"𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒆, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒎𝒚 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆.”
---
The night my reign ended, the palace smelled of rain and smoke.
Not blood—not yet.
They came for me softly, as if afraid to wake the ghosts that already lingered in the halls. My guards, once loyal, couldn’t meet my eyes. Even my ladies-in-waiting trembled when they bowed. The sound of my crown being set on the table was louder than the thunder outside.
I remember smiling. Not out of courage, but disbelief. You never think the end will arrive dressed so politely.
They said I would not be harmed. That I would “retire in comfort.”
Comfort. A curious word for exile.
My chambers were moved to the west tower—once a place for poets and widows. From the window, I could still see the courtyard where I had crowned my husband and, years later, buried him. Now, banners of a different color hung there, and strangers walked my gardens as if they’d planted them themselves.
Every morning, a servant brought me breakfast. Every evening, she took it away untouched. The room was quiet except for the steady drip of rainwater through the ceiling. I began to count the seconds between drops, as though time itself could be measured by loss.
On the seventh night, I spoke for the first time.
“Tell me,” I asked the girl who brought my meals, “do they speak of me still?”
She hesitated. “Only in whispers, Your Majesty.”
“Good,” I said. “Whispers travel farther than shouts.”
---
When they came for my crown, I did not protest.
The young general—a boy with the face of a saint and the heart of an opportunist—held it out as if it were cursed. “The council wishes to preserve it,” he said, “as a symbol of continuity.”
I almost laughed. “Continuity?” I whispered. “Tell them the crown carries memories. It remembers the weight of the heads it’s crushed.”
He paled. And for that moment, I was queen again.
---
Days turned into months. My world shrank to the size of a tower room and a single window. Sometimes I spoke to the rain. Sometimes it answered.
The people, I heard, called me "The Widow Queen". A title both cruel and true. They said I wept over a lost throne. They were wrong. I wept for the kingdom itself—the rivers poisoned by greed, the soldiers marching without honor, the children who would grow up knowing tyranny as tradition.
At night, when the wind howled through the cracks in the stone, I whispered old prayers—not to the gods, but to the earth itself.
And the earth listened.
---
It was Elara who came to me first. A servant barely older than sixteen, with clever hands and frightened eyes. She slipped into my room after dark, carrying a candle that flickered like guilt.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Then why are you?”
She hesitated, then whispered, “Because they’re burning the archives. The royal records, your letters, your decrees—everything. They say the new queen wants the past erased.”
“Then remember it,” I told her. “Every word, every law, every scar. When they ask you what you’ve seen, speak truth—even if it kills you.”
Elara nodded. Her candle trembled, but her resolve did not. “They say you cursed the throne,” she said softly.
“Not the throne,” I replied. “The hands that would steal it.”
---
Seasons shifted. Snow came, cloaking the city in white silence. I thought they had forgotten me—until the footsteps came again.
“The new queen wishes to see you,” the guards said.
She entered like a painting come to life—young, radiant, trembling behind her crown. I saw in her eyes the same hunger that had once been mine. But hers burned brighter, crueler.
“You should have left,” she said. “You make people uneasy.”
“Uneasy?” I smiled faintly. “Unease is the beginning of wisdom.”
She frowned. “You speak as though you still rule.”
I rose from my chair, joints stiff but unbroken. “Child,” I said gently, “ruling isn’t about sitting higher. It’s about standing longer.”
Her mouth tightened. “Enjoy your tower, 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘔𝘢𝘫𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘺.”
When she left, her perfume lingered like smoke. I knew then she feared me—not my power, but my silence.
---
The next night, thunder shook the palace. The new queen’s banners tore loose in the storm, fluttering away like fleeing birds. I felt it—the trembling of the earth beneath my feet, the heartbeat of something ancient awakening.
Elara came running, breathless. “The city floods! The rivers—”
“I know,” I said. “The water remembers who it served.”
She stared at me, terrified and awed. “Did you do this?”
“No,” I whispered, touching the windowpane as rain lashed against it. “The crown did.”
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By dawn, the storm had quieted. They came for me again—but the guards didn’t look victorious this time. They looked afraid. The throne room had cracked in half, they said. The crown had fallen from the new queen’s head.
I merely nodded. “Then perhaps,” I said, “the kingdom remembers, too.”
When they locked me away again, I did not resist. I sat by the window, tracing raindrops with my finger, and felt peace for the first time in years.
Because I knew that even stripped of my throne, my bloodline, my name— my story had taken root.
And stories, once planted, never die.
---
Some say the storm carried my spirit away that night. Others claim I still walk the palace ruins, whispering to the rain.
Let them wonder. Let them fear.
A queen is not made by crown or kingdom.
She is made by what remains when both are gone.
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