raamimanda

The stars did not warn me.
Not when she smiled like dusk,
or when her silence felt like prophecy.

She was a secret wrapped in silk,
a prayer the gods forgot to answer.
And I-
I was just a name waiting to be rewritten.

They spoke of duty,
of oaths, and blood, and kings.
But I listened only to the way she breathed
when no one else dared to.

Now the wind howls through hollow halls,
and the world is ash-touched and quiet.
Still, I would not unlove her.
Even now.
Even here.
Even at the end.

In Her Name,I Burned

Not beneath the golden dome of the kingdom they bled for.

But beneath the trees—wild, unmarked, and far from the hands of kings.

Alric's sword lay beside him, still soaked with rain and loyalty. Saren's ring, the one she wore as a child before she was a princess, was clutched in his hand. Their fingers had curled together even in death.

The riders who returned said nothing.

They brought back no trophies. No victories.

The Crown Prince stood over his sister's last letter.

It had arrived days after her death, carried by a bird she'd trained as a girl.

> "I was never meant to destroy you, brother. Only to prove I was never less than you."

And then burned it without a word.

The people never knew the full truth.

They were told that the young duke and the disgraced princess tried to seize the throne and were executed for treason.

But stories… stories have a way of surviving in the cracks between truth and tale.

They said the Duke died holding the only woman he ever loved.

They said the Princess, cruel and clever, had once laughed like firelight and danced barefoot in the rain.

Some called them monsters. Others, martyrs.

But centuries later, in the songs sung by wandering minstrels, in the poems hidden in old libraries and scratched onto tavern walls, they were remembered by another name:

He stood by the Crown Prince's side until the end of his days.

He wore no smile. He took no wife. And he never spoke her name again.

But sometimes, on long winter nights, when the wine was gone and the fire low, he would sit by the window and whisper into the dark:

History erased the crown she was never allowed to wear.

But somewhere in the quiet pages of time, someone still writes:

> She would've made a brilliant queen.

And he would've set the world on fire for her.

Let us rise a toast.... to the girl he loved the most " Duchess Saren Vale of Viremont"

Epilogue - The Ashes They Left Behind