The road home was quieter than you remembered.
Even with the rattling wheels and clattering hooves, there was a stillness to it — a silence that mirrored your own. Not grief, not guilt. Just the aftertaste of choices made.
You watched the landscape shift beyond the carriage windows: fields golden with late summer grain, hill shadows deepening as dusk folded the world in grey. Your house crest flapped faintly on the standard at the coachman's seat — not royal, but yours. Only yours.
You had not been chased. No soldiers at your heels. No summons demanding your return.
Because you had been clever.
Two days before your departure, you had begun laying the groundwork — quiet murmurs to court aides, strategic glances exchanged in the Queen Dowager's presence, just enough stir to be carried through the halls: The Queen is departing to oversee the Festival of Remembrance — a sacred duty in her province. The temple rituals require her presence. The estate needs inspection. Her absence is expected. Natural. Harmless.
No scandal. No disgrace. No abandonment.
You had vanished with dignity — and left behind a story to cradle the silence.
Still, the question echoed as the carriage neared the outer gates of your childhood estate:
Will everything be all right?
Even now — with the gates of your father's estate rising in the distance, the colors of your childhood house flying above them — you weren't certain. You had rehearsed this moment a hundred ways, but none of them felt like this: heart tight in your chest, the ache of something unsaid pressing behind your eyes, the air thick with a kind of mourning that wasn't grief, exactly, but not peace either.
The carriage slowed. You looked at Mira.
She had not spoken much since you left the palace, but her eyes had not stopped watching the road, or you.
The gates opened without hesitation.
No questions asked. No inspections. No ceremonial delay. The steward — old, graying, and sharp-eyed — met you on the steps with a bow that was deep, but not performative.
The steward, Lord Henric, awaited you at the entrance, flanked by a few guards bearing your house colors. He bowed deeply — not to a Queen, but to a sovereign daughter returned.
"Welcome home, Your Grace," he said, without surprise. As if he had always known you would come.
You descended in plain travel clothes, dust clinging to your hems, no crown upon your head. And yet, no one questioned your arrival. Not the staff. Not the retainers. Not even the old gardener who once chased you from the orchard as a child.
Because your absence had been prepared for — and because for the past two years, quietly and without spectacle, you had fortified this land in your name.
You had sent grain when floods came. Gold when the roof of the southern infirmary collapsed. Discreet letters to ensure the Council of Elders still bent toward your authority. You had never let go.
Now, you walked the stone paths of your own court with a calm that felt like both homecoming and armor. You smiled when required, nodded to familiar faces, accepted no questions.
Only memory. And belonging.
You climbed the familiar stairs and paused at the threshold of your old chambers. When the door opened, you did not know what to expect — but the sight stopped you in your tracks.
It was untouched.
The same rosewood writing desk by the window. The old armchair where your father read to you. The painted screen your mother gifted you the year before her death. Even the embroidered cushion you once threw during a tantrum, still tucked beneath the bench.
The room had been cleaned, but not altered. As if someone had known you would return.
You stepped inside slowly, running your fingers along the desk's edge. Dustless. Polished. Familiar.
Later that afternoon, after formalities were addressed and you had reviewed the estate's affairs with your steward, you dismissed everyone and started to walk alone to the family mausoleum.
Mira followed you into your private solar, silent until the door closed behind her.
"You're worried," you said without turning.
She stood a step behind, her hands clasped in front of her apron. "You rebuilt all this after the uprising. You kept it alive. But it's been years, and you were away so long. What if…" She hesitated. "What if this is not welcome but simply tolerance?"
You turned to face her — your handmaid, your shadow, the girl who had once knelt beside you when rebels stormed the palace gate.
"I still remember how you held my hand," you said gently. "When we hid in the storeroom behind the tapestries. You didn't run."
Her throat bobbed. "You didn't either."
You stepped closer, placing a hand on her arm. "This place remembers us. The people do. My work never stopped, even from afar."
She didn't answer, but her shoulders eased. You smiled.
"They bowed today, Mira. Without being asked. That is something. Whatever tomorrow brings we will face but for now we are home.."
The fire crackled softly between you.
"Rest now," you said. "Tomorrow, we begin again."
When she left, you dressed simply, took up a torch, and rode alone.
No ladies. No guards.
Just you, and firelight flickering against the night as you made your way to the hillside shrine.
The grave markers stood where they always had — carved into the rock, circled by wild marigolds.
You knelt before them. The stone still cold, even in summer.
"I failed," you whispered.
The wind shifted. Leaves rustled like distant applause. Or disapproval.
"I tried," you continued, quieter. "I thought maybe — maybe I could be both Queen and daughter. That I could hold his hand and still carry your name."
You reached out, touched the base of your father's headstone.
"I'm sorry."
The words broke something in your throat.
But you didn't cry.
Not this time.
"I am not that weak girl anymore," you said, steadier now. "Not the princess who bowed to a council's pressure. Not the bride who waited to be seen. I didn't save my marriage — but I will protect our kingdom. I will not let it be devoured by alliances or forgotten in another man's court."
The flame of your torch bent low in the wind, then steadied.
"I don't know what happens next," you admitted. "I don't know if he will come. Or if I'll want him to. But I will not wait in silence anymore."
You placed your seal ring gently on the stone for a moment — a symbol of who you were before marriage, before the crown. Then slipped it back on your finger with quiet finality.
"I am my father's daughter. And that will always be enough."
The stars blinked overhead.
You stood.
And you did not look back.