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alittlewitchyone · 2 days ago

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Here's a healthy reminder. DO NOT READ THIS AND LISTEN TO TIME IN A BOTTLE, I REGRET😭

Linger

── .✦ Lilia Calderu X Princess! Reader

╰┈➤Chapters : 2/3

Word count :19k

⋅˚₊‧ ଳ ‧₊˚ ⋅

I did not look back.

If I did, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave.

So I walked. One foot in front of the other, out of the castle, beyond its towering gates, and into the open world that had once felt so full of possibility. Now, it felt hollow.

The air was thick with the scent of autumn— damp earth, crisp leaves, and the last remnants of summer flowers wilting under the cold. It should have been refreshing, liberating. Instead, it clung to my skin like a suffocating memory.

I told myself this was for the best. That Y/N had made her choice. That I was not the kind of person to stay where I was not wanted.

And yet—

Her voice still echoed in my ears.

"You’re leaving."

She had been breathless, standing in the doorway like some tragic heroine from a tale neither of us would get a happy ending to. And I, foolish, heart-aching fool that I was, had wanted to take her hand and beg her to run away.

But she had said no.

So I walked.

I don’t know how far I traveled that first night, only that my feet ached and the stars blurred as I finally collapsed beneath a thick oak tree. The night was cool, the wind gentle, but I felt neither.

I had thought that putting distance between myself and the castle would make things easier. That once I was away, my heart would stop feeling like it had been carved out of my chest and left bleeding in her hands.

I was wrong.

Everything reminded me of her.

The delicate white flowers blooming at the roadside— just like the ones that grew in the castle garden, where she had once twirled a petal between her fingers, laughing as I teased her for her absentmindedness.

The way the wind whispered through the trees— too much like her laughter on those rare days when she let herself be carefree.

Even the sky, deep and endless, reminded me of nights spent talking until dawn, of stolen moments where it felt like the world was ours alone.

I should not have left so soon.

I should have left sooner.

Days passed. Or maybe weeks. I didn’t keep track.

I wandered through villages, stayed in inns where no one knew my name, drifted between places like a ghost that didn’t know where to rest.

I should have felt free. This was the life I had always lived— unbound, untethered. No duties, no titles, no expectations.

And yet I felt caged.

Because freedom had never felt like wandering alone.

Freedom had felt like her hand in mine, pulling me through the castle walls, her laughter spilling into the cool evening air.

It had felt like long conversations beneath autumn leaves, bickering over ridiculous things just to fill the silence.

It felt like waking up in a bed that was too small for two, but somehow never uncomfortable.

I clenched my fists.

This was pathetic.

I was not some lovesick fool. I was not the kind of person who mourned things that were never meant to be.

And yet here I was, standing in the middle of a quiet village, staring at a marketplace stall because the scent of freshly baked pastries reminded me of the way her room always smelled in the morning.

I turned away sharply, disgusted with myself.

This had to stop.

I had left to outrun my grief, but it had followed me like a shadow.

Maybe it wasn’t something I could escape.

Maybe it was something I had to carry.

And that—

That terrified me more than anything.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

The village was small— quaint, even. The kind of place where people knew each other by name, where shopkeepers greeted passersby with warm smiles, where life moved at a pace so slow it felt almost frozen.

I did not belong here.

And yet, my feet carried me through its cobbled streets, past vendors calling out their wares, past children chasing each other in the open square, past a baker kneading dough in the window of his shop.

It smelled like cinnamon and honey. Like warmth. Like home.

I swallowed hard and kept walking.

I didn’t know where I was going. I hadn’t known for days, maybe weeks. But stopping— settling— felt unbearable. If I stopped, I would have to think.

And thinking meant remembering.

I let my mind drift, let my body move on instinct alone. A field stretched before me, golden with the last remnants of autumn. The wind stirred the grass, bending it in waves, and for a brief moment, I could almost pretend I was somewhere else.

That I was someone else.

Someone who didn’t ache with every breath.

Someone who hadn’t left a piece of herself behind.

I didn’t realize I had stopped moving until I felt the cool touch of grass beneath my fingertips. When had I knelt down? When had my legs given out?

I pressed a hand to my chest, as if that could steady the hollow ache there.

This wasn’t grief.

Grief was mourning something lost, something past.

This was something crueler. This was knowing what could have been and watching it slip through my fingers.

I clenched my jaw, forced a breath past the tightness in my throat.

I had told myself I was leaving to forget her.

But I had been lying.

I wasn’t trying to forget.

I was trying to outrun the truth.

That no matter how far I went, no matter how many villages I passed through, no matter how much distance I put between myself and that castle—

She would always be there.

In the scent of autumn flowers. In the way the sky stretched endlessly above me. In the quiet moments, when the world was still and my thoughts crept in like ghosts I could not banish.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

What was I supposed to do?

Go back?

No.

She had made her choice.

And I— I had made mine.

Then why did it feel like I had lost?

The wind shifted, carrying the distant sound of a bell from the village. Evening was settling in. The world continued moving forward, indifferent to the war waging in my chest.

I let out a slow breath and rose to my feet.

I couldn’t stay here.

I had nowhere to go, but I couldn’t stay.

So I did what I had been doing for days now.

I walked.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

One evening, as I sat by a campfire in the woods, I found myself staring at my hands.

Calloused from years of travel. Hands that had once held hers without hesitation.

I had always thought I was strong. Untouchable. Someone who could leave the past behind without a second thought.

But here I was. Alone. Lost. Haunted.

I exhaled, tilting my head back. The stars winked down at me, indifferent to my sorrow.

For the first time since I left, I asked myself a question I had been avoiding.

What am I doing?

I left because I couldn’t bear to watch her marry someone else. I left because I thought distance would make the pain easier.

But it hadn’t.

Running hadn’t made me forget. It had only made me realize how much I had to lose.

I closed my eyes, and for the first time in weeks, I allowed myself to say it.

I love her.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

I should move on.

I should keep walking, find another place, another life, another purpose.

That was what I had been telling myself since the moment I left.

But every road I took, every village I passed through, every empty inn room I slept in— it all led me back to one undeniable truth.

I didn’t want any of it.

I didn’t want to build a new life somewhere else. I didn’t want to forget.

I wanted her.

I wanted to see her smile again, even if it wasn’t for me. I wanted to hear her voice, even if it wasn’t calling my name. I wanted to stand in the same place, breathe the same air, even if it meant enduring the pain of knowing I could never have her.

Even now, as I sat by a dwindling fire in the middle of nowhere, my mind refused to let go of her.

The way she had looked at me that night, breathless and wide-eyed.

The way her voice had cracked when she asked if I was leaving.

The way she hadn’t denied it when I accused her of pretending this meant nothing.

I had left because I thought I had no choice. Because I thought I couldn’t bear to watch her marry someone else.

And yet—

A selfish, desperate part of me whispered that maybe she had missed me, even a little. That maybe, despite everything, she had wanted to ask me to stay.

What if I had been wrong?

What if there was still something left to fight for?

The fire crackled beside me, casting flickering shadows against the trees. I stared into the flames, my heart pounding in my chest.

I had been running for so long. Wandering, searching— except I hadn’t truly been searching for anything.

Because the answer had always been the same.

There was no moving on from this.

No running far enough to erase what I felt.

No road that wouldn’t lead me back to her.

I clenched my fists, inhaling sharply.

Tomorrow, I would turn back.

I didn’t know what I would find when I returned. I didn’t know if it would change anything.

But I couldn’t keep running.

Not anymore.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

I had expected pain.

I had expected regret, guilt, sorrow— every agonizing thing I had carried with me since the night I left.

But I hadn’t expected this.

The castle was silent.

Not in the way of sleeping cities, nor in the hush of courtly restraint. This was something else. Something heavier.

Something dead.

I had been gone for over a year, and yet the city I returned to felt as though it had aged a lifetime. The streets that had once been alive with music and revelry, that had celebrated a wedding I could not bear to witness, were muted now. The banners that had flown so proudly were gone. The air was thick— not with the scent of autumn this time, but with the kind of stillness that follows loss.

The castle gates stood open, unguarded, as if the city no longer feared intruders. Or perhaps it no longer had the energy to care.

I should not have come back.

I knew that now.

But I had been foolish enough to believe that I could return and still find her here. That after all my wandering, after all my empty, desperate attempts to outrun grief, I would still have time.

Then I heard it.

A name spoken in hushed whispers.

A story retold with solemn voices.

The queen, they said. Taken too soon.

The queen.

The words hardly made sense. They were foreign, distant, like something spoken in another language.

I didn’t move. I hardly breathed.

Someone, a merchant, muttered that it had been childbirth. That the gods themselves had demanded too much.

Someone else— an old woman— sighed that it had been bound to happen. That she had always been too fragile for this world. That no amount of love, no amount of devotion, could have saved her from fate.

My vision blurred.

My pulse roared in my ears, drowning out the rest of their words.

No.

No, this was wrong. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

I had spent a year away. A year convincing myself that if I ever returned, I could fix something.

There was nothing left to fix.

Nothing left to return to.

The castle no longer belonged to her. The throne, the halls, the life that should have been hers— empty now. Given to another.

And somewhere within these walls, buried beneath cold stone, was the only person I had ever loved.

I do not remember moving.

I do not remember my hands pushing open the great doors of the castle, my feet moving through halls I had once known so well. The guards did not stop me. The servants did not question me.

Perhaps they recognized me. Perhaps they saw the grief in my eyes and knew there was no need to bar my path.

I walked through the corridors in a daze, past grand staircases and towering windows, past candlelit hallways that no longer carried the warmth of her presence.

She had once stood here.

She had once lived here.

And now she was nowhere.

I do not know how I found my way to the crypts.

One moment, I was walking through the empty castle. The next, I was standing before a carved stone door, cold and unyielding beneath my trembling hands.

I pushed it open.

The air inside was still. Heavy. The scent of old stone and extinguished candles filled my lungs, suffocating me. The dim light flickered against the walls, casting long, cruel shadows over the rows of silent tombs.

And then I saw her name.

The moment I did, the world caved in.

My knees hit the ground before I even realized I had fallen. My fingers dug into the frozen stone, tracing the letters as if I could will them to be anything but what they were.

Y/N.

Beloved Queen. Taken too soon.

I could not breathe.

I had left her.

I had left her, and now she was gone.

No second chances. No stolen moments. No final goodbyes.

I had waited too long to come back.

Now, there was nothing left.

I pressed my forehead against the stone, my body trembling as I exhaled a shaking breath.

For the first time in my life, I did not know who I was without her.

For the first time, I had nowhere left to go.

A voice cut through the silence.

“You came back.”

I did not look up.

Footsteps echoed against the stone, slow and measured. I felt him before I saw him— the weight of his presence pressing down like a storm cloud, thick with things unspoken.

The king.

Her husband.

Edric.

The man she had chosen.

I lifted my head, my hands still resting against the stone that bore her name. He stood a few steps away, dressed in mourning black, though his face was eerily calm. Tired, maybe. Resigned.

I hated him.

Not in the way of enemies, not with the kind of hatred that burns and devours. No, this hatred was something quieter, deeper. It was the resentment of knowing he had been the one to stand beside her at the end. That while I had been wandering, lost in my own grief, he had been here.

He had lived the life that could have been mine.

He exhaled softly, stepping closer. “I thought you might return one day.”

I swallowed against the knot in my throat. My voice came out hollow. “And yet you buried her without me.”

He sighed, his gaze dropping to the carved letters between us. “She would not have wanted you to see her like that.”

I flinched.

The thought of her— fragile, fading, slipping beyond reach— was unbearable.

I pressed my palm against the stone, as if I could feel anything beyond the cold. “She suffered.”

He hesitated, then nodded.

The weight of it settled into my chest, heavy and unmovable. I had left to spare myself pain, and yet she had borne it alone.

“I loved her.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

“I know.”

The quiet certainty in his voice made me look up sharply. He was watching me, not with anger, not with jealousy, but something else entirely. Something that looked too much like understanding.

“She never said it outright,” he continued, voice soft, “but I knew. I saw it in the way she spoke about you. The way she carried your absence like a wound that never healed.”

I clenched my jaw. “Then why did she—”

“Because duty is a cruel thing.” His expression darkened, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. “And because she thought she was doing the right thing.”

I closed my eyes.

The right thing.

She had always been so determined to do what was best for others, even at the cost of her own happiness. Even at the cost of us.

The king crouched beside me, his voice quieter now. “She never forgot you.”

The words hurt more than I expected.

“She kept the flowers you gave her,” he murmured. “Carried them in her books, pressed them between pages. Even on the worst days, she—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “I think a part of her was always waiting for you.”

A sharp, broken sound left my throat.

Too late.

I had come back too late.

We sat in silence for a long time.

Then, finally, he spoke again. “You can stay.”

I turned to him, frowning.

He met my gaze, steady and sure. “I won’t stop you.”

Stay.

In the castle that was no longer hers. In the halls that no longer echoed with her laughter. In a place that felt like a graveyard of what once was.

I shook my head. “I don’t belong here.”

His expression didn’t change. “Then where will you go?”

I didn’t have an answer.

He sighed, standing. “She would want you to find peace.”

Peace.

The thought was almost laughable.

I traced the letters of her name one last time. Then, with great effort, I rose to my feet.

“I don’t think I ever will,” I admitted.

The king said nothing. He only stepped aside, allowing me to pass.

As I walked away, leaving her behind for the second time, I realized something.

The first time, I had left believing I would see her again.

This time, I knew I never would.

The halls felt empty.

Not in the way that abandoned places did, not with dust and decay and silence— but empty in the way that came from absence.

Her absence.

The air still carried a faint trace of her, woven into the fabric of the castle, lingering in the soft candlelight and the distant echoes of footsteps.

I had been a fool to come back.

I should have turned and left the moment I realized she was gone. There was nothing here for me anymore.

And yet—

A sound stopped me in my tracks.

A cry.

Faint, but unmistakable.

A baby’s cry.

Something cold curled in my stomach as I followed the sound, my feet moving of their own accord. I shouldn’t. I didn’t need to see. I didn’t need to know.

But my hand was already on the door.

It creaked as it swung open, revealing a small, dimly lit chamber.

And there, in a cradle near the window, was a child.

Her child.

My breath caught.

The baby’s cries softened as I stepped closer, its tiny face scrunched in distress. A nursemaid hovered nearby but made no move to interfere as I knelt beside the cradle, my fingers trembling as I reached out.

Soft.

Its skin was soft beneath my fingertips, warm and alive and real.

A weight settled in my chest, too heavy to bear.

She had died for this.

For this.

A life she would never get to see. A child she would never get to hold.

I swallowed hard, my fingers gently tracing the curve of a tiny cheek.

“You look just like her,” I murmured.

The door behind me opened.

I didn’t turn.

The king’s voice was quiet. “She begged for the child’s name with her last breath.”

I closed my eyes.

“She wanted the baby to be named Lilia.”

Something inside me shattered.

A broken sound escaped my lips as I gripped the edge of the cradle, my body trembling with the force of everything I could not say.

Even in death, she had not let me go.

I forced myself to breathe.

To steady the storm inside me.

“She was thinking of you,” the king said, softer now. “Even at the end.”

I opened my eyes.

The baby stirred beneath my touch, tiny hands curling into fists. So small. So fragile.

A piece of her— left behind.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

I left.

I didn’t look back. Not this time.

The castle, the halls, the child left behind— none of it was mine. I told myself I had done what was right. That staying would have been cruel, selfish. The child was safe, cared for. Y/N was gone.

There was nothing left for me there.

So I walked.

I didn’t count the days anymore. They blurred together, indistinguishable from one another. Villages passed, rivers flowed, seasons shifted, and still, I wandered. I thought time would dull the ache, but it never did. It only settled deeper inside me, bone-deep, inescapable.

I barely felt the cold anymore when I lay beneath the stars. I barely noticed the hunger when I went without food for days.

But I always noticed the absence.

I had lived with loss before. I had lost things, people, places, but this— this was different. This was a wound that wouldn’t close.

I was tired.

So, so tired.

That night, I let myself rest beneath an ancient oak, the gnarled roots curled around me like the arms of something old and knowing. I let the exhaustion pull me under, let myself slip away into sleep—

And when I opened my eyes, I was in the garden.

Not any garden. Our garden.

The wind was soft, carrying the scent of flowers in bloom. The lanterns were lit, casting warm golden light along the stone pathways. It was peaceful. Familiar.

And then—

“Lilia...”

The sound of my name struck like a heartbeat stopping.

I turned.

She was there.

Y/N.

She stood bathed in moonlight, watching me with the same eyes that had haunted my every waking moment. She looked just as she always had— warm, beautiful, alive.

I couldn’t breathe.

“I must be dreaming,” I whispered.

She smiled, tilting her head. “Of course you are.”

My hands trembled at my sides. “Then you aren’t real.”

“No,” she said softly, “but I am here.”

My throat burned. I had imagined this moment so many times— what I would say if I could just see her again, if I could tell her everything I never had the chance to. But now, standing before her, words failed me.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I should have stayed.”

She shook her head. “You did what you thought was right.”

“It wasn’t right.” My voice cracked. “I ran. I left you behind.”

“You left,” she agreed, her tone gentle. “But you never let me go.”

I looked away. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear this.

“I miss you,” I whispered. It felt pitiful, empty, but it was all I had.

She took a step closer. “I know.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “I can’t move on.”

“You can,” she said. “You just don’t want to.”

I clenched my fists. “Then what do you want me to do? Forget you?”

Her expression didn’t change. “No. I want you to live.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t know how.”

She sighed, stepping closer. Her hand lifted, brushing against my cheek. It felt real. Warm. I leaned into it, desperate for something solid to hold onto.

“Forgive yourself,” she murmured. “Then I’ll forgive you too.”

My breath shuddered. “I don’t think I can.”

“You will,” she promised.

The garden seemed to shimmer, the edges of the dream growing soft, dissolving like ink in water.

Panic seized me. “Wait—”

She smiled, so heartbreakingly familiar, and leaned in.

A kiss— gentle, lingering, filled with everything unspoken, everything lost.

And then—

She was gone.

I woke with the taste of a memory on my lips and the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Moving on did not happen all at once.

At first, it was just surviving. Waking up. Walking. Eating when I remembered. Sleeping when exhaustion won over grief. There were days I barely felt human— more ghost than person, more shadow than light. But I kept going. Because I had to. Because Y/N had asked me to.

The first decade was the hardest.

I wandered still, but not with the same reckless abandon. I found places to rest, even if I never stayed long. Villages, cities, forests— I drifted between them all. Always leaving before I could belong. Before I could let anyone belong to me.

People came and went. Some were kind, offering warm meals and places to stay. Others were cruel, looking to take advantage of a lone traveler. None of them mattered. Not really.

But time softened me. Slowly, painfully.

The first time I laughed after she was gone, it startled me. It had been so long since I’d felt something other than grief that I almost didn’t recognize the sound.

The first time I stayed somewhere longer than a season, it felt foreign.

The first time I let someone matter— not in the way Y/N did, never like that— but as a friend, it terrified me.

But I kept going.

I worked when I needed to. Lived where I could. There was no grand purpose, no great journey to define my life. Just time, stretching endlessly before me.

And slowly, I learned to fill it.

Decades passed, and the memories no longer hurt like open wounds. They became something quieter— something bittersweet.

I could look at flowers without remembering the garden where we once stood. I could hear laughter without mourning what I had lost.

I still thought of her. I always would.

But the grief was no longer a weight that drowned me. It became a part of me, something I carried, something I honoured. Something I let linger

A century passed, and I could finally say her name without breaking.

Y/N had asked me to live.

And though it took a hundred years, I finally did.

⋅˚₊‧ ଳ ‧₊˚ ⋅

#why am i like this #wlw #angst #my heart #i cooked myself with my own choices #so did y/n and lilia #is this girlhood?

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