the goddess began speaking in Lilia's dreams, and the letters stopped coming, and the temple took her away, and the story rewrote her memories until she almost believed she had always hated the "cruel" Evelyn.
Almost.
Tonight the locket felt heavier than any saintess's mark.
Lilia closed it and pressed it to her heart.
Tomorrow Cedric would demand she stand on the siege tower and bless the catapults.
Tomorrow the army would expect her to curse the villainess who had "tried to murder" the saintess.
But tonight, for the first time in ten years, Lilia let herself remember the truth.
She had never been the heroine.
She had been the cage.
And the girl who just took an arrow for her (the girl who should, by every sacred rule, want her dead) had chosen to keep her alive anyway.
Lilia looked toward the distant silhouette of Caer Veyral, dark against the stars.
"I don't know who you are," she whispered to the night, to the maid whose name she didn't even know, "but thank you for refusing to let me die the way I was supposed to."
She closed her eyes.
Tomorrow she would have to decide:
Obey the goddess and try to drag the story back onto its rails…
Or finally, finally, start writing her own.
Eleven days left.
And for the first time, the saintess wasn't sure whose side she was on anymore.