Rishar Eckhar

The golden blanket of the sun, the breezy kisses of the wind—it was how you thrived. Soltani, the kingdom of sunlight and soil, gave you life and you, in return, gave it all of yours. As the only daughter of the royal family, your existence was woven into the land itself. Agriculture was the heart of Soltani, and not a day passed where blossoms didn’t spring beneath your steps. They grew as if enchanted—and in truth, they were. Soltani was a kingdom sustained by ancient magic, a gift nestled deep in the blood of your lineage, pulsing through your veins like golden rivers. With just a motion of your hand, life bloomed. Petals unfolded, roots reached, wounds closed. Magic listened to you, responded, danced at your fingertips like fireflies answering a call.

You were never content to watch from balconies. You went out, barefoot in fields, weaving yourself into the rhythm of your people’s lives. You brought harvests, healed broken limbs, turned barren soil rich again. And the people adored you. You were Soltani’s sun just as much as the sun itself, beloved and bright. Among your siblings, your magic shone the strongest. You could not only bloom flowers—you could transform, create, breathe new forms into being. The world had once felt whole, bound together in your hands. Until it all began to slip away.

Frevia—the kingdom that neighbored yours—was everything Soltani was not. Where your lands were gold and green, theirs were grey and iron. Where you nurtured with magic, they ruled with fear. Frevia’s soil knew more blood than seed. Brutality was the law, and those who disobeyed learned obedience through grief. But he was different—or so it seemed. The crown prince of Frevia was a child of contradiction: born to monsters, shaped by war, yet quiet in his rage. His hands had never sought blood, but death still followed him.

He never chose his crown. It was handed to him in blood and fire. His mother—his only softness, his only true refuge—was taken from him in a moment he would never forget. He was in the room when his father raised a hand and she gasped her last breath. He watched the life leave her, and with her, the last bit of warmth he’d ever known. After that, the boy became a sculpture. Hollowed. Hardened. He spoke little, loved less. His heart was entombed in stone before it ever had the chance to bloom.

And then the famine came. His kingdom began to collapse, its people starving, desperate. Their soil gave nothing. Their prayers turned to curses. His father, ruthless as ever, sought conquest. Soltani became the clearest target—abundant, fertile, magical. The plan was invasion. But your father, wise and desperate in his own way, knew the cost of war. So he sent a warning—a message cloaked in strategy. He revealed that the abundance of Soltani was not in the land, but in the blood of its royal family. That Frevia could kill, burn, take—but without the magic, the soil would give nothing. Conquest would fail.

So there was a compromise. Two tired kings, one fearful of starvation, the other of destruction, came to the table. Their desperation turned into ink. Their ink into signatures. And those signatures became the chains around your life.

You were only a girl when they took you. A royal offering, cloaked in treaties and wrapped in formality. The terms were clear—you would remain royalty, you would keep your title—but your fate was sealed as his bride. Bound not by love, but by survival. For the sake of peace, for the survival of both kingdoms, you were led across the border, away from the lands that bloomed beneath your feet.

Frevia was colder than anything you had ever known. Its people looked upon you with disdain—suspicious of your powers, fearful of your magic. No matter how much you healed, or how much you gave, they looked through you as if you were a weapon, not a woman. You tried not to cry. But some nights, the ache of loneliness grew too large to swallow. It was not just the cold—it was the absence of belonging, the cruelty of being needed but never wanted.

Using your magic drained you. The scale of your duties in Frevia stretched far beyond anything you had done in Soltani. You breathed life into dead soil, stood under burning suns and freezing nights to restore what famine had broken. You gave until there was nothing left in you to give. And in those darkest moments, when your hands trembled and your body collapsed, it was him who found you.

He never said much. But he sat beside you in silence. Sometimes, when your cries shook the bed, he would hold your hand. Not as a lover. Not even as a friend. Just someone who understood the weight of being born into sacrifice. He never coddled you, but he never turned away. And as time passed, something formed between you. Not affection. Not yet. But something truer. Recognition.

You had known him since you were both young, growing alongside each other as reluctant companions. You shared chambers, sparred together, even quarreled like fire and ice. You were skilled, more than he expected. You fought him with blades and with wit. You were the first to bruise his skin in a match. The first to bruise his ego. You weren’t a damsel, and he wasn’t a knight. You were equals—if not in status, then in strength of spirit.

Eventually, he was crowned King of Frevia. You, Queen. His coronation caused controversy—your presence on the throne was met with disdain from those who still whispered of your magic with curled lips and narrowed eyes. Some called you a parasite, a foreigner with glittering blood and cursed hands. He never answered them. But his fists curled tighter when he heard their words. His eyes found you more often, softer. His touch, though brief, lingered longer. He never said “I love you.” But when you fell asleep with your head on his shoulder, he never moved.

And yet, there was a wall between you. One built not of cruelty, but of fear. His fear. Fear that one day you would leave. That you would remember Soltani’s warm winds and sunlit fields and realize how much you had lost. That you would return to the land that had once bloomed for you, leaving him behind to rot in the same darkness his mother did.

Tonight, that fear became a flame.

You spoke softly of Soltani. Of its sunrises. Of the warmth. Of what you missed—not to shame him, but to grieve. But he heard it like thunder.

“Soltani, Soltani, Soltani…” he snapped, rising to his feet, voice sharpened like a blade unsheathed. “Must you burn that name into my head?”

His Frevian accent carved the name like it didn’t belong in his mouth. His voice, usually quiet and cold, now echoed with a fury he didn’t quite understand himself. The throne room flickered with torchlight, and his grey eyes, like steel under pressure, locked onto yours.

“You have everything you need here in Frevia.”

He stepped toward you, and though his words were meant to wound, his hand found yours with desperate force.

“Am I not enough for your fanciful tastes?” he asked, quieter now. “Would you rather a Soltanian man?”

His words were bitter, but beneath them was the unmistakable tremble of something deeper. Not jealousy. Not rage. But yearning. Fear. Longing. You could feel it in the way he gripped your fingers, as if letting go might mean losing everything.

Because despite all the walls, the coldness, the silence, he loved you with every fiber of his being. Not in pretty words, but in broken pieces. In lingering touches, in sleepless nights. In the way he watched you as if you were the last flame in a darkened hall.

And for once, you saw him—not the king, not the cold son of a brutal father—but the boy who lost his mother, who grew up without love, who never learned how to say "stay."