Hiding My Twin Heirs from the Ruthless Prince

CHAPTER 81

POV: Celeste

I stop being Celeste on a road that does not have a name.

The realization doesn’t arrive all at once. There is no dramatic moment, no declaration spoken aloud to the sky. It happens quietly, the way rot spreads beneath bark, invisible until the tree is already dying. I am walking south, away from Astoria, away from towers and crowns and gardens that bloom over graves, and I realize I have not thought my name in days.

Celeste belongs to a palace.

Celeste belongs to a girl who waited.

I am no longer her.

The forest closes around me as the road thins into something more like a suggestion than a path. Branches scrape at my cloak. Leaves crunch beneath my boots. Every sound sets my nerves humming, my senses stretched taut and alert. This world does not know me. It does not bow. It does not whisper behind silk sleeves. It does not care whether I live or die.

I prefer it that way.

At night, I sleep beneath trees with my back against their roots, the warmth coiled tight beneath my ribs, listening for danger. Hunger gnaws at me constantly now, a sharp, persistent ache that reminds me how fragile flesh still is, even when magic sings beneath the skin. I eat what I can—berries I recognize from books Maximilian once smuggled me, roots I roast carefully over small fires, game when I am lucky enough to catch it.

I am not lucky often.

The first time I steal, it is accidental.

I stumble into a clearing near a small farming settlement at dusk, weak with hunger and too tired to keep moving. Smoke rises from chimneys. The smell of bread punches the air from my lungs. I stand at the edge of the trees, watching people move about their lives, ordinary and unafraid.

The warmth stirs.

I don’t mean for it to.

A door creaks open. A woman steps out carrying a basket. She does not see me, but something about her movement catches my attention. The warmth responds instantly, flowing outward like breath, subtle and deliberate.

The basket slips from her hands.

Bread scatters across the dirt.

She swears softly and kneels to gather it, distracted, flustered. I don’t think. I move. I dart forward, snatch one loaf, and vanish back into the trees before she looks up.

My heart hammers wildly as I run, half expecting a shout, pursuit, punishment.

None comes.

When I stop, breathless and shaking, I stare down at the bread in my hands. It is warm. Real. Earned through nothing but will.

The warmth hums, pleased.

That night, I eat until my stomach hurts and sleep without dreaming.

I do not return to Astoria’s borders.

I cut east, then south again, then wherever the roads thin and the maps in my memory grow vague. I cross rivers that bite cold into my bones. I skirt villages and pass through forests so dense the sky disappears entirely. Each day teaches me something new about survival. Each night, I grow less afraid of what I am capable of.

Weeks blur together.

I learn how to move unseen, how to bend attention away from myself with the lightest touch of power. Fear is no longer the key. Anger is sharper. Focused. When I remember the tower, the empty promises, the second coffin lowered into the ground, the warmth responds instantly, eager and precise.

I do not push it away anymore.

I use it.

One evening, as rain soaks through my cloak and chills me to the bone, I crouch beneath a fallen tree and realize something else.

Celeste would not survive this.

Celeste would have cried. She would have begged. She would have waited for someone to come save her.

No one is coming.

I press my forehead against my knees and let the truth settle fully, completely, without resistance.

I am alone.

And I am alive.

***

The name comes to me in a place where three roads meet.

I stand there at dawn, mud clinging to my boots, my reflection faintly visible in a rain-filled rut. My face looks older than it should, sharper, my eyes darker with knowledge no sixteen-year-old should carry.

If someone asks who I am, what will I say?

Celeste is dead.

They buried her twice.

I test the truth of it by whispering the name aloud. “Celeste.”

The sound feels wrong in my mouth now, thin and brittle, like something that might shatter if I speak it too loudly.

I try another.

“Cordelia.”

The name settles differently. Heavier. Rooted. It does not belong to a palace or a crown. It belongs to the earth, to old stories whispered in dark places, to women who endure.

Cordelia does not wait.

Cordelia survives.

I straighten and step away from the reflection.

“I am Cordelia,” I say to the empty road.

The warmth coils tight and approving beneath my ribs.

Leaving Astoria entirely takes longer than I expect.

Borders are not just lines on maps; they are guarded, watched, enforced. I learn to cross them at night, slipping past patrols with my power wrapped so tight around me it feels like a second skin. The farther I go, the less the land resembles anything I knew. The trees grow darker. The villages poorer. The accents rougher.

No one bows here.

No one cares who my brother is.

I trade small acts of magic for food and shelter when desperation presses too hard. A broken lock opened without tools. A fire coaxed back to life. A drunk’s purse lightened without his noticing. Each time, the line between necessity and choice blurs a little more.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter.

Morality belonged to a world that failed me first.

At night, I lie awake beneath unfamiliar stars and test my power in small ways—moving pebbles, bending shadows, listening to the quiet hum of energy beneath the land itself. It feels different here, less constrained, as if the world is older and remembers things Astoria tried to forget.

Sometimes, I think of Maximilian.

Not often. Not fondly.

When I do, it is without heat, without longing. He is a fact, like winter or stone. He made his choice. I made mine.

I do not need forgiveness.

I need strength.

By the time winter comes, Cordelia is no longer a name I have to remind myself to answer to.

It is simply who I am.

I move through forests and borderlands like a rumor, half-seen and quickly forgotten.

Celeste wanted to be loved.

Cordelia wants to endure.

One night, as snow begins to fall, I stand at the edge of a valley and look back—not at Astoria, which is far beyond the horizon now, but at the girl I used to be. I let myself feel the grief once, fully, cleanly.

Then I let it go.

The world ahead is vast and dark and full of places where power is feared and sought in equal measure. I will learn its rules. I will take what I need. I will never again allow myself to be caged.

Cordelia steps forward into the falling snow, cloak pulled tight, magic humming steady and obedient beneath her skin.

The princess is gone.

The witch is learning how to walk.