Eyes of the Unloved
Once upon a time, in a kingdom veiled in sunshine and joy, there lived a princess.
One evening, as the moon rose like a silver coin in the sky, the king said to his daughter, “My child, you may choose any man in the land to marry. Prince or peasant, noble or knight, whoever your heart seeks, he shall be yours.”
But that very night, the princess, restless and wild with wonder, cloaked herself in common dress and slipped out of the castle. She wandered through the town, her slippered feet brushing dust, her golden hair hidden beneath a hood.
As dawn kissed the rooftops and rose into the sky, she saw a young man beneath the awning of a baker’s shop, his smile was quiet, his eyes deep with thought. He was a peasant, yet something in him glowed brighter than any jewel in the royal vaults. She approached him.
“Good morning,” she said, unsure why her heart trembled.
“And to you, miss,” the man replied kindly.
They spoke of books, of birdsong, of the way the stars vanish in the morning. And with every word, she fell deeper in love. At last, the princess, heart thundering, said,
“Marry me.”
But the young man gently shook his head.
“I am already promised to another, a woman I love with all I am. Forgive me.”
And so the princess left him, but her heart did not. For one hundred and forty nights, she read every book in the royal library, histories, poems, spells, hoping to find the answer to a question she could not silence: Why not me?
But the books, wise though they were, held no answer.
So she returned to the village, her eyes hollow from sleepless nights. There she saw him again, this time with the woman he loved. She watched as he kissed her gently beneath the branches of a blooming tree. The woman who had the one thing the princess lacked: his love.
And jealousy, once a whisper, became a scream. She followed the woman home.
That night, as the world slept, the princess crept into the house like a shadow and stood over the woman’s bed. She unsheathed a dagger.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, though she did not know if she meant it.
The blade fell. The woman’s breath stilled.
The next day, the princess found the man.
“Your lover is dead,” she said softly. “Now… we can be together.”
But the man looked at her with horror, heartbreak, and tragedy.
“If she is gone,” he said, “then I have nothing left in this world.”
And before she could stop him, he drew a knife and stabbed it into his chest.
The princess screamed for the guards.
“Bring him to the palace! Save him! Save him!”
They carried him to her chambers, blood soaking the royal silks.
The healers came and went, shaking their heads.
“He is dying, Your Highness,” said one. “We can do no more.”
She ordered them all to leave.
Alone with him, she knelt at his side. Then, a whisper echoed in her mind, something she had read in a forgotten book of witchcraft:
“The eyes are the window to the soul.”
And in that moment, madness and longing became one.
She took her hands and plucked his eyes from their sockets, weeping as she did. Then, with shaking fingers, she removed her own and placed his eyes into her head, and hers into his.
She thought, “If I see through his soul, he will see mine. And he will love me.”
But the moment she opened her stolen eyes, sorrow crashed into her like a wave. Through them, she saw what he had felt when his lover died, the raw grief, the endless ache.
And it broke her.
She began to cry. Softly at first, then fiercely, uncontrollably. Her tears poured like rain. They soaked the carpets, then the stone, then the walls.
And soon, the room began to flood.
She wept so much that water filled the chamber, covering them both. Still, she wept until her tears drowned them both.
She died with him in her arms.
But death is not the end for the princess and the man’s inevitable tragedy.
In the afterlife, the man awoke beside his beloved, reunited at last. And the princess? She awoke alone.
Yet they had each other’s eyes.
And so, the princess was forever cursed to see, through his eyes, the man she loved holding another, smiling, laughing, lost in a joy that was never hers.
And the man? He was doomed to see, through the princess’s eyes, her endless weeping, tears that would never dry.
They each bore the soul of the other.
He, with her sorrow.
She, with his joy.
And both, in different ways, were damned.