Age: 5
Mirelle
The world was never quiet around Kaelith.
Even when no one else was speaking, the air shifted near him—like the forest knew his name, like the wind held its breath when he walked by.
He stood at the edge of the brook again today, his boots sinking into moss, arms crossed, brow furrowed like always. Nine years old and already carrying the weight of some invisible crown.
I was five, but I didn't see the prince.
I only saw Kael. My Kael. My shadow in the sun. My safety in the dark.
He watched me with that same annoyed look as I stepped further into the water, toes curling in the cold.
"Mirelle," he said, voice low and warning. "You'll fall."
I smiled, because I liked it when he said my name like that—like he wanted to sound angry, but couldn't. "Then you'll catch me."
He didn't answer, but he didn't look away either. His eyes—deep green like summer leaves—were too old for his face. They always had been.
I remember thinking, I wish I could stay here forever. In this glade. With him. Before the world remembers he's not mine to keep.
Before they take him away from me.
Mirelle
Kaelith never smiled the way other boys did. Not with his mouth. His smiles lived in the twitch of his jaw, in the faint softening around his eyes, in the way his hand would linger just a second longer when he helped me climb or caught me from falling. I didn't know then that what I was watching was restraint—the early signs of someone taught not to feel too loudly, not to want too openly.
He had always been too careful, even with me.
I waded a little deeper, cold water brushing against my knees. The bottom was slick with stones and soft mud, but I liked the way it felt. Wild. Like I was doing something dangerous with him nearby to protect me. That made it safe. That made it mine.
"You're going to slip," Kaelith said again.
"You said that already," I teased.
He sighed, stepping closer. "Because it's still true."
I turned to look at him, arms stretched out for balance. The sunlight framed him like something from one of the old stories—broad shoulders for a boy, dark hair tousled from the wind, and eyes like a storm that hadn't yet broken.
And then I did what he said I would.
My foot slid over a mossy rock, and before I could scream or flail, his arms were already around me, lifting me as if I weighed nothing. His chest was warm, and I could hear the fast thrum of his heart as mine tried to settle.
He held me longer than he needed to.
"Told you," he muttered, breath brushing the side of my face.
But I didn't answer. I was too busy listening to the way his heart stuttered under my ear.
He always smelled like pine bark and something sharper—something that didn't quite belong in the forest. Later, I'd know it as the scent of the Varethos, the ancient thing inside him that slumbered and watched and waited. But back then, it was just Kael.
He set me down gently on the bank, brushing my wet curls from my face with one calloused thumb. I should have let go. I should have thanked him. But instead, I blurted,
"When I grow up, I'm going to marry you."
His entire body went still.
I watched his throat bob as he swallowed, eyes darting to mine for a moment before he looked away, not smiling, not teasing like he usually did.
"Don't say things like that," he said quietly.
I frowned. "Why not?"
"Because that's not how it works."
"But I want to."
He turned then, crouching to be level with me. His gaze was sharper than I expected, almost fierce. I didn't understand it then, but something in me tucked that moment away, like a secret pressed between pages.
"You can't marry me, Mirelle. I'm… I'm different. You know that."
I crossed my arms. "You mean because you're a prince?"
He didn't nod, but he didn't deny it either.
"That doesn't matter to me," I whispered.
He shook his head. "It matters to everyone else."
We were quiet after that. The kind of quiet that sticks to your skin like fog. I didn't cry, but I felt something in my chest twist. Even at five, I understood that some dreams were too big for girls like me.
I didn't know it yet, but the world had already started pulling us apart.
That night, I overheard the grown-ups talking. Whispers about Kaelith being summoned to the palace for formal training. About bloodlines and betrothals and duty. The words didn't mean much to me, not yet. But I felt them.
Like knives, pressing beneath the skin.
When he came to see me the next morning, I tried to act normal. We sat by the brook, but I didn't wade in. He brought me a carved wooden sparrow he'd made, clumsy and lovely, and I smiled so hard it hurt.
"You'll come back, right?" I asked as he stood to leave.
He hesitated. "I don't know."
I remember thinking he looked taller than usual. Distant. Like the wind might carry him away if I blinked.
So I did something stupid.
I kissed his cheek.
Quick. Shy. The way little girls kiss their heroes in stories.
He stared at me like I'd struck him.
"You're just a little girl," he said, voice strange and hollow.
I nodded, even though I didn't understand. I thought it meant he didn't like me. That I'd ruined everything.
He turned and walked away without another word.
I didn't cry until he was gone.
Years would pass before I learned what that look in his eyes had really meant.
Not anger. Not disgust.
Fear.
Because even then, Kaelith had already begun to crave what he was told he could never have.
Mirelle
I didn't fall.
But I pretended to lose my balance—just enough to make him flinch.
And like always, Kaelith was there before I could hit the water, arms wrapping around my waist, lifting me out like I weighed nothing. He always smelled like stone and pine, like the mountains we weren't allowed to climb. His chest rumbled with a sound close to a growl as he set me down on the grass, dripping and giggling.
"You'll get sick," he muttered, pulling his cloak off to wrap it around me. It nearly swallowed me whole, soft and warm and stitched with the royal crest on the back. I traced it with my fingers like I always did.
"You're not supposed to give me this," I whispered. "Your mother said—"
"I don't care what she said," he snapped, sharper than before. Then softer, quieter, "You were cold."
That was the thing about Kael. He always got angry when he cared too much. And with me… he always cared too much.
Even at nine, he knew it was dangerous.
The cloak was heavy on my shoulders, but it made me feel safe. Untouchable. Like the rules couldn't reach me when I was wrapped in his warmth.
Like I belonged to him.
I looked up at him, blinking water out of my lashes. "Will I have to stop seeing you when I grow up?"
He frowned down at me, confused. "Why would you?"
"Because… I'm not like you."
Kael's jaw clenched. "That doesn't matter."
"But—"
He dropped to a knee in front of me, fingers brushing my cheek, pushing back wet curls. "Mirelle. You're mine. I don't care what anyone says."
I didn't know what that meant back then. Not really.
But it curled around my heart like a promise I would never forget.
A week later, his mother sent for him. Said he was to begin official training. Said the heir to the throne couldn't run wild with common-born girls any longer.
He didn't come to the brook after that.
Not once.
And I—too young to understand, too proud to beg—waited anyway.
Every day.
Until the water froze over and the trees lost their leaves. Until my name no longer echoed in the glade.
And still… I waited.
Age: 7
Mirelle
It had been two years since Kaelith left the glade.
Two years since he last wrapped me in his cloak. Two years since he brushed my cheek with his calloused fingers and told me I was his.
I wondered if he meant it… or if he'd only said it to comfort the crying child dripping wet in the grass.
I never asked.
Because I hadn't seen him.
Not once.
They said he was training. Preparing to inherit the throne. That boys like Kaelith had no business lingering in the woods with lowborn girls like me. And even though I was told not to call him Kael anymore—told to bow, to say "your highness"—I didn't.
Not even when I saw him again for the first time.
He was on horseback, returning from the northern borders with the king's guard. He looked taller. Older. Sharper around the edges. His eyes weren't soft anymore, and his jaw didn't clench in frustration—it was set in cold, silent strength.
I stood at the edge of the road like an idiot, clutching a basket of herbs I'd been sent to gather.
He didn't see me.
Or maybe he did—and just didn't stop.
Something in me shattered.
Not loudly. Not all at once. Just a quiet fracture down the center of a little girl's heart.
That night, I cried until I couldn't breathe. Not because he didn't speak to me.
But because I still would've dropped everything—everything—for one look from him.
I was seven.
He was eleven.
And somewhere in that awful silence, I realized something that would haunt me for the rest of my life:
I missed someone who didn't even know he'd left me behind.
Age: 9
Mirelle
The palace didn't want me.
No one said it, not directly. But I felt it—in the stares, the smirks, the half-whispers laced with silk and venom.
"She's the herbalist's girl."
"Why is she here?"
"Did someone mistake her for a servant?"
I stood too straight, too stiff, my fingers curled tightly at my sides as the chambermaid laced me into a gown that didn't feel like mine. The fabric was soft—real velvet, deep burgundy—but it itched beneath my skin, as if my body knew I didn't belong in it.
"You'll smile when you meet the council," the matron hissed in my ear. "And speak only when addressed. You're here because of him, remember that."
Kaelith.
It was always him.
I hadn't seen him in nearly a year. Rumors whispered of how he'd changed—how he now trained with the High Vareen warriors, how he could split a man in half with a blade made of shadow and flame. I didn't know what parts were truth. I didn't know what I'd see when I finally did see him again.
But I'd come.
Because I had to.
If I wanted even the smallest chance to belong to him, I had to become someone the Crown could stomach.
So I let them change me.
I learned to curtsy like I was born to it. I learned their books, their dances, their cruel little games. I swallowed their insults and pretended not to notice the way they looked down on me.
And when I was alone…
I still whispered his name.
Kaelith.
Kaelith.
Kaelith.
He was the ache in my chest, the ghost behind my ribs. The boy who once wrapped me in his cloak and promised I was his—even if he'd long since forgotten.
Age: 9
Mirelle
I wasn't ready to see him.
I thought I was. I told myself I was.
But when the council doors opened and he walked in, flanked by guards in obsidian armor and draped in a cloak of dark fur, the breath left my lungs like I'd been struck.
Kaelith.
He was taller now—broad-shouldered and quiet as always, but there was something new about him. Something colder. Like winter lived inside his skin.
His hair was longer, black as nightfall and tied loosely at his neck. His jaw had sharpened, his cheekbones more defined. But his eyes…
His eyes were the same. That impossible green—moss and shadow, sunlight through forest leaves. They swept across the room like a storm front, distant and unreadable, until they landed on me.
And for one heartbeat, they stayed.
Recognition flickered.
Froze.
Then vanished.
He looked away.
Just like that.
As if I were no one.
As if the brook, the forest glade, the whispered promises beneath summer moons—none of it had mattered.
My heart didn't just break. It shattered.
I stood as still as the statues lining the hall, my fingers trembling against my skirts.
He'd forgotten me.
Or worse.
He remembered—and chose to forget.