Rewriting My Royal Regret

Synopsis

It was the winter of the twenty-ninth year of the King's reign. The day I died, a heavy snow blanketed the Crown City. Feathery flakes drifted from a leaden sky, settling on the window frames, the eaves, and the skeletal branches of the crabapple tree in the courtyard. Inside, the hearth crackled with premium charcoal, filling the room with a cozy warmth, yet I was shivering. It was a cold that bled from my very marrow, a chill that no amount of furs could ever touch. "My Lady, your medicine is ready." Elowen Thorne entered, the tray trembling in her hands. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and she couldn't bring herself to look at me. I leaned against the headboard, watching her place the dark, bitter liquid on the bedside table. The pungent scent hit me instantly. I knew this draft—a new concoction from the court healers. They said it was to sustain my life, but in truth, it was only meant to drag out my final breaths. "Where is he?" I asked. Elowen kept her head down, her voice small. "His Grace... he is in the study." The study. Always the study. We had been married for seven years; he had lived in that study for every single one of them. I forced a faint smile and reached for the bowl, swallowing the bitter dregs slowly. It was so foul it made my tongue go numb, but I didn't flinch. I drank every last drop. "My Lady..." Elowen broke, her tears finally spilling over. "Please, don't do this. You have to hold on." I set the empty bowl aside and looked at her. "Elowen, fetch my inkwell." "My Lady?" "Get the ink," I repeated. "I need to write a letter." Who was the letter for? For the man stationed at the Southern Border. The man I grew up with, the one who had promised me the world, only for me to sever our ties with a single, cold letter. The man I had pushed away with my own hands when I was fifteen. When the parchment was ready, I lifted the quill, but my strength was gone. My hand shook so violently that the nib only left a jagged blot of black ink across the page. I let the quill fall, leaning back as I closed my eyes. Memories flooded back. When we were children, we used to scale the garden walls to steal cherries. He had fallen once, scraping his knee bloody, yet his only concern was stuffing the fruit into my mouth so I wouldn't get caught. When my mother died when I was twelve, he sat with me on the bluffs all night. He didn't say a word; he just held my hand. When I was fifteen, he was called to the front. Before he left, he found me one last time. "Ophelia," he had said, "wait for me for three years. I'll come back and make you my wife." Three years later, he did come back. But he returned to the news that I had married another. And then? Then he left for the South and never looked back at the Capital again. And I, trapped within these stone walls, became nothing more than a ghost. "Cedric..." I whispered. No one answered. Outside, the blizzard intensified. My consciousness began to slip, the world fading into a dull grey. In that final spark of clarity, I thought I saw a shadow moving through the storm, walking toward me. Was it a hallucination? I didn't know. I only knew that the debt I owed him was one I could never repay in this life. December 23rd, Year 29. Ophelia, Duchess of the North, passed into the long night.