The story ended on page 364.
The last sentence was simple:
“And they lived happily ever after.”
It was the kind of ending that made readers sigh with satisfaction, that made children dream and grown-ups hope. The kind of ending that wrapped everything in a golden bow and sent it off into the shelves of legend.
But endings, even happy ones, are rarely the truth.
The truth began on page 365.
Evelyn was a queen now. She’d been one for seven years, though most days she still felt like a girl playing dress-up in gowns too heavy and shoes too narrow.
The castle was grand, the kind you’d expect in fairy tales. Ivy curled up its silver towers, and its gates opened to fields that caught the light just right in the morning. Her husband, King Tristan, had once slain a dragon with a single arrow. He was brave, just, and handsome in a way that made bards sigh into their lutes.
But Evelyn wasn’t in love with him anymore.
Or maybe, she thought on her loneliest nights, she never truly had been.
They had married out of triumph, not tenderness. The kingdom had been saved, her curse broken, the villain slain. The people wanted joy. They needed it. So when Tristan knelt with a ring fashioned from starlight, Evelyn said yes.
Not because she couldn’t say no.
But because saying yes felt like a reward.
And wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? Fall in love. Marry the hero. Become a queen.
She never asked herself if she wanted it. Not then.
And by the time she did, it was too late.
On the outside, she lived a dream.
Lavish gowns, endless praise, diplomatic galas with honeyed wine and harp songs. She was admired, envied, even adored.
But inside, something wilted.
It was small at first, a shadow in the corner of her mirror. A sigh she couldn’t explain. A craving for quiet that wasn’t steeped in performance.
Then came the insomnia.
The way her chambers, once a sanctuary, began to feel like a stage where the curtains never closed.
Then the books.
She began sneaking into the royal library at night. Not for tales of love or conquest—but for stories about people who left. Who wandered. Who began again.
And finally, the dream.
It came to her again and again, always the same: She was standing at the edge of a cliff, hair whipped by wind, and beyond the horizon, there was no kingdom. No crown. Just forest. Fog. And freedom.
She always woke up before she stepped forward.
One morning, Evelyn didn’t come to breakfast.
A servant found her in the conservatory, sitting beneath the glass dome, barefoot, wearing a simple linen shift.
Tristan came immediately. He looked concerned—but not panicked.
“Evie,” he said gently. “You missed the delegation from Maroth.”
She looked up at him, sunlight catching in her unbound hair. “Did I?”
He tried to smile. “Everything okay?”
She studied him.
Tristan had grown heavier since their wedding—more responsibility, more lines around his eyes. But he was still kind. Still good. Still trying.
And that was the worst part.
Because she didn’t love him. And he didn’t deserve to be unloved.
“I need to leave,” she said.
His face fell, confusion first, then something like pain. “What do you mean?”
“I need to find myself again,” she whispered. “I don’t know who I am beneath this crown.”
“You’re my wife.”
“Yes. But I don’t know if I’m me.”
He looked away, then back, eyes wet. “I always knew you were restless.”
Evelyn stood.
“I don’t want to run from this, Tristan. I just… I need to walk toward something else for a while. Please don’t ask me to stay.”
He didn’t.
He only nodded, slowly, like a man releasing a bird he’d raised from a hatchling.
⸻
She left at dawn, with nothing but a satchel, a travel cloak, and her own name.
Not “Queen Evelyn.” Just Evelyn.
She wandered. Through forests and market towns. Through cities with no kings and villages where no one knew her face. She learned to braid her own hair again. To walk barefoot on riverbeds. To cook stew over an open fire.
She met people.
A poet in a stone cottage who taught her how to write her dreams into verses. A healer who taught her which flowers helped sadness sleep. A girl with crooked teeth and a sharper mind who became her friend and never once asked about her past.
She lived.
Not grandly. Not epically.
But truly.
⸻
A year passed.
Then another.
She sent letters to Tristan, sparse but honest. He never replied, but she knew he read them.
In one, she wrote: Thank you for not keeping me in a story I had outgrown.
In another: I hope you’re finding your own pages now.
In a third: Maybe some loves are meant to rescue us, not remain with us.
And then, finally, none. Because she had said all she needed.
⸻
Evelyn never returned to the palace.
But she did return to the capital once.
Not as a queen. As a guest. Anonymous. Free.
She walked past the gates she once ruled behind and didn’t flinch.
She stopped at a bakery, bought honeyed bread, and sat beneath a tree with golden leaves.
And as she ate, she heard a child nearby ask her mother, “Do princesses really live happily ever after?”
The mother smiled. “Some do. Some find their happy somewhere else.”
And Evelyn smiled too.
Because she had.
And the story hadn’t ended.
It had just begun.
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