The Year She Was Seventeen Again

"If there is someone you care for… say it."

The monarch’s baritone drifted down from the raised dais, washing over the expansive banquet hall. He kept his tone measured. He offered a gentle cadence that demanded obedience. "I want to hear it from you."

Oriana Thorne stood motionless in the center of the gilded room.

Her lungs seized. Her heart hammered against her ribs in a frantic rhythm. Reality struck her like a physical blow.

She was back.

She drew a shallow breath, tasting the familiar scent of roasted meats, sweet wine, and melting beeswax. She had lived this exact night before. Reborn. Regressed to the very year she turned seventeen.

This was the royal banquet. A gathering cloaked in the guise of family celebration. Yet every lord and lady whispering behind their jeweled goblets knew the truth.

The King had summoned her to dictate her future. He intended to arrange her marriage right here, utilizing the weight of his crown.

Oriana parted her lips. Her throat locked. A wave of grief crushed her vocal cords. Heat pricked the corners of her eyes.

"You need not be afraid." The King leaned forward, interpreting her silence as maidenly terror. "The Thorne family has served the crown for generations. Your father, your uncles, your brothers… they all gave their lives for Valdoris on the battlefield."

A heavy pause stretched through the opulent hall.

"And now, only you remain." The King’s gaze locked onto her. "I will personally see to your marriage. No matter whom you wish to wed, I will make it so."

Hearing her family referenced tore a fresh hole in Oriana’s chest. The Kingdom of Valdoris was young. Decades old, built on shaky foundations and surrounded by wolves. Just last year, the savage riders from the Iron Reaches broke through the northern borders. The Thorne men marched north to plug the breach.

She remembered the morning they rode out. Her father adjusting his gauntlets. Her uncles sharing a flask of spirits. Her older brothers teasing her, pulling her hair, their laughter echoing in the courtyard. They were full of life, loud enough that she had covered her ears and told them to leave.

They did.

When they returned, they made no sound at all.

They came back in wooden boxes. Their bodies wrapped in blood-crusted cloaks, the fabric stiff and black with dried gore. Her family vanished in a single season. Aunts and sisters-in-law packed their trunks and scattered to new lives. Her mother succumbed to the crushing weight of the loss, coughing up her life by the start of the year.

Thorne Manor turned into a ghost ship. Oriana was the only one left to wander its empty halls.

The King called tonight a family banquet to honor that sacrifice. He planned to reward the fallen Thorne men by parading their last surviving daughter and handing her a husband.

A bright laugh sliced through the solemn atmosphere.

"Why even ask, Father?"

Princess Kalliope Belmont leaned against her cushioned chair. "Everyone knows Oriana is hopelessly in love with Evander. She’s never exactly been subtle."

Oriana’s fingernails dug into her palms.

In her past life, the King’s favorite daughter had chimed in with those exact words. Back then, seventeen-year-old Oriana had ducked her head, her cheeks burning dark red at the mention of the Crown Prince. The King had boomed with laughter, waved his hand, and betrothed them on the spot.

Oriana had believed her devotion would be enough. She threw her soul into the preparations, tracking every detail of the wedding, stitching her hopes into the banners. She thought her sincerity would crack his cold exterior.

Then came the wedding night.

Evander locked her out of his chambers. He refused to look at her. Refused to touch her. Oriana had waited outside his door, shivering in her intricate silk gown until her legs gave out. She spent her first night as a royal bride curled on the freezing stone floor, staring at the shadows until dawn.

No warmth. No consummation. No heir.

The pity from the King and Queen rotted into quiet disdain. The servants in the Crown Prince's Wing mirrored their masters. They stopped bowing. They brought her lukewarm tea and whispered insults just loud enough for her to hear. Oriana swallowed the humiliation, telling herself endurance was a virtue.

Until the afternoon she stood in the sunlit corridor outside the armory.

She heard Evander’s voice drifting through the open window, speaking to his closest confidant.

"She forced me to marry her." The Crown Prince’s tone dripped with venom. "Now she’s getting what she deserves."

His friend had hesitated. "But Oriana is beautiful. She truly cares about you. Do you really feel nothing for her?"

"She disgusts me."

Three words. They shattered her reality.

He knew about the neglect. He knew about the mocking servants. He orchestrated her misery because he blamed her for a marriage ordered by his own father. The King played the benevolent ruler, Evander secured his dutiful reputation, and Oriana absorbed the punishment.

The grief had twisted into something ugly and hollow inside her chest. She had marched straight into his study, her face pale, and dropped into a stiff bow. She demanded a divorce.

Evander, usually a picture of aristocratic indifference, had snapped.

He grabbed a heavy porcelain teacup from his desk and hurled it straight at her face.

Oriana hadn't flinched. The dense ceramic slammed into her temple with a sickening crack. Hot blood burst from the split skin, sliding down her cheek and dripping onto her collarbone. Evander froze, his hand still raised, a flicker of shock crossing his features. He looked like he wanted to stand, to bridge the distance. But his pride won. He ground his teeth together and sneered at her bleeding face.

"There's no need to act pitiful."

He rejected her plea that day. He ignored her existence for another week before tossing a signed dissolution decree at her feet.

Oriana remembered standing in her barren bedchamber the night before she was supposed to leave. Four years of marriage had bled her dry. She stared at the gaunt, hollow-eyed woman in the mirror. She felt nothing. She packed nothing. She just wanted the freedom to breathe.

She closed her eyes in that suffocating palace, expecting to wake up a divorced outcast.

Instead, she woke up here. Seventeen. Unmarried. Unbroken.

"Oh?" The King’s voice jerked her mind out of the bloody past. He stroked his bearded chin, glancing down at her. "She likes Evander?"

"Yes," Kalliope chirped, oblivious to the shift in the air. "Oriana is smitten. She’s always baking pastries for him and bringing them over herself. Once she burned her hand on the oven, but she smiled and insisted it didn’t hurt at all. Though, to be fair, Evander never ate them. I usually finished the plate."

A ripple of muffled laughter washed through the lords and ladies.

"And not long ago," Kalliope pressed on, enjoying the spotlight, "when Evander lost his hunting pouch, he sulked for days. Oriana came to my rooms begging to know his favorite patterns. She spent weeks trying to embroider a new one for him."

Oriana shifted her gaze.

Crown Prince Evander sat two seats away from the King. His handsome features were twisted. A deep crease marred his forehead. His jaw ticked. The discomfort rolling off him was palpable. Her affection was a disease to him, an unwanted weight dragging him down.

Eyes shifted toward Oriana from every corner of the room. Dozens of nobles watched her, their gazes laced with amusement, pity, and mockery. They waited for the orphaned girl to blush, to stutter, to claim her prize.

If she were still the naive girl from her past life, the humiliation of being discussed like a pet would have crushed her.

Now, Oriana felt nothing but the steady beat of her own heart.

This public spectacle was a minor breeze compared to the hurricane of isolation she had already survived.

The King chuckled, a booming sound that signaled his final decision. "So you like him that much? You two grew up together in the capital. It must be mutual, then. In that case, to honor the Thorne family, I shall arrange the betrothal myself—"

"Your Majesty."

Her voice sliced through the hall. Sharp. Clear. Ringing with a cold authority that belonged on a battlefield, not at a banquet.

The King stopped, his hand freezing in mid-air. "Hmm?"

Oriana kept her posture straight. Her eyes stung with a faint redness from the memory of her dead brothers, but she blinked the weakness away.

She did not spare Evander a single glance. Not a shift of the eye. Not a turn of the head. He was a ghost to her.

She took a deliberate step forward, the fabric of her dress brushing against the polished marble floor. She sank into a deep, flawless curtsy, bending her knees and bowing her head with the precision of a seasoned courtier.

"I did grow up alongside His Highness," Oriana projected her voice so it reached the furthest corners of the room.

"But I have always regarded him with respect. Nothing more."

She paused, letting the syllables hang in the air. She raised her chin just enough to meet the King’s gaze.

"I have never harbored improper feelings toward him."

A suffocating silence slammed down on the Great Hall. The ambient chatter vanished. The musicians stopped tuning their strings.

In the periphery of her vision, she saw Evander flinch. His scowl deepened into a look of sheer unadulterated disbelief. He stared at her as if she had suddenly spoken in a demonic tongue.

The King lowered his hand. The jovial warmth drained from his face, replaced by the calculating frown of a ruler whose script had just been set on fire.

"Are you certain?" The King’s tone held a warning edge.

Oriana knew the man sitting on the throne. He hated unpredictable variables. He offered her a boon to appease the masses and show his benevolence. If she simply rejected the Crown Prince without offering an alternative, the King would force the issue. He would not let the evening end with an open question. He needed a target to aim his royal decree.

She remained in her deep bow. Her spine was a rod of iron.

She knew exactly who she needed to name. A choice that would sever any chance of Evander crawling back into her life. A choice that would shock the court so thoroughly they would forget the pastries and the embroidered pouches.

"I have long admired the Duke of Grimwood."

A collective gasp sucked the air from the room. The nobles shifted, eyes wide, exchanging frantic glances.

Oriana held her ground amidst the rising tide of shock.

"If I may become his wife…"

She lifted her head, her clear, unwavering gaze locking directly onto the King’s stunned expression.

"…then I would have no regrets in this life."