"Royal Hearts"

Royal Hearts

Subtitle: Bound by Crown, Torn by Love

The Kingdom of Elowen had known peace for nearly a century, but peace was never without cost. Behind the walls of its golden palaces and rolling green fields lay a legacy of blood oaths, arranged marriages, and sacrifices cloaked in velvet. At the heart of it all were two souls — Queen Seraphina and King Alaric — bound by a crown and a kingdom, yet torn by the weight of love unfulfilled.

Seraphina had been betrothed to Alaric before she was old enough to understand what love truly meant. Their union was orchestrated by the Council of Elders, a strategic marriage to unite the once-warring regions of Valmere and Dorsith. On the day of their wedding, banners danced in the wind, and the bells rang through every village. The people called it the dawn of a golden era.

But gold, like love, could tarnish.

Alaric was a warrior-king, raised in the cold halls of Dorsith where steel spoke louder than sentiment. Seraphina was born of Valmere’s warm lands, raised by scholars, healers, and poets. She ruled with wisdom and heart; he ruled with law and loyalty. They respected one another, but the fire that love demands flickered dimly between them.

That all changed the night the Oracle arrived.

Cloaked in midnight blue, eyes like starfire, the Oracle knelt before the throne with a prophecy that chilled the court.

“The heart of the kingdom shall falter.

Only when love reigns true

Shall Elowen be saved from the shadow due.”

The warning was vague, as prophecies often were, but it shook the court. Whispers flooded the marble corridors. Some believed it meant war. Others feared a betrayal. And some, like Queen Seraphina, wondered if the kingdom itself sensed the hollowness in its crown.

As weeks passed, the air thickened with tension. Fields once fertile with crops began to wither. Animals wandered away from their pens, frightened by things unseen. Nightmares plagued the citizens of Elowen — dreams of dark skies, twisted trees, and a crown burning in a pool of blood.

One evening, Seraphina wandered alone into the royal gardens. There, among the moonflowers and whispering vines, she found Alaric staring at the stars.

“You’ve been distant,” she said softly.

He turned to her. In the moonlight, his face looked tired, older than his years. “You say that as though we were ever truly close.”

The words stung, but she did not flinch. “Do you believe the prophecy?”

“I believe in threats,” he replied. “And that was one.”

She stepped closer. “And love? Do you believe in that?”

Alaric hesitated, then turned his gaze back to the stars. “I believe it has no place in politics. Or in thrones.”

Silence stretched between them, filled with all the words they had never said.

The days turned darker. Shadows began to spread across the kingdom — quite literally. Villages reported strange figures moving through the fog at dusk. Crops turned to ash. Children stopped singing in the streets. Something ancient and malevolent stirred beneath the soil of Elowen, as though the land itself cried out for something it had been long denied.

Then came the storm.

It was not rain that fell from the sky that night, but ash — soft, gray flakes that burned like fire upon the skin. The palace shook. The stained glass windows in the throne room shattered. Lightning carved symbols into the sky that none could decipher.

And at the center of it all, the Oracle returned.

This time, she came not with prophecy, but with truth.

“You were given to one another not by fate, but by fear,” she said. “Your marriage forged peace, yes. But peace without love is an illusion. The land knows. The heart of the kingdom is the heart of its rulers. And it is breaking.”

Alaric looked at Seraphina then — not as a queen, not as a political equal, but as a woman he had never truly tried to know. And in her eyes, he saw the weight she carried, the loneliness she hid behind wisdom and grace

“I do not know how to love you,” he confessed.

Seraphina stepped forward. “Then let us learn together. Not for the kingdom. Not for the crown. But for us.”

And there, in the ashes of the throne room, amidst shattered glass and fading prophecies, the king and queen held one another for the first time without duty between them.

The darkness did not vanish overnight, but it began to recede. The crops returned to life. The children sang again. And in the heart of Elowen, something ancient stirred — not in anger, but in healing.

The kingdom began to bloom again, not from war or wisdom, but from love — fragile, flawed, and deeply real.

Seraphina and Alaric ruled side by side for many years after. They were never a perfect love story, but theirs was the kind that saved a kingdom — not with swords, but with open hearts.

And so, the legend of Elowen lived on, not just in books or ballads, but in every heart that dared to love not because it was easy, but because it was true.