Ciera Dorne
Some identities burn, others peel away like damp parchment.
We were holed up in an old watchtower two valleys north of House Thornevale.
It wasn't exactly a house. More like a forgotten pile of stone with a roof that wheezed when it rained and stairs that creaked like guilty consciences. It sat on the edge of a mist-choked cliff, swallowed by pine and snow, far enough from the main roads that even desperate bandits wouldn't bother. The wind sounded like wolves arguing with ghosts, and the only warmth came from a fireplace that hated its job.
Cerxic said it was ideal.
Quiet, remote and disposable.
Three things I was apparently meant to become.
I didn't argue. I don't get a response from him anyway.
The first few days passed in blisters and silence.
Cerxic handed me tasks without explanations. Scrubbing floors, cooking millet porridge and cleaning soot from a chimney that hadn't been used since the last dynasty.
I made the mistake of greeting him once like a proper lady. Back straight, voice even.
"Good morning, Master Cerxic."
He stared at me like I'd just offered him a dead squirrel.
"You're not a noble anymore," he said flatly. "Stop sounding like one."
I wanted to tell him it was a muscle memory. I'd spent twenty years breathing nobility. It can't just vanish like perfume.
Instead, I muttered something about wanting to beat him with a ladle.
He heard me and gave me a brief, suprising smirk. Oh! So he does smile.
I called it progress. But days bled together.
I burned porridge, peeled potatoes incorrectly, scrubbed until my hands cracked and then scrubbed more.
Cerxic made no comment when I bled—only handed me vinegar and cloth like it was part of the lesson plan.
"You still stand like someone who expects a throne," he said one night, watching me carry a bucket.
"I used to," I blantly replied.
He didn't say anything after that.
But the next morning, the buckets got heavier.
At night, I curled into a straw cot that reeked of dust and smoke. My shoulders ached from labor I wasn't born for. My ribs still remembered the corset that once cinched them in place, but my skin was starting to forget the silk.
I whispered the new name sometimes, just to see how it fit.
"Ciera Dorne."
"Hello, Name's Cierra Dorne."
"Call me Ciera."
It tasted dry in my mouth, like old paper or stale bread. Nothing sweet and nothing soft.
On the sixth day, I stood outside in the bitter air, scrubbing blood from a cloth after nicking my finger. Cerxic approached, cloak drawn close, and handed me a folded set of documents.
"Your new identity," he said.
The paper was thick, official, stamped with the Empire's own bureaucratic poison.
Name: Ciera Dorne
Origin: Merrowlight Village, Frostward border
Station: Servant, unwed, literate at a basic level
"Basic?" I muttered, lifting a brow. "I translated five languages by the time I was twelve."
He shrugged. "Basic is believable."
"I should've died dumber."
"You did," he said. "Remember?"
I arched a brow. I didn't trust him, not fully.
Cerxic had too many secrets in his sleeves and too little explanation in his mouth. No one risked helping a dead noble girl just for sport.
I asked him once, late one evening, why he was doing this.
"You barely knew my family," I said. "And you could've left me in that dungeon."
He met my eyes.
"You were supposed to become Empress," he said. "…And you would have been good at it."
"Really? So what?"
"So now you'll be something worse."
That answer sat in my chest for days, like a hot coal I couldn't spit out.
Cerxic brought me whispers from the North. Places that remembered. Breghollow. Ravenspire. Villages that tied scarlet threads on doorways.
I clung to those stories like lifelines. Because that was all that remained of Seraphina Valenna was a handful of memories, a few embers and a mountain of ash.
Cerxic told me I'd be placed in Thornevale within the week.
The opportunity came when a senior servant died of winter fever. "They need someone quick," he said. "You'll be now useful."
That word stuck me.
I had been useful once before—just not in this way. I had read treaties, calmed nobles, memorized supply chains, corrected governors without insulting them. I had known the names of every major general in the Empire.
I had been prepared to rule.
Now, I was preparing to iron collars.
It should've broken me. Instead, it sharpened something.
Because if I could scrub floors, I could listen.
If I could vanish into a sea of linen and silence, I could move freely.
If I could be unseen—then I could be everywhere.
And when the time came, I would not need a crown to bring them all down.
But before I imagined revenge, I let myself feel it all.
——
One night, while Cerxic slept on the cold stone near the fire, I curled beneath my blanket and cried into my hands. Just no gasping or sobbing. I don't want him to hear me.
Just quiet, bitter tears that soaked my palms and stung the fresh calluses on my fingers.
I wept for Aldric.
For my father's last words—whatever they were—that I never got to hear.
For my mother's garden, burned.
For the blue room where she read stories about kings who always returned and daughters who were always loved.
For the girl who stood on a dais in garnet silk and thought she had time.
I keep moving, yes—I will scrub, I will bow, I will learn the rules of a life that isn't mine—but the grief doesn't vanish. I will carry that sorrow like a blade, hidden but never dulled.