The Lost Fae Princess

Elara curled on the worn velvet of Adrian’s sofa, a textbook balanced on her knees, but her attention wasn’t on the dense paragraphs about economic theory. It was on him. He was bathed in the late afternoon sun slanting through his apartment window, the golden light catching the perfect, beautiful disarray of his brown hair. He looked like a renaissance painting, all sharp lines and soft shadows, like that of a historical prince and for the thousandth time, she felt a flutter of disbelief in her stomach that he was hers.

All hers.

The world felt less cold than it had a year ago, more like a soap bubble, shimmering and dangerously thin.

“You’re staring again, Elle,” he said without looking up from his phone, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips. It was a smile that had once made her feel chosen, seen. Except that it now made her feel… owned.

“Just thinking,” she murmured, pulling her threadbare cardigan tighter around herself. The apartment was always chilly, a stark contrast to the subtle warmth he always presented to the world.

“Don’t think too hard. You’ll get wrinkles.” His thumb swiped across his screen in a quick movement before dropping it to face her.

Almost immediately, the phone buzzed softly again against the glass coffee table, lighting up with a new notification.

Elara’s gaze dropped to it. She could see the name Chloe bloom on the screen, followed by a preview of the message.

Chloe: Can’t wait for tonight, my love. This is going to be…

The rest was hidden, but the words “my love” seemed to vibrate in the air. Her own heart stuttered, then began to thud a slow, heavy rhythm against her ribs.

‘My love’.

There was only one Chloe present in their life and that was her best friend.

Also his best friend. They often called each other ‘babe,’ ‘hottie,’ sometimes ‘my love’ in a joking, exaggerated way.

But this didn’t feel like a joke.

Adrian’s smile tightened almost invisibly. He picked up the phone, his thumb hovering to delete the notification.

“Chloe?” Elara asked, her voice carefully neutral. “What’s she so excited about?”

He didn’t look at her. “Oh, you know Chloe. She’s just hyped about some new boutique that opened downtown. Wants me to give my ‘expert opinion’ on her outfit for some party.” He gave a dismissive chuckle, but the line of his shoulders was tense.

A cold knot tightened in Elara’s stomach. Chloe hated Adrian’s fashion opinions. She calls him a “label-obsessed snob” in private. Elara had been the one to soothe those ruffled feathers of his more than once.

“Right,” Elara said softly.

The silence that descended afterwards was thick and heavy, filled with many unsaid words.

Adrian stood, stretching with a feigned nonchalance. “I’m gonna grab a shower. That econ reading is brutal, take a break.” He leaned down, pressed a kiss to her forehead that felt more like a seal, a dismissal and disappeared into the bathroom.

The moment the bathroom door clicked shut, the lock engaging with a soft, final sound, Elara was moving.

Her body felt both leaden and weightless as she crossed the room, reaching towards the coffee table. This was a violation. She knew it. Adrian valued his privacy, and had always lectured her about trust. “A relationship built on suspicion is already dead, Elle,” he had once said to her, his eyes sincere when she opposed his relationship with a fellow school mate.

But that was before the secret dates she knew he went to, before the whispered phone calls he would end when she entered the room, before he had asked her to keep their relationship a secret from everyone… except Chloe because he ‘feared’ that she would be bullied by his girl fans.

“She’s your best friend, she should know,” he had reasoned, and she, with her very foolish heart, flattered by his intensity, had agreed.

Her hand, trembling slightly, closed around the cool metal of his phone. She typed in his passcode—her birthday, a fact he had presented as a grand romantic gesture, but now felt like a convenient, easy-to-guess number.

The message app opened. Chloe’s name was at the top. Her thumb hovered for a second, a last bit of decency, before it gave way to the raw, clawing need of curiosity.

She opened the thread.

And the world she knew, the fragile, carefully constructed life she had clung to, shattered.

It wasn’t just one message. It was a string of them, stretching back to months. Possibly months before she started dating him or after.

Flirtatious, intimate, cruel texts about everything. Pictures she hadn’t seen before. Of Chloe hugging a lace teddy identical to the one he had supposedly bought for Elara but got missing, Adrian shirtless in a hotel room she recognized from a weekend he had told her he was on a family trip.

The timeline made her dizzy, sick. They had started a month after she and Adrian had become official.

‘Good lord, ' she whispered, resting her body on the coffee table. The thought of their bodies together on the hotel bed was nothing compared to the betrayal of their words.

[Adrian]: I swear she’s so naive. It’s almost boring. Thinks a cheap bouquet from the corner store is a declaration of an undying love.

[Chloe]: I know right. The way she looks at you, like you hung the moon. It’s pathetic. She has no idea what a real man is even like.

[Adrian]: But I’m a real man with you. She’s a child playing at being in a relationship. You and I… this is real.

Elara’s breath hitched, a small, wounded sound in the silent room. They had been mocking her. Mocking her kindness as naivety. Her love was pathetic. All her struggles were a joke to them.

Then she saw the financial threads.

[Chloe]: Did you get her to pay your credit card bill?

[Adrian]: Yeah. Told her it was for a class project and my scholarship money was delayed. She emptied her savings account for me. The guilt was almost adorable.

[Chloe]: LOL. My shopping spree is safe then. You’re a genius.