Under the Cherry Tree

Under the cherry tree, I danced alone.

The petals fell like pale snow around my sleeves.

Once, whenever I danced this piece, Aurelian would sit beneath the tree with a flute in his hands and play the melody I loved.

I would turn.

He would smile.

The world would feel so tender that even the wind seemed afraid to disturb us.

Tonight, there was no flute.

Only the distant sound of wedding drums.

By now, he should have married her.

Jocelyn Reed.

His so-called savior.

His beloved.

His future queen.

A laugh rose in my throat, but it tasted like blood before I had even touched the wine.

How ridiculous.

I, Seraphina Vale, once believed I would stand beside a king.

I was born into House Vale, the first noble house of Aramore.

From childhood, I was educated as the capital’s finest lady. Every step measured. Every word trained. Every smile weighed.

I did not disappoint them.

By sixteen, I was known as the First Lady of the Capital.

By seventeen, everyone believed I would become Crown Princess.

House Vale was too powerful to ignore.

Any prince who married me would gain the support of half the noble court.

At that time, the obvious choice was Crown Prince Elias.

He was kind to me.

Too kind, perhaps.

He never placed the cold distance of royalty between us. When he spoke to me, he was not the crown prince. He was simply Elias.

Before everything changed, I spent far more time with him than with Aurelian.

If there had been no accident, the royal decree would have named me Elias’s bride.

One day, I would have become queen.

I did not dislike Aurelian then.

I simply had never imagined marrying him.

He made sure imagination became irrelevant.

The day he arranged for the court to find us together, his arms around me in a pose too intimate for innocence, I knew my path to Elias was broken.

“Seraphina…”

That was Elias, voice hollow.

“Lady Vale, what is this?”

That was the Queen.

Gasps spread through the garden like fire catching silk.

“Why would she do such a thing?”

“She was supposed to marry His Highness.”

“Poor Crown Prince.”

“Aurelian!”

Aurelian said nothing.

He only held my wrist tightly enough to bruise.

A week later, the decree came.

My name remained.

The groom changed.

I became the wife of the third prince.

Not the crown prince.

Not the future king.

At least, not yet.

Aurelian’s ambition ran deeper than anyone knew.

He was not the harmless, quiet prince the court dismissed.

He had been building power in the shadows for years.

And after trapping me into marriage, he used my family’s safety as leverage.

House Vale could have resisted.

Perhaps even won.

But resistance creates risk, and I needed risk close enough to control.

There was another reason I accepted him.

A memory.

When I was seven, I once saved a boy in a southern river town.

He was filthy, starving, and kneeling beside his sick mother.

His name was Arlen.

I bought food.

I brought a physician.

I hid money among the supplies because I knew he would refuse it if I gave it openly.

Before I left, he bowed to me and said,

“I will repay you one day.”

Years later, I learned that Arlen was Aurelian.

The king’s illegitimate son, born from a woman he met during a disguised journey.

After his mother died, the king brought him back to the palace and named him third prince.

When I realized this, something inside me softened.

Perhaps fate had not abandoned me.

Perhaps the boy I saved had returned in another form.

Perhaps I could love him.

Foolish thoughts.

Lovely, foolish thoughts.

For a time, Aurelian treated me well.

He held my hand beneath the moon and promised,

“Seraphina, I will be good to you all my life.”

I believed him.

I called him Arlen.

He smiled whenever I did.

Then ambition became throne.

Throne became power.

Power became distance.

And eventually, the boy named Arlen vanished inside King Aurelian.

The man left behind no longer remembered who saved him.

He remembered only Jocelyn.