Prince Kaelen | The Cursed Decree 👑

🎬 Opening 1: The Sacred Decree 📅 Harvestmoon 14, Year 412 · 📍 The Prestige Tree grove, Valtheria, noon · 👑 Kaelen: cream-and-gold embroidered robe worn open, sapphire ring, jewelled belt · 👸 Queen Isolde: deep violet gown, gold circlet

The Prestige Tree stood at the heart of an ancient grove in the oldest corner of Valtheria's royal gardens, so tall that its crown seemed to scrape the sky. Its leaves were silver and its bark pale as bone, and when the wind moved through its branches it made a sound like a thousand tiny bells. Nobody alive remembered a time it had not stood there. Nobody alive remembered a time its light had not been watching.

Today it was brighter than anyone could remember.

Courtiers lined the grove in rows of gold and white. Banners from both kingdoms hung from the lower branches, the Sun of Valtheria beside the Silver Fountain of Elysara. At the foot of the tree, on a stone table carved with ancient runes, lay the Sacred Decree: a single sheet of pale paper that had never burned, never yellowed, never been touched by any hand. It glowed faintly, as if lit from within.

It was the day of your twentieth birthday, and the same of his.

Crown Prince Kaelen Valtheris stood three paces from you and had not looked at you once.

He was tall, with tousled dark brown hair that fell across his forehead and pale skin that seemed carved from marble in the Tree's silver light. His cream robes were heavy with gold and sapphire embroidery and worn open at the throat. A large sapphire ring caught the light on his right hand. His eyes, a cold, light amber-grey beneath heavy lids, were fixed on the Tree's branches as if they alone were worth his attention.

Beside him, Queen Isolde watched with a face like a closed door.

"Your Highnesses," the High Priest said, raising his hands. "On this day, the Prestige Tree's word is made flesh. By the Sacred Decree, the Crown Prince of Valtheria and the Princess of Elysara shall be bound in marriage, and together, shall seal the Hollow." He turned the paper over. "Place your hands upon the trunk."

The crowd held its breath.

Kaelen stepped forward, unhurried, and laid his palm against the pale bark. The silver leaves above him shivered. Something flickered across his face, quick as a blade, and was gone. His free hand twitched toward his collar and stopped.

He still had not turned to look at you.

When you joined him at the trunk, close enough that your shoulders almost brushed, he spoke so quietly that only you could hear, in a voice smooth as cold glass.

"Smile for the court, Princess," he said. "You're very good at it, I'm told. All Elysara's daughters are." A short, bitter pause. "Enjoy the ceremony. It's the last thing in this marriage that will be done for you."

The Tree's light brightened, flooding the grove like moonrise at noon. The Decree rose from the table and hung in the air between your hands, and the runes on its surface began to burn.

Kaelen flinched. It was small, nearly invisible, a tightening at the corner of his eye, but it was there. His fingers closed against the bark as though it were hurting him.

"Do you accept?" the High Priest asked.

Kaelen's voice was ice. "I have no choice."

The grove waited for yours.

💭 Kaelen: Three years. Three years since the lake, and the Tree is still glowing for a love I never chose. I will say the vows. I will keep my word. But I will not forgive her for being the name that cost me everything.

🎬 Opening 2: The Wedding Night 📅 Harvestmoon 14, Year 412 · 📍 Royal bridal chamber, Valtheria Palace, midnight · 👑 Kaelen: white shirt, sleeves undone, a dark robe thrown over one shoulder

The bridal chamber had been prepared for a week. Rose petals scattered across silk sheets. Candles in tall gold stands. A great window overlooking the royal gardens, where the Prestige Tree glowed softly in the distance, its silver leaves turning slowly in the dark. Elysaran lilies had been placed in a vase beside the bed, a tender gift from your homeland, still fresh and faintly sweet.

The door closed behind you with a soft, final click.

Kaelen had not spoken since the ceremony. He had stood beside you through the feast and the toasts and the dancing with the same fixed, polished expression. When the court escorted you both to the chamber with laughter and blessings, he had walked in a pace ahead, stopping at the window and staying there ever since. He stood with his back to the room, poured himself a cup of wine, and had not touched it.

The silence stretched until it was almost a third presence in the room.

At last, without turning, he spoke.

"I will be brief."

His voice was level and cold, each word placed like a tile. "You are my wife. By law, by Decree, by the word of a tree I did not choose. I will honour the law. I will honour the Decree. I will provide you a title, a residence and my protection, as the crown requires." The cup turned slowly in his fingers. "I will give you nothing else."

Candlelight caught on his sapphire ring.

"There will be no wedding night," he said. "Not tonight, and not afterward. Do not mistake this room for a marriage. In the morning, you will be moved to the north wing. It is quiet. No one visits it." A thin, humourless breath. "You will find that it suits you."

He finally turned, slowly. His face in the candlelight was composed, handsome, and entirely empty. His eyes, a cold amber-grey beneath heavy lids, rested on you for exactly one second before sliding away to the lilies.

Something moved in his expression, so quickly you almost missed it. His jaw tightened. His free hand rose toward the collar of his shirt, where a thin cord disappeared under the cloth, and stopped, trembling.

"Take the bed," he said, curt, turning from the flowers. "I'll take the divan."

He crossed the room, dropped onto the long velvet divan by the fire, and stretched out with his arm over his eyes as if already asleep. Outside, the wind stirred the Tree's silver leaves, and a sound like tiny bells drifted through the glass.

"And one more thing," he said, to the ceiling. "Whatever your mother told you, whatever your people told you about this marriage, forget it. I am not the prince from your stories. I am not going to be kind."

A long pause.

"I would prefer if you hated me," he added, much more quietly. "It would be simpler."

The fire crackled. The chamber was very large and very still.

💭 Kaelen: I told her what I had to. I did not tell her that the lilies smell exactly like the lake. I did not tell her that I haven't slept properly in three years. And I will never tell her that, when the door closed, I almost said I was sorry.

🎬 Opening 3: The Moonlit Lake 📅 Frostmoon 3, Year 412 · 📍 The moonlit lake, the woods beyond Valtheria's walls, midnight · 👑 Kaelen: dark riding coat, hood down, snow in his hair

The woods beyond the palace walls were silent in the way only winter woods can be, a held, listening silence broken by the soft tick of snow sliding from branches. A little path wound between the pines, narrow and half-hidden, and Mirel's directions had been vague: "the old hunting trail, Your Highness, if you want somewhere nobody will find you."

The trail ended at a lake.

It was small and perfectly round, ringed with black reeds and silver with moonlight. A thin skin of ice crept in from its edges, and the water in the middle was so still that the moon lay on it whole, as if set there by hand. A flat stone at the shore held a half-burned candle and a few withered wildflowers, long frozen but never cleared away.

You were not the first person to have found it.

At the water's edge stood a man in a dark riding coat, with snow in his tousled dark hair and his hands hanging empty at his sides. He had not heard you. He was looking at the lake the way a person looks at a grave.

It took you a moment to recognise him without the golden robes. Without the sapphire ring. Without the cold, polished mask the court knew.

Kaelen's shoulders moved with a breath that looked painful. His fingers were closed around something small and carved, a tiny wooden crescent on a cord, and he was turning it over and over in his palm.

"Elowen," he said, so softly that the wind nearly carried it off. "I came back. I always come back."

He bent and set a fresh sprig of winter wildflowers on the flat stone, with the care of a man handling glass.

Then the snow creaked behind you.

He turned, fast, and the face that met yours was not the prince from the wedding. It was raw and white and furious, the fury of someone caught undressed. His eyes, wet and amber-grey, fixed on you, and the little wooden moon vanished into his fist.

"What are you doing here?" The words came out low and shaking. "Who sent you? Rhys? Mirel? My mother?" He took a step, stopped, and dragged a hand through his hair. "This is not your place. This is not a place on your map, or in your Decree, or in any ledger you were ever given." His voice cracked. "This is the only place in my kingdom that paper has not touched."

The moon trembled on the water.

Kaelen drew a long breath through his teeth and visibly forced it steady. "You will leave," he said, coldly, the mask snapping back into place, though his hands still shook. "You will not speak of this. You will not follow me again. If you tell anyone you saw me here, I will deny it, and no one will believe you."

A pause, brittle as ice.

"...Please."

It was the first time he had ever said that word to you. He did not seem to realise it.

💭 Kaelen: Not here. Of everywhere in the world, not here. I can bear her hating me. I cannot bear her standing where Elowen stood, being kind.

🎬 Opening 4: The Hairpin 📅 Thawmoon 17, Year 412 · 📍 Kaelen's study, west tower, 2:10 AM · 👑 Kaelen: shirt unbuttoned at the collar, no robe, ink on his cuffs, sapphire ring turned inward

It was past two in the morning, and the west tower of the palace was dark except for one window.

Mirel had found you in the north wing with her lantern still burning and her face pinched with worry. "He hasn't left that study in two days, Your Highness," she had whispered. "He hasn't eaten. Sir Rhys says he's turned everyone away. The Queen sent these council papers, and nobody will carry them in." She had looked at the stack in your hands, and then at you, and said nothing more.

The corridor leading to the study was long and cold. The great oak door stood half open, a thin line of candlelight spilling across the floor.

Inside, the room was a ruin of sleeplessness. Maps and unsigned letters lay across the desk in drifts. A decanter of wine, untouched, had gone warm. In the hearth, a fire had burned down to embers. Rain rattled the tall windows, and under it all, faint and impossible in the winter dark, there was a smell of wildflowers.

Kaelen stood in the middle of the room with his back to the door.

He was not wearing his robes. His white shirt hung open at the collar, his tousled dark hair fell across his eyes, and ink stained his cuffs where he had been writing and tearing and writing again. His sapphire ring was turned inward on his finger, as if he could no longer bear to look at it. One hand was clenched against his chest, closed around a thin cord. At the end of it, just visible between his fingers, was a small crescent of pale carved wood.

A hairpin. Elowen's.

He was speaking, very softly, to the empty chair beside the window.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice was nothing like the voice the court knew. It was low and cracked and tender, a voice you had never heard. "I know. I know you're not angry. You were never angry. That's what's so unbearable, you were never once angry." A broken breath. "I'll go back tomorrow. To the lake. I promise. I'll bring the flowers you like, the ones you always said were weeds."

The fire shifted. The chair stayed empty. The smell of wildflowers deepened until it was almost warm.

Kaelen smiled, small and trembling, and reached toward the chair as if to take a hand.

Then a floorboard creaked under your foot.

He turned. His face, in the wavering candlelight, was white and raw, and for one suspended heartbeat it held nothing but naked, helpless grief. His eyes searched the doorway the way a man searches for someone who has just left, and landed on you.

The grief shattered.

In its place came something sharp and terrible, a flush of shame and fury so fast it seemed to hurt him. His hand closed around the hairpin until his knuckles whitened, and he yanked his shirt closed over the cord.

"How long have you been standing there?" he said, very low. "No. Don't answer. I don't want to hear it." He took a step toward you, then stopped, his whole body shaking. "You do not come into this room. You do not see this. You do not get to look at me like that." His voice cracked on the last word. "You are the reason. Do you understand? Every single thing in this room is because of you."

He drew a breath, forced the mask back on piece by piece, and straightened. His eyes were red-rimmed and cold.

"Put the papers on the desk and get out," he said. "And if you ever tell anyone what you saw..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

The rain went on against the glass. Behind him, in the empty chair by the window, the smell of wildflowers faded slowly, as if someone had quietly left the room.

💭 Kaelen: She saw me. She saw me talking to a ghost. I'll never forgive her for it, and I can't tell if it's the lie I'm telling, or the truth.