The Princess and the Pretender

(Lior’s POV)

The dirt was cold enough to bite through her palms.

Lior pressed it down anyway, fist by fist, until the rough mound looked less like a wound and more like a grave. The southern sun hadn’t climbed yet; only a bruised band of light sat on the horizon, washing the fields in dull grey. A single crow perched on the fence and watched. No priest came to bless the dead. The church of Light asked coin for rites, and the Vale hadn’t had spare coin in years.

Her mother knelt in the mud, lips moving soundlessly. Neriah clung to her skirt, face buried in the cloth, tiny shoulders shaking. Lior’s father stood apart, hat in his hands, looking at nothing. The man who had laughed loudest at harvest dances now looked hollow. Leo had been his only son.

Lior kept her eyes on the earth. If she looked at their faces, she might shatter too.

They buried him without words, without hymn. The cold ground closed over his thin body and the uniform he would never wear.

When it was done, the family trudged back across the field. Lior lingered, touching the packed soil once more. Her hands were numb, but she didn’t know if it was the cold or grief.

The steward arrived that night.

He came on a grey horse, cloak trimmed in pale northern fur, a scroll case at his side. His boots were clean when he stepped into their kitchen—cleaner than anything in the Vale. He smelled of parchment and wine.

“Condolences,” he said, glancing at the dirt still fresh under their nails and the empty cot beside the hearth. “But your family owes arrears on this land. Your son’s enlistment was to offset those debts. Without him…” He tapped the scroll case against his palm and smiled that small, pitying smile that wasn’t pity at all. “Taxes are due by month’s end.”

Her father started to speak, voice rough. The steward cut him off with a single raised finger.

“South Vale farmers always find a way,” he said, not kindly. “Or the crown finds someone else to work the field.”

His eyes flicked to Lior once, lingering on her dark skin, then away again—the way city men looked at stray dogs. He left the parchment listing the sums due and mounted up without a prayer.

When the door shut, the house felt smaller. Her father sagged into the bench and held his head. Her mother whispered prayers, half to the Light, half to older southern spirits she was careful not to name aloud. Neriah looked at Lior with huge wet eyes, as if she already knew the answer.

Lior didn’t cry. She went to the small chest by Leo’s bed and pulled out his travel writ.

It was thin, cheap parchment, creased from his hands. A soldier’s oath inked at the bottom. She couldn’t read the words, but she knew the shape of his name—the loops, the tail of the final letter, the blot where his hand had shaken. She traced it until her thumb burned.

Her breath came rough.

They’ll hang me if they find out.

The thought landed heavy and cold. She could almost feel the rope, the crowd, the priest who still wouldn’t pray for her. For one heartbeat she almost put the parchment back.

Then her father muttered a broken prayer. Neriah sobbed quietly. The house creaked like a dying animal.

Fear, she realized, was for people who had choices.

She looked over her shoulder. Her father had slumped asleep by the fire, bottle at his side. Her mother’s head rested on the table, fingers still locked in prayer. Neriah had crawled into bed. The small house breathed slow, worn-out breaths.

Lior folded the writ and slipped it into her coat. Her hair fell forward—long, dark, coiled from sweat and work. She pulled a knife from the table.

The sound of the first cut was soft. Hair slid down her back and pooled on the floor. She worked until her neck felt bare and the mirror over the hearth showed someone she almost didn’t recognize: a lean, sharp-jawed soldier’s shadow.

Tomorrow she would leave before dawn, wearing Leo’s boots, carrying his name. She’d pay the debt, keep the farm alive. Maybe die for it. But she’d rather die fighting than watch the Vale starve.

She wrapped the cut hair in a rag, set it beside the hearth, and sat until the fire sank low. Outside, a dog barked in the fields and went silent. In the darkness, Lior whispered her first and only prayer.

“Stay alive.”

When the embers thinned to orange threads, she started packing: a knife, a crust of bread, the little copper she’d saved from market work. Leo’s boots fit awkwardly but well enough. His threadbare coat swallowed her shoulders. She tightened the belt until it bit.

A floorboard creaked.

“Lior?”

Neriah stood in the doorway, nightdress too short, braid unraveling. Her eyes were huge in the firelight.

Lior froze. “Go back to sleep.”

“You’re leaving.” Not a question. “Where are you going?”

Lior knelt so they were eye to eye. Neriah smelled like smoke and straw.

“To the army,” she said, soft but steady. “They’ll pay. We’ll keep the land.”

“They’ll know you’re not—” Neriah bit her lip.

“They won’t.” Lior smoothed the girl’s hair, the way their mother used to. “You have to stay quiet. Don’t tell.”

Tears filled Neriah’s eyes. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I don’t either.” Lior’s throat burned. “But if I stay, we all lose. This way… maybe we win.”

Neriah sniffled and threw her arms around her neck. For a heartbeat Lior held on, cheek pressed to her sister’s head. She felt how small and breakable Neriah still was.

“Be brave,” she whispered into the child’s hair. “Look after them. Pray for me.”

“I will.” Neriah’s voice cracked. “I’ll pray till you come back.”

Lior pulled free before she broke, shouldered the pack, and slipped out into the night. She wanted to look back—to see the smoke rising from the hearth, Neriah’s shadow in the doorway—but the road only went one way now, and the name on her papers didn’t belong to someone who cried.

The Vale slept as she passed: low stone cottages hunched under thatch, fields furred with winter stubble. Dogs barked once, then quieted. The night smelled of frost and woodsmoke.

By dawn she’d reached the trade road. A wagon creaked by, driven by a pale-skinned merchant who glanced at her cropped hair and patched coat, then clicked his tongue and didn’t slow.

At the bridge, the toll man squinted at the parchment. The steward’s red wax seal was still stamped deep in its corner; she had rubbed soot across it earlier to hide the cracks. The man barely looked before waving her through. One southern boy was as good as another.

Along the road she passed posters nailed to trees: SERVICE TO THE CROWN: BOUNTY FOR ABLE MEN. The king’s seal glared in black wax. Someone had scrawled a thick line of charcoal across the poster — angry marks pressed so hard the parchment tore. She didn’t know the words, only that someone hated whatever promise lay beneath.

By midday she shared the road with other conscripts—boys too young for beards, gaunt men with farmer hands. A few glanced at her dark skin and looked away quickly, as if not wanting trouble. One sneered openly but kept walking.

Lior kept her head down.

That first night she camped by a shallow river. She built a fire small enough not to be seen from the road and ate her bread in silence. Across the water a pair of soldiers laughed, drunk on travel wine, but didn’t approach.

She unrolled Leo’s papers once more and traced the blot of his name with her thumb. Leo Vale. It looked like someone else’s life. Tomorrow it would be hers.

She thought of Neriah’s thin arms clinging to her, of their mother praying for coin that would never come, of the steward’s cold smile. Fear churned in her stomach, but under it burned something harder.

Stay alive, she’d told herself.

She would.

Lior banked the fire to coals, lay down with the papers tucked against her chest, and stared at the cold scatter of stars until sleep finally came.