50 Different Love Stories

Story 1:- The Queen and the Undercover King |Part 1

Queen Elowen Thorne of Aethelgard
Age: 19
Height: 5'1"
Sex: Female
Skin Tone: Pale with a faint rose warmth
Hair: Dark brown
Role: Queen of Aethelgard, warrior, orphaned ruler, protector of her kingdom

Caelan Ashford
Age: 19
Height: 6'3"
Sex: Male
Skin Tone: Sun-browned
Hair: Black
Role: Commoner, lumberjack, unknown warrior, the man who saves the queen

Disclaimer:

The characters featured in this chapter are entirely fictional. Their names have been formed through selected fictional and random combinations, and they are not intended to represent any real individuals. Some love stories in this book may be inspired by real emotions, real struggles, or real moments from life, but no real names, identities, or personal details have been used. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Love may borrow its ache from the world, but the souls upon these pages belong to fiction.

Part 1: Blood Over Aethelgard

The sea had been quiet for two years.

To the people of Aethelgard, that silence had once felt like mercy.

Their kingdom sat upon the hard bones of Dogger Bank, a cold and stony land rising from the North Sea, roughly a hundred kilometres east of the English coast and west of Denmark. Aethelgard was not a gentle place. Its cliffs were sharp. Its winds were cruel. Its soil fought the plough, its winters bit through wool, and its people were raised with iron in their hands and salt in their blood.

Yet it was home.

For two years, the bells of Aethelgard had rung for harvests, weddings, births, and holy days instead of funerals. For two years, mothers had not waited by the shore for sons who would never return. For two years, the treaty between Aethelgard and Corvallis had held.

A thin treaty.

A bitter treaty.

A treaty written less with trust than with exhaustion.

Across the sea, far beyond the southern waters where the English Channel opened its throat to the Atlantic, stood Corvallis upon the jagged crown of Haig Fras. It was a fortress kingdom of black stone, storm-scarred towers, and men who believed honour was something one proved by spilling another man's blood. Corvallis had never forgiven Aethelgard for standing equal to it. Aethelgard had never forgiven Corvallis for trying to kneel it.

So peace lived between them like a wounded animal.

Breathing.

Bleeding.

Waiting.

And on the morning Corvallis broke the treaty, the sky above Aethelgard turned the colour of old steel.

Queen Elowen Thorne stood upon the eastern battlements when the first horn sounded.

She was nineteen years old, though the crown upon her head had tried to make her older. It had weighed upon her since her eighteenth year, placed there not by celebration but by death. Her father had fallen upon the southern shore during the last campaign. Her mother, who had ridden beside him with a sword in hand and prayer in her mouth, had been brought home three days later beneath a white cloth.