Valerie, who now answered to the name Vera, continued to grasp the horrifying new reality in the squalor of the capital's poorest district. While Ainsworth tightened his cruel grip on Eldoria, she was fighting a very different battle – one of identity, survival, and the crushing weight of powerlessness.
Martha, her supposed mother, was relentlessly kind, her concern for "Vera's" lingering weakness genuine. Jon, her "father," was more taciturn, his eyes often holding a mixture of pity and a pragmatic weariness. They were poor, desperately so, and an extra mouth to feed, especially one as initially useless as Vera, was a burden, however loved.
One quiet afternoon, while Martha was out bartering for scraps of food and Jon was mending his nets by the river, Vera found herself alone in the hut. A cracked shard of polished metal, likely once part of a soldier's discarded breastplate, lay half-buried in the dirt near the fire pit. Hesitantly, she picked it up.
The face that stared back was a stranger's, yet eerily familiar. The hair was still black, lank and dull, but raven. The bone structure, beneath the gauntness, held a shadow of her own. But the eyes were a common brown, not her distinctive rubies, and the face was younger, barely twenty, hardship already etched there. Her body was painfully skinny.
"This… this is me?" she whispered to the reflection, a fresh wave of disorientation washing over her. She touched the unfamiliar cheekbone.
"So young," she thought, her gaze fixed on the stranger in the shard. "And so… worn. To think, only weeks ago I was planning state visits, and now..."
A chill traced its way down her spine, a fear more profound than the gnawing hunger.
"Sylvia… Clara… would they even recognize me? Could they see past this… this peasant shell?"
Her heart clenched. "If Martha and Jon, these people who claim to have raised me, see only their 'Vera,' delirious from fever… what hope is there that my dearest friends, my staunchest allies, would see me? Their Queen? In this… this starved girl?" The thought settled like a cold stone in her gut, heavy and sickening. "They'd likely think me a madwoman, just like these poor folk do."
How had this happened? Her mind circled back to Clara. Could magic truly twist life and soul to such an extent? It seemed impossible, a fancy from the darkest, most forbidden grimoires. "Clara," she murmured aloud, then continued in thought, "what have you done? Is this some desperate, twisted miracle?"
"No, not Clara," Valerie thought, her gaze lost in the grimy shard. "As powerful as she is, this... could she even conceive of such a thing? And why this body? This life?"
She squeezed her eyes shut, the image of the grand halls of Eldoria Castle, her luxurious chambers, the faces of her well-fed court, flashing behind her eyelids. Then, the stark contrast of this hut, the smell of poverty, the haunted look in Martha's eyes.
"Or perhaps," a more insidious thought whispered, twisting in the pit of her stomach like a cold serpent, "this wasn't Clara's doing at all. Perhaps this was… a judgment."
"Not to save me, but a lesson?" A cold dread filled her. "Was I so insulated by castle walls that I became blind?" She remembered the official reports, the polite bows. "Did I ever truly see beyond the parchment, understand the cost of hardship for people like these? Or did I just assume it was managed?"
This hovel, this constant hunger, this fear – was this the truth of Eldoria for so many, a truth she, too comfortable, had failed to touch? "My 'benevolent rule'… a hollow phrase, she thought with bitter shame. "Perhaps I deserved to see it, to live it, to understand the forgotten." For now, she had no answers, only the need to survive. She would be Vera. She would learn.
The next day, as Vera slowly regained some of her physical strength, though the weakness in her new limbs was a constant frustration, Martha approached her with a hesitant but hopeful look. A large, woven basket overflowing with soiled linens sat by the door.
"Vera, child," Martha began gently, "you're looking a bit steadier on your feet today. The innkeeper's wife sent over their washing. It's how we earn a few extra coppers for food. Do you think… do you think you might be well enough to help me down by the river today?" She gestured to the basket. "Your father's catch has been poor, and every little bit helps."
Vera looked at the mountain of rough, stained cloth, then at Martha's tired face. The thought of such physical labor was daunting, alien. But she saw the plea in the woman's eyes, the quiet desperation. This was survival. "I must try," she resolved internally. "Yes, mother," she said, her voice still a little weak. "I can try."
Valerie, who had once commanded armies and dictated laws, now struggled to master the rhythm of laundry by the muddy riverbank, her mind feeling clumsy for these mundane tasks.
"To think I once debated tariffs with foreign envoys," she muttered, scrubbing furiously but ineffectively at a stubborn stain on a thick tunic, "and now I battle grime with this wretched lye that eats at my skin!"
A gruff woman with sinewy arms, washing beside her, paused her vigorous scrubbing and snorted. "What in the blazes are you doing, girl?" she said, gesturing with a sudsy hand at Vera's clumsy efforts.
"That's not scrubbing, that's just tickling the dirt! You need to put some elbow into it, like this!" Vera watched, mortified, as the woman demonstrated, her movements powerful and efficient. Her own hands, once accustomed to the smooth glide of a scepter, were now raw and blistered from scrubbing coarse linen against a rough washboard. The harsh soap stung fiercely, and her back ached.
While scrubbing, she heard the hushed, fearful conversations of the other women.
"Did you hear?" one woman would whisper. "King Ainsworth's raised the tax on linen again! And the grain! He did it the very first day, the vulture! How are we to feed our children?"
"And the new 'Lord Edicts'?" another would add, her voice low and fearful. "Appointed by the King himself, they say, to 'oversee' our district. More like bleed us dry and line his own pockets. Old Man Hemlock said as much, and they dragged him off last night. Haven't seen him since. Speak a word against him, and it's the dungeons for you, or worse."
Vera absorbed these snippets, her heart growing heavier with each tale of Ainsworth's tyranny. Her people were suffering. Her people. And she, their Queen, was scrubbing shirts, trapped in a body no one recognized, with memories no one believed. The helplessness was a constant, suffocating cloak.
One evening, as Martha stirred a meager stew, Vera watched them. Their faces were illuminated by firelight, etched with a weariness that seeped into their bones.
"The tax collector came by the market today," Jon said quietly. "Shark-eyed fellow, new to the post since… well, since His Majesty took charge. Took nearly half of what little coin the fishmonger offered for my catch. Said it was the 'King's Due for Market Access,' on top of everything else."He shook his head. "Barely enough left for a handful of grain, let alone mending the holes in these boots that let the cold river water seep right in."
Martha sighed. "And old Isa, my friend, down the town… her boy, Gareth, barely a man himself, only know how to chop woods, was taken by the King's Guard yesterday. Dragged him right out of her hut. Said he was 'of age for royal service.' She's beside herself with grief, wailing something awful. He was all she had left."
Vera's fists clenched. Ainsworth was not just taxing them into starvation; he was stealing their children. The injustice burned. "This… this is not right," she said, her voice stronger, a flicker of her old fire. "To tax people into starvation, to steal their children… it's barbaric! How can anyone stand by and do nothing while he… while he tramples on us like this?"
Martha and Jon looked at her, surprised. "Hush, Vera child," Martha said quickly. "Such talk is dangerous. Walls have ears, especially now. You remember what happened to Old Man Hemlock, don't you? Best keep your head down and your thoughts to yourself, girl."
Jon's gaze was stern. "And what would you have us do, girl?" he asked. "You, barely a woman grown yourself, what great rebellion do you propose? Raise our fists, armed with mending needles and fishhooks, against armored guards with steel swords and the King's authority behind them? We are fisherfolk, laundresses, Vera. We bend, or we break. We survive. That is all we can do in these times." His words were a harsh dose of reality, extinguishing her spark of defiance. He was right. In this body, what power did she have?
Later, as she lay on her straw pallet, the sounds of the city drifting in, Valerie wrestled with her thoughts. This life was a brutal education. Every aching muscle, every pang of hunger, every tale of oppression, carved itself into her understanding. If she ever regained her throne, she would not forget this.
A sharp pang, familiar now, twisted in her chest. "Sylvia… Clara…" Their names were a silent prayer, a desperate hope. "Are you safe?" she wondered, staring up at the grimy thatch of the roof. "Do you even know what truly happened? Or do you believe Ainsworth's lies, that I simply… succumbed?" A fresh wave of anxiety washed over her. "His cruelty knows no bounds. Are you imprisoned? Or worse?" The thought of them suffering because of her, or because of their loyalty to her, was unbearable.
"I have to reach you," the thought burned, a desperate ember in the cold darkness of her situation. "You need to know I'm alive, that I remember. But how?" She pictured herself, this gaunt, ragged girl, trying to approach the castle gates, or the Tower of Mages.
"A peasant girl, stinking of lye and river mud, babbling about being Queen Valerie?" A humorless smirk touched her lips. "They wouldn't just laugh. They'd call the guards. Or worse, 'A dangerous lunatic, spreading seditious tales.'" Her shoulders slumped. "No. That way lies only ridicule, or a cell." The path to them seemed impossibly barred.
A new, grim resolve began to form within her. She was Vera now. And Vera had to survive. Vera had to learn to be strong in this new, harsh world. Not with the strength of a queen, but with the resilience of the oppressed. For if she crumbled here, then Queen Valerie truly would be dead, in spirit as well as in name. And perhaps, just perhaps, if Vera endured, she might find a way to make even a small difference. Or at the very least, bear witness.