Flower of Maeve [Saturday Upd...

Dedicated to @afuqiao  for being an absolute encouragement while I write this 온라인카지노게임.

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The palace always looked grandest at dusk.

That was the cruel part of it — how beauty softened everything it hid. How gold-streaked towers and marble halls could deceive even the most suspicious eye. How the world thought it must be a gift to be raised in silk and shadowed by crowns.

But tonight, Maeve could only see the cracks.

They ran not through the stones, but through people — through their veiled words, trimmed reports, and gloved hands that offered lies as though they were favours. She had smiled through it all, sat through the pleasantries and the proposals, but her mind had long left the room.

Instead, it wandered back to the trees. To her own decision to walk alone.

She commanded her soldiers to leave. And not all of them had taken it well. They had questioned. They had protested with loyalty in their eyes, and yet it wasn't them who she had distrusted.

It was the weight of their presence. The noise of it. The way they might have tried to shield her from what she needed to see.

She needed clarity. And clarity, she had learned, was earned in silence.

Besides, she hadn't gone for them.

She went for herself. She had gone for the flower.

Not that anyone else truly believed in it. In hushed chambers, it was spoken of like a myth. But not to her. Not when she'd seen her mother reach for it in dreams — whispering the name she'd never share. Not when her father had once mentioned it as a last resort, voice heavy, eyes hollow, grief visible.

And then there was the forest.

The man.

The mistake of a conversation that now lingered like a bruise beneath her skin.

The stranger from the forest.

His reminder tasted like something forbidden — like a memory she didn't want, but couldn't quite let go of.

She had dismissed him. She walked away.

But why did her thoughts not follow?

Why, when she sat down now to draft letters — some true, some false — did his voice linger in her thoughts? Why did she keep replaying that moment when he didn't strike, didn't lie, didn't retreat?

There was something in him that stopped him from pretending.

In her world of lies and deceit, he looked honest and determined.

And that together frightened her more than lies ever could.

She turned the page.

A list was beginning to form—small names, subtle changes. Ministers who repeated numbers too neatly. Merchants who curtsied too low. Silences that echoed louder than words. A thread, just barely visible, was starting to show.

If she tugged too hard, it might snap.

If she didn't, it would strangle them all.

And so, Maeve did what her mother used to do — she wrote in ink and silence. Let the palace think her idle, ornamental. All the better. It was easier to outthink someone when they believed you incapable of thinking at all. Maeve thrived in underestimation.

She set the letter down and stood, pacing toward the long windows that overlooked the west garden.

Her father found her there. He didn't announce himself—he never did. The weight of him always arrived first: a shadow at her shoulder, a familiar ache in the air. Never a man with subtlety, his presence was all too commanding in whichever space he occupied.

"I heard you left your guards behind," he said after a moment, quiet but not unkind.

Maeve nodded, not turning. "I needed to see the forest. Not what people whispered."

"And?" he asked. "What did you see?"

"A man," she said.

Wasn't she there for the flower? The forest housed many stranded men. Why did this man deserve a mention? He raised an eyebrow, but didn't interrupt.

"A stranger," she continued, voice steady. "He didn't look like a thief. Didn't act like one either. But he didn't belong there. And I think —" She hesitated. "He knows something about the flower, too"

"You're still chasing her ghost," her father said. His voice wasn't angry. Just... tired. "Your mother's obsession wasn't always healthy."

Maeve turned to face him then. Her amber eyes clashed with the matching set. "It wasn't an obsession."

"It was," he asserted, staring at her. "But it was kindness. And it was grief."

That silenced her.

He stepped beside her, gaze following hers out to the fading sky. "Your mother believed the flower could fix everything — disease, death, despair. She believed she could share that power with people. But power like that, Maeve... It's dangerous. It breeds desperation. Desperation turns people cruel."

She knew that. But she also knew what she had seen in her mother's eyes when she was sick, those last days.

It hadn't been fear.

It had been a regret.

"Would you have stopped her?" Maeve asked.

He didn't answer immediately. "I tried. But she wasn't a woman who could be stopped. You remind me too much of her."

Maeve swallowed. The compliment was a blade in disguise.

"Do you think I'm going too far?" she asked quietly.

"I think," he said, "you're asking how far you can go without breaking the crown's rules. And I think you already know the answer."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "And if I bend them?"

"You'll be our daughter," he admitted, more defeated than proud. "And my heart will break. But I'll still be proud."

The silence that followed was heavy. She leaned into it. Into him. Just for a breath.

"But I will stop you when you need to be." His voice warned. "I make no habit of making the same mistake twice."

She stiffened at the promise. And she straightened again. Back to the mask. Back to the plan.

He watched her, but didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The quiet continued.

For a moment.

Then another.

And then—a knock.

A sharp one.

Her father stepped back just as a guard opened the door, slightly breathless.

"Your Highnesses," he said, directing his words to the father-daughter duo. His eyes strained in her direction the next instant. His voice unmasked with urgency. "A message arrived for you. No name. No seal. It's... odd."

Maeve reached for it, unfolding the paper. Her fingers stilled.

It was a drawing.

Crude. Childlike. But unmistakable.

A flower. Roots tangled around a crown.

And beneath it, two words:

"You know."

She looked up sharply. Her father was watching her. And the paper. Maeve knew he saw the content. This time, his concern was plain and clear.

Maeve folded the paper again, tucking it out of sight.

"I need to go," she said.

"To where?"

But she was already turning.

Back to her chambers.

Back to the forest.

Because this wasn't over.

Not yet.

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