Chapter 2: The Queen’s Rebirth.

Chapter 2

Year 358, Arkovia Dynasty

The room was too still, not in the way of peace, but in the way a battlefield becomes after everything living has finally stopped moving and even the air seems uncertain whether it is allowed to continue. Sunlight spilled through the tall windows in long, pale streams, touching the chamber with a softness that felt almost insulting, as though the world had not learned what it had done to her.

Sigrid did not wake gently or quietly, because nothing about her had ever returned gently. She fought her way back through something heavy and suffocating, her body twisting against the sheets as if unseen hands still held her down as if she was still held by the chains that dragged her around the kingdom just to humiliate her.

Her fingers clawed into fabric that was too clean, too soft, too alive, and her breath broke in uneven pulls that scraped against her throat, sharp and uncontrolled, as though her lungs had forgotten how to belong to her at all. For a moment there was no room, no bed, no light, only memory pressing in from every side, only steel, only the sound of a blade deciding the end of her.

"Curse you... Ragnar..."

The words left her mouth like poison dragged through broken teeth, low and hoarse, carrying a hatred that had not died with her. Her grip tightened violently in the sheets as though she could pull them into something sharper, something that could tear through death itself.

"Curse you... Maria..."

Her breath shook as the name followed, heavier than the first, and her body jerked as though something inside her had finally snapped loose from restraint. She rose abruptly, dragging air into her lungs too fast, too deep, as though she had just been pulled from drowning rather than execution stone.

Her heart slammed against her ribs with a force that refused to settle into anything resembling order, because nothing she was seeing—or not seeing—made sense. There was no iron biting into her wrists, no weight of chains forcing her still, no blood drying beneath her skin.

Her hands moved before thought did, pressing into the bed beneath her, and the softness of it made her pause in a way fear never could. It was warm. Clean. Alive. Her fingers trembled once before she forced them still, burying the reaction as though it had never happened, because trembling meant uncertainty, and uncertainty was what got people killed.

Her gaze lowered slowly, then lifted, scanning the room with a quiet, controlled precision that came not from confusion but from habit, from years spent surviving in places where stillness meant danger, having made enemies just to protect Ragnar and his regime. This was not the palace she remembered, not the queen’s chambers where she had once ruled beside a man who would later call her traitor. This was her room. Before everything. Before Ragnar’s crown became something she bled to protect. Before Maria learned how to smile like mercy while sharpening betrayal behind her teeth.

"I died," she said at last, the words leaving her in a low, steady tone that carried no softness at all, only recognition. "I know I died."

There was no question in it, because she remembered too clearly for doubt to exist. The weight of chains, the silence of the crowd, the moment the world stopped pretending she mattered, and the fall of the blade that ended everything she had been. Her hand tightened slightly against the sheets as though even memory itself was something she could restrain.

And yet she was here. Breathing. Thinking. Existing in a world that should have ended with her. That was not mercy. That was not salvation. That was wrong.

She rose from the bed in a controlled motion that betrayed nothing of the chaos beneath it, steadying herself as though the world might still tilt and reveal this as some final trick before death. It did not. The floor remained firm beneath her feet, the air remained unchanged, and that only made it worse. She moved toward the window without hesitation, each step deliberate, grounded in the kind of certainty that came from refusing to accept anything without proof.

And there, the banners flew high against the sky, their colours unmistakable—not the sigil of Ironvale, not the mark of the reign she had helped forge with blood and sacrifice, but the crest of the Arkovia Dynasty, unchanged, untouched, as though time itself had refused to acknowledge what she had lived through. No crown she had once forged through blood and sacrifice. Everything she had built in another life stood intact here, as though her death had never reached it at all.

Her fingers pressed lightly against the window frame, and for a brief moment memory rose uninvited—war councils, poisoned negotiations, alliances carved from threats and silence, all the things she had once done for a man who called it love when it benefited him and betrayal when it did not. Everything she had built... everything she had given...

Gone.

Or perhaps not yet begun.

Her hand tightened further.

Then—

The heavy oak doors opened.

The sound broke through her thoughts cleanly, pulling her back into the present with a sharp clarity she did not resist. Her gaze shifted immediately, instinctively, her body turning toward the source as though expecting threat.

A maid entered.

Her steps were careful, measured, as she pushed a small table before her. The moment she crossed the threshold, she spoke.

"Young mistress, you ought to be awake by now. Your father is waiting for you—"

Her words faltered.

Her eyes widened slightly as she looked toward the bed, finding it empty.

For a brief moment, something like alarm flickered across her face.

Then she turned.

And saw her.

Relief came quickly, softening her features as she found Sigrid standing by the window, whole and unharmed.

But for Sigrid it was the opposite because the moment their eyes met, something shifted.

Her vision sharpened unnaturally, the world narrowing until only Lilith remained within it. A strange pressure built behind her eyes, sudden and unwelcome, as though something forced its way forward without her permission.

And then her eyes glowed faintly, a deep, unnatural crimson that flickered like a dying flame.

The room vanished.

Not entirely, but enough.

Fragments bled into her sight—disjointed, intrusive, undeniable.

~A chamber.

Larger than this one.

A bed.

Two figures tangled within its sheets, their laughter low, careless, untouched by fear or consequence. There was intimacy in the scene, something that twisted uncomfortably in her chest as she was forced to watch.

A hand moved.

A face turned.

And in a moment the two figures faces were Visible. Duke Vesper Beaufort and Lilith.~

The image lingered for only a heartbeat longer before it shattered, disappearing as abruptly as it had come.

Sigrid inhaled sharply.

The room returned.

The sunlight. The silence. The quiet weight of reality pressing back in.

Her eyes returned to their natural shade, though the tension in her body did not ease. Her breathing had steadied, but something colder had taken its place, something sharper, more aware.

Her gaze remained fixed on Lilith.

’What I had i just seen, is it the truth or something else entirely?’ She thought

The question lingered, but it did not stop her.

"Lilith," she said, her voice calm, controlled in a way that did not match the storm rising beneath it.

"Yes, My lady?"

"Are you having an affair with my father?"

The words settled heavily between them.

Lilith froze completely.

Her eyes widened, not with simple surprise, but with something far deeper—something closer to fear. The colour drained from her face as though the very ground beneath her had shifted, leaving her unsteady.

The room fell silent and not the kind that signaled peace but one that followed before revealation.

And Sigrid—

Her gaze did not change. But something behind it sharpened, as though a blade had remembered its edge.