The first week after the decree passed like fog. The corridors seemed quieter now, not because fewer walked them, but because everyone had learned to soften their footsteps when the young prince was near. His word carried weight, not through rank alone, but through the sharp, measured silence that surrounded him like a blade — and it was in that silence that Elenya lived now.
Her lessons continued in the east wing. Her laughter — once light, often unrestrained — now came only in brief, uncertain bursts, swallowed too quickly by the air around her. The servants smiled at her out of duty, not affection, and the teachers never looked directly into her eyes for too long. She was the Queen's mistake, after all, a wound that hadn't closed, and though none dared say it, every look she caught said the same thing: you shouldn't have been born here.
Kaelen visited only when necessary. He didn't announce himself; he simply appeared, always at the edge of her lessons, leaning against a doorway, watching. His presence was enough to scatter conversation and turn laughter to whispers.
He never spoke to her directly anymore. He told himself that it was mercy — that his silence would hurt less than the words that might come otherwise. But he lied to himself every day.
On the fifth evening, Elenya approached him.
She had waited by the garden steps, where the dying light fell through the high glass, painting her in amber and dust. Her small hands were clenched behind her back; her ribbon had come loose again, a habit she never seemed to correct.
"Your Highness," she said quietly, her voice soft and unsure. "You haven't eaten."
Kaelen stopped mid-step. It was a small thing — simple, obvious — but it hit him in a way he didn't expect. He turned, slowly, the tension in his jaw visible.
"You notice much for someone confined," he said, his tone neither cruel nor kind, simply controlled.
"I… I just saw the trays return untouched," she said quickly. "I thought maybe—"
"You thought wrong," he interrupted, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Your task is to study. Not to concern yourself with what I do."
She hesitated, looking down. "Yes, Your Highness."
He almost left then, but something — perhaps the echo of her tone, or perhaps the faint resemblance in her face when she lowered her gaze — made him pause. It wasn't pity, not exactly. It was something colder, a reluctant recognition that this child, however unwanted, was still tethered by blood to everything he despised.
He turned back to her. "Who told you my name?" he asked suddenly.
She froze. Her head jerked up, eyes wide and startled. "I— I don't know," she stammered.
"Don't lie to me," he said, voice hard now, the calm gone. "That name is not spoken. No one here knows it except a few. So tell me… who whispered it to you?"
Elenya's lips trembled. "I don't remember," she said softly. "I just… knew it. Like I'd heard it in a dream."
A dream. The word twisted in his gut.
Dreams had meaning among their kind — high elves believed that blood carried memory, that lineage could whisper across generations, through thought and time. The idea made his stomach turn.
"Dreams," he muttered, taking a step closer, enough to make her flinch. "You dream of things that aren't yours to dream about?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "I didn't mean to make you angry."
"You didn't make me angry," he said sharply, then stopped himself. The words came out colder than he intended. "You simply reminded me what anger feels like."
He turned away again, walking toward the archway. But before leaving, he glanced once more at her — the child, the mistake, the echo of a betrayal he could not forget — and beneath the anger, a question burned quietly, one that refused to leave him alone.
Could his mother have reached her dreams, too? Could she have spoken into her mind as she slept, binding her to this place, to him, through whispers and names long forbidden?
It seemed absurd. Yet so did everything his mother had ever done, and still, here they all stood — ghosts orbiting a wound that refused to close.
That night, Kaelen lay awake in his chambers, eyes fixed on the ceiling where candlelight flickered against the carved beams. He thought of Elenya's face when she said she'd heard his name in a dream, and for the first time in years, he felt something that almost resembled fear. Not for her, not for himself — but for the possibility that his mother's reach had never truly ended.
And as dawn crept in pale and unfeeling, he decided that he would find out.