The hand of the law is a brutal thing, its icy fingers forcing down your gaze and pressing your spine into a crooked bow. Here, the rules lay unspoken between you and the palace floors: Armor yourself against your own heart, even as your desires unfold themselves from your ribcage like thunder from a light-struck sky. All your life, you’ve borne an ache in your soul, carved from a kingdom of intolerance and the austerity of court. All your life, they’ve been telling you to stay away, their words a remote sort of savagery: Romance always comes at a cost.

The prince’s proposal is but another variable in the multi-faceted equation of your life; princesses marry and they become queens, and volition was never a factor in the calculation. He is a constant, a star that snags the edges of your universe, and yet you find yourself eclipsed—revolving around another deity, another lover curving against your dream-slick spirit, this shadow of a shadow of your desire.

On the night before your wedding, you envision hands tangled in your hair, palms pressed soft against your shoulder blades. You watch the sky and the way the universe is always gently curving against itself, your mouth full of words for someone you are not meant to love: Stitch the atlas of space onto my skin, trace my body like it is a line of poetry. Feel my heartbeat against the tips of your fingers; see, I want to make yours thunder like that.

Your resolve hardens as the minutes slip by. It is your lover, your liberation—your shrouded lover, your secret liberation. Here you lay with your mind tracing all the constellations like your passions scattered across the sky, even as the morning is draped over you like a weighted blanket, somber and unforgiving. 

So perhaps, you think, it is finally time for you to be your own salvation.

Bruises on your shins. Blisters blossoming at your fingertips.

Mud on the soles of your feet.

The forest has always seemed like a breathing entity. Its trees are streaked through with moonlight, bent under the weight of the rain and the indigo bloom of the night. Tonight, the wind moves slow, whispering through the branches that bleed into each other like stalks of river reeds.

Scaling the castle wall was no simple feat, the stone wet and chafing against the skin of your hands, but you have agreed to meet your lover at midnight. The rain is a sweet remedy to the fire inside of your skin, anchoring you to this world, this earth. Your hair tumbles over your shoulders, unbound—so you’ve left your crown behind, and your royalty lies forgotten in the dirt.

She draws closer to your presence at the edge of the trees. The horse at her side gives a huff, as if to say, Are you ready?

The palace stands stark, almost ethereal, against the night. Wasted legacy, they will say in the morning when you are gone. When the sun rises, they will send their consolations to the prince you never cared for and cast shame upon your title, and your escape will forever be a tragedy on the lips of those who tell your story. 

For now, though, the moonlight filters through the trees and presses a glowing tapestry onto your lover’s skin. The rain wrings rivers from her hair, and when she reaches for you, her hands are calloused from years of work in the castle. For one moment, you let yourself think of the law—of how the queen used to call you a dangerous dreamer, how the king used to tell you that want is a word meant to be crushed between your teeth, to be stamped out before it grows wild. 

But the truth: you are something larger than they will ever understand, and your hearts are spread over the expanse of galaxies. Tonight, you have both unchained yourselves and become divine.

So you think, Let our blood sing in the resurrection of our lives, and let us be proud of it.

“I am ready,” she says, and a smile traces the curve of her lips. 

For you, darling, I would capture all the world’s starlight and translate it into love. 

So you say, “let us go.”

And in return, come shape my soul into something a little less broken.

The horse races through the forest like a dappled tide. Somewhere behind you, you’ve left a kingdom of sorrow, but this night is given to the thunder and the sky, the once-servant and the once-princess, and the shine in your lover’s eyes. 

Incandescence—this is the mark of freedom.