They didn't just take the crown from me. They took my identity.
I was promised the throne room would be quiet. They lied.
It wasn't quiet—it felt like I was suffocating. It was the kind of silence that comes just before someone is sent away forever. Each step I took echoed loudly, like the floor itself was accusing me of something I hadn't done. The nobles watched me as if I were volatile, their eyes a mix of curiosity, fear, and hidden delight at my misfortune.
And there, on the throne of gleaming gold, sat King Henry Cromwell—the man I thought was my father. His gaze was icy, without any warmth or recognition. Beside him stood Queen Evelyne, stunning and unreadable as always, and then there was Sora.
Sora.
She looked just like me, with the same silver hair and deep red eyes—but hers were sharper, colder. I'll never forget her triumphant smile when she entered the court weeks ago, adorned in royal colors and flanked by knights I used to command.
"I've come home," she'd declared with a voice that was both sweet and triumphant.
A single drop of blood and a test turned my world upside down.
"She is the true daughter of House Cromwell," declared the priests. "By divine right and royal blood."
And me? I became a nobody. An orphan, secretly taken in by the queen after her true child was kidnapped. I was raised as a stand-in princess. A living deceit. No one told me, not even Queen Evelyne. I truly believed I belonged—I studied court law, led state meetings, and trained with the elite knights in the Cromwell Aura Sword Technique.
My achievements were genuine. My loyalty, unwavering.
But it all meant nothing now.
"You will be exiled to the Langley Duchy," King Henry declared. "Effective immediately."
The weight of the room's atmosphere was suffocating. My aura stirred inside me, flickering like a candle in a storm. I tried to grasp it, to make it solid and useful.
But it slipped away like mist.
Always unstable. Always resisting control.
I thought it was a failing in my training, not realizing it was something more.
"I should've known," the king muttered, not to me, but to the court. "That no daughter of mine would have such instability."
He labeled me a heretic.
I turned to the Queen, wanting to ask why—why she allowed me to live a lie, why she looked at me as if I were both hers and not. But she wouldn't meet my eyes.
Then Sora stepped forward with that cruel grin on her face.
"Don't worry, sister," she whispered as she passed. "I'll make sure your little reforms don't go to waste."
Her words were mockery. She knew how hard I had worked and enjoyed telling me she would destroy it all.
The guards came to take me.
I didn't fight.
I looked at the throne one last time, at the man I had strived to please my whole life. He didn't look back.
The journey to Langley was a haze. The winding forest roads matched the confusion in my mind—what did it mean to think you were a princess, only to be told it was all a lie? Was I still Selene Cromwell if the name wasn't truly mine?
When I set foot in the duchy, I saw its reality: neglected, broken, forgotten. It was not the majestic halls I once controlled.
But I did not lose hope.
I still had my mind. My voice. My sword. I knew how to lead. I had mastered statecraft and diplomacy. Even if my aura wouldn't follow my commands, even if I couldn't wield it like a noble should, I would adapt. I would find a way.
They called me a villainess.
Let them.
I would embrace being a villain if it meant protecting what the kingdom discarded. I would rule Langley, not as a Cromwell. Not as a lie.
But as Selene of Langley, forged in fire, reshaped by betrayal, and strengthened by truth.