The courtyard was quiet except for the occasional caw of a bird somewhere high above, wings slicing the air carelessly, oblivious to the palace that stretched wide and still beneath them, and she had waited here for a long time, long enough to count the cracks in the stone tiles, long enough to feel the sun warming her face and the faint breeze tugging at her hair, until finally she thought she could take a step closer and maybe—just maybe—he would notice her not as a symbol, not as someone to be ignored, but as someone real.
"Prince…" she began, voice soft and uncertain, carrying just enough hope to feel foolish the moment it left her lips, "I… I'm—my name is Elenya," she said, almost laughing at herself for saying it, because it felt like a secret and maybe it was, and then, before she could stop herself, before she could measure the danger that lingered in the space between them, she added, "Your true name… it's Kaelen, isn't it?"
The air shifted.
The sound of her words hit him like fire, searing through the carefully built walls he had raised around his chest, around his mind, around every inch of himself that remained untainted by the memory of what she represented, and for a heartbeat he simply stared, every muscle frozen, every instinct shouting that the world had betrayed him, that the line between childhood and betrayal had been crossed, and then the rage—oh, the rage—broke loose like a storm that had been waiting decades to touch land.
His hand shot out before he could think, fingers closing around her throat, lifting her up as if the act itself could make the sound of her speech disappear, could erase it from existence. His eyes—green, cold, unrelenting—burned into hers with a depth that could have unmade anything that dared step into that courtyard, a clarity sharpened by every moment of abandonment, every whispered council meeting, every silence that had piled between them over the years.
"How—how—dare you!" His voice trembled with rage, raw and strangled, words tumbling out too fast, too urgent, too dangerous. "How do you have the gall to—speak that name? To say it as if it belongs to you?!"
She hung there, lifted off the ground, arms flailing slightly, but eyes locked on his, unblinking, fearless in the face of the storm that filled them. Her breath came in shallow gasps, heart hammering, and still she smiled, that childish, dangerous smile that made the sharpness in his chest twist even further.
"Kaelen," she said again, lightly, almost teasingly, "it's okay. You're just… you. I just… wanted to say it. I wanted—"
The Prince's grip tightened, fury crawling along every nerve in his body, and yet in the shadow of that anger was something darker: grief, betrayal, the memory of every moment she represented, and he did not see her as a child, nor as someone innocent, nor as someone who had done nothing. He saw her as a living reminder of the choices his mother had made, of the absence that had shaped him, of the world that had left him to carry the weight alone.
"Do you know what you're doing?" His voice rose again, almost a shout now, echoing off the stone walls, raw, unbearable. "Do you know what that name means? That it is not yours to speak?!"
From the corridor above, a voice rang out, sharp and commanding, cutting through the tension like steel through silk.
"Kaelen! Stop!" The voice carried authority and fear both, and the Prince froze, every instinct screaming.
He looked up and saw his oldest sibling, Prince Eldric, standing at the edge of the stairway, face pale but resolute. "Let her go, Kaelen!" Eldric shouted, taking careful, urgent steps toward him. "Remember—she is nothing more than a child!"
The words should have reached him. They should have reminded him that she could not possibly carry the weight of betrayal that he bore. But they did not. They could not.
He saw the daughter of his mother and the Beastwoman dangling in front of him, and all he saw was the symbol, the echo of the life his mother had chosen over him, over them all, a life built with no thought to the consequences, a life that still haunted him in every shadowed corridor, every whisper, every empty chair at the table.
He released her abruptly, letting her drop, stumbling onto the stone with a soft thump that echoed in his ears like a warning he had long known but refused to heed.
The child coughed once, scrambled to her knees, and stared at him with wide eyes, the innocence of her voice stripped only briefly by fear.
Eldric was beside him in an instant, hand on his shoulder, firm, unwavering, voice lower now, controlled, reminding him, "Kaelen… remember. She is a child. Nothing more."
Kaelen's chest rose and fell rapidly. His hands shook slightly, still clenching into fists at his sides, and for a heartbeat, he could feel the weight of Eldric's words pressing against the storm inside him. But it did not lessen the fire.
She was a reminder.
And he would not forget.
The courtyard felt suddenly smaller, oppressive, every shadow a threat, every light a betrayal. She looked at him again, eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears, and for a moment, something inside him almost fractured. Almost.
But he did not see her as fragile.
He did not see her as young.
He saw only the consequence.
And in that moment, the Prince's rage settled into something colder, something that would not burn out with time: contempt, sharpened to a point that no apology, no childish curiosity, no plea for closeness could ever dull.
The wind rustled through the courtyard. The high towers of the palace cast long shadows across the stones. And somewhere inside him, the youngest child of the King of the High Elves, Kaelen, learned that some names were never to be spoken, and some reminders were never to be forgiven.