This is the SFW version of the novel without the smol/l*li stuff (it will nuke this novel). For the NSFW version, please visit my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/SmallScribble.
Ysabel knelt there for a long time, the tiny, dying creature cupped in her hands. She felt a hot, pricking sensation behind her eyes, and a single tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. She gently closed the swallow's eyes.
She knew, with a certainty that she could not let the princess see this. Rosalinda's small world had been shattered enough. To see her only friend, her only source of unconditional kindness, broken and bleeding on the stones would be an act of cruelty she could not bear.
So, Ysabel did the only thing she could. She stood up, her face a mask of grim determination, and took the small body with her to bury in a quiet corner of the castle garden, marking the spot with a single, flat stone.
From that day forward, the ritual did not end but simply changed.
Every morning, before the sun had fully risen, Ysabel would go to the market. She would buy a single, perfect bean, or a plump, wiggling worm from a bait seller. Then, while the princess was still asleep, she would slip to her window and leave the gift on the sill, before retreating to her post in the shadows. When Rosalinda woke and found her offering, her smile would return, a fragile, hopeful thing.
Ysabel became the secret guardian of that smile. She became the swallow, continuing the promise of kindness that the little bird had started. The princess never knew that her guard was the one feeding her hope. She only knew that her friend had not abandoned her after all.
And for Ysabel, the simple act of leaving a worm on a windowsill became the most important duty she had ever been given. It was a silent penance, a quiet promise to the princess she had once so wrongly judged.
-
-
-
-
"But in the end, I found out," Rosalinda's voice cracked, and the words dissolved into a sob. "It was you, Ysabel. Not the bird. Not anymore."
Tears streamed freely down her pale cheeks, tracing paths through the light dusting of freckles across her nose. She buried her face against the cold steel of Ysabel's breastplate, her small frame shaking with the force of her grief.
"I asked you so many times," she cried into the metal, her voice muffled and broken. "But you never told me why. And from that day until now… we both just acted like it was nothing. Like that story was just a story."
"You did not act like it was nothing," Ysabel said softly, her hand coming up to rest gently on the back of the princess's head. "You became detached and cruel to everyone for a long time. Including me. It was your way of hiding the pain, of protecting yourself from losing something else."
"I know, and I'm so sorry, so sorry about that," Rosalinda wept, her words barely intelligible. "I pushed everyone away. But… can you tell me now? Please. Can you just tell me?"
Ysabel was silent for a long moment, the only sounds in the room the princess's ragged breathing and the distant bustle of the castle. She looked down at the fiery red hair spilling over her armor, at the delicate shoulders trembling under her hands.
"Maybe it's time for you to know," Ysabel finally said, her voice firm but gentle. "Time to let the past go and look forward."
She took a firmer hold of Rosalinda's shoulders and gently eased her back, forcing the princess to meet her gaze. Rosalinda looked up, her face blotchy and streaked with tears, her vivid green eyes wide and pleading.
"The bird was dead," Ysabel began, her voice steady and devoid of emotion, a soldier reciting a report. "It was killed by a slingshot. I found it on the flagstones below your window, its chest caved in, its feathers matted with its own blood."
She watched Rosalinda's face crumple, the fresh understanding of that brutal reality hitting her so hard that she couldn't breath.
"Its last act..." Ysabel continued, forcing the words out past the tightness in her own throat, "...was to bring you a gift. In its beak, it held a small blue flower. A myosotis."
A raw, wounded sound escaped the princess's lips. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated heartbreak.
"I didn't want you to see it like that," Ysabel explained, her voice softening just a fraction. "Your world was already so small, so grey. I couldn't bear to be the one to show you that even the smallest, purest things can be senselessly destroyed."
"I started bringing you the gifts instead," she confessed, the full weight of the admission landing between them. "A worm, a bean… whatever I could find. I left them on your sill every morning before you woke. I was the bird, princess. I was trying to keep your smile alive, because I had failed to protect the thing that made you smile."
The last words hung in the air, a final, heavy confession of a guilt she had carried for years. She had been a guard, a soldier, a machine. But for one small, forgotten princess, she had tried to be more.
"So for that, I am too, sorry for lying to you," Ysabel said, the words feeling like they were torn from her soul.
Rosalinda was quiet for a long moment, digesting the staggering truth. Then, she spoke, her voice a fragile whisper. "My guess was true, then."
Ysabel looked down at the trembling princess, a wave of fierce worry washing over her. She had broken this girl's heart, all over again.
But then, the shaking in Rosalinda's shoulders subsided. She slowly looked up, her tear-drenched face illuminated by the dim light of the room. A wobbly, watery smile broke through her grief.
"Thank you," she breathed, the two words filled with more sincerity than any royal proclamation.
Her smile carried neither the innocence of a child nor the poise of a princess. It was the smile of someone who had just been handed a piece of their broken world and found beauty in its brokenness. It was a smile that acknowledged the pain, the loss, and the lie, but saw the love that had been woven through them all. And in that heartbreakingly beautiful, tearful smile, Ysabel felt the first real glimmer of hope she had experienced in years.
#######