At dinner, my parents talked over me — politics, border disputes, my brother's new fencing tutor. They didn't ask how I felt. They didn't mention the ceremony. They didn't even look at me when they said my name.
"He's a quiet one," my father told the visiting duke, chuckling.
"But dependable," my mother added, as if that were praise.
They never said I was kind.
Never said they were proud.
They never said they loved me.
⸻
That night, I went to the observatory again — my favorite hiding place, high above the rest of the castle.
The sky was clear. Stars scattered across the dark like silver dust. I lay there in the quiet, tracing familiar patterns.
One star — faint, far away — blinked in and out of view behind a passing cloud.
I whispered to it.
"Do you see me?"
It didn't answer.
But I imagined it did.
When I was little, I used to pretend the stars were people — old kings, forgotten gods, lonely children like me. I made up stories where they watched over me when no one else would. I believed in them because I had to.
Because the stars never told me to be different.
Never compared me to anyone else.
Never looked away.
The stars remember what the world forgets.
Maybe I made those words up.
Maybe they were just something I needed to hear.
Either way, I said them again. Softly. Like a secret.
"The stars remember."
And for a while, that was enough.