The Prince Who Ran

Chapter Eleven: Stone By Stone

Chapter Eleven: Stone by Stone

The throne room was no longer a place of spectacle.

Not under Caelan’s rule.

The gilded banners were taken down. The velvet cushions stripped. In their place: maps. Documents. Ledgers. And people — commoners and nobles alike — invited to speak, to argue, to be heard.

The crown weighed heavier now that the cheering had died.

It was one thing to win the hearts of a crowd in the heat of a moment.

Another to hold them in the cold grind of daily change.

“I don’t want another promise,” the merchant snapped, slamming her calloused hand on the table. “I want bread prices lowered — or families will starve before the rains come.”

Caelan didn’t flinch.

“I understand,” he said. “The new harvest tariffs were meant to—”

“Spare us the reasons,” the woman growled. “We’ve lived through reasons before.”

Caelan took a breath, forcing himself not to defend — but to listen.

He turned to Sareth. “Freeze the tariffs for now. Take the treasury’s surplus to offset the cost. We’ll recalculate after the midsummer yield.”

Sareth hesitated — but nodded.

The merchant blinked, stunned.

“I… thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Thank me when your granaries are full,” Caelan said softly. “Not before.”

She left, head high.

Others came and went — a grieving soldier’s widow, a city artisan begging for guild reforms, an old knight asking to rebuild the eastern watchtower with his pension.

Each one etched a line deeper into Caelan’s face.

Each one made the crown heavier.

◇

Lyra watched it happen.

At first, she admired him — the way he sat among the angry, the broken, the proud, without a shred of arrogance. But as the days wore on, she saw something else:

The way he stopped smiling.

One evening, she found him alone in the palace archives, hunched over a stack of tax parchments, fingers stained with ink, face drawn with exhaustion.

“You skipped dinner,” she said.

“There wasn’t time.”

She walked behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You keep carrying it like it’s a punishment.”

He didn’t answer at first.

Then: “Maybe it is. For running.”

“You came back.”

He turned, met her gaze — and for a moment, the weight dropped away.

“I only came back because of you.”

Lyra didn’t flinch.

“Then don’t lose yourself now that you’ve got the thing you feared.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know. But you haven’t looked at me in three days, Cael. Not really.”

He stood, suddenly too tired to fight. “There’s too much to fix. Too many people who believed in me. If I fail them—”

“You’re human,” she snapped. “You’ll fail. That’s not the point. The point is who you become trying not to.”

He stared at her.

Silence.

Then he sat again, burying his face in his hands.

Lyra crossed the room, knelt beside him.

“Come to the village with me. Just for a day. Visit the forge. See the fields. Remember why you came back.”

He hesitated.

Then nodded.

◇

The next morning, they rode out at dawn.

No retinue. No banners. Just two horses and a trail of golden sun stretching over the plains.

The village was smaller than he remembered — or maybe it was he who had grown.

Children ran beside the horses. Farmers paused mid-swing in their fields to stare. Old Maira wept when she saw him dismount.

“Still a prince to me,” she said, pinching his cheek.

He and Lyra walked the narrow streets, stopping for hot cider and burnt bread, petting a half-lame dog, and standing at the edge of the old forge — now run by Halden’s nephew.

“He’s resting,” the boy said. “Healing. But he’ll want to see you soon.”

Caelan smiled.

Then, standing beneath the tree where he had once slept as a runaway, he turned to Lyra.

“You were right,” he said. “This is where it began.”

“No,” she replied, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “It began when you stopped running.”

He kissed her.

Not as a prince, not as a king.

Just as Caelan.

◇

But peace, like all things, was temporary.

By nightfall, Sareth had sent a raven.

A rebellion had stirred in the west. Minor nobles with ties to Vayne — emboldened, perhaps, by the mercy Caelan had shown.

The road back was swift and silent.

But when they reached the palace, Lyra pulled him aside.

“You’re going to have to fight,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Not just them. But yourself. Every time you’re tempted to become like them — to rule through fear, to strike first, to forget the people behind the crown — fight.”

“I will.”

She hesitated.

“Will you let me help?”

He took her hand.

“I can’t do it without you.”

◇

That night, Caelan stood again in the throne room — no longer a symbol, but a strategist. A leader.

As Sareth laid out the rebellion’s movements, Caelan’s jaw clenched — not in panic, but in resolve.

“We’ll ride at dawn,” he said. “But no blood unless it’s spilled first. Send envoys. Offer terms.”

“And if they refuse?”

Caelan looked out the window at the city glowing with lanterns.

“Then we remind them who rules this kingdom now.”

And for the first time, he felt it:

Not the weight of the crown.

But the strength of it.