Chapter Text
Golden Cheese still remembered the sound of White Lily’s laughter.
Not the grand speeches she gave in the halls of the Vanilla Kingdom, not the gentle way she spoke to frightened Cookies during festivals or famines. No — it was always the laugh that returned to her first. Soft, startled, like White Lily herself never expected joy to find her so easily.
It haunted the palace now.
The golden halls were silent except for the distant scrape of servants rebuilding what greed and ruin had broken. Torches flickered against walls lined with treasures that no longer meant anything. Mountains of jewels glittered beneath the throne, untouched.
Golden Cheese Cookie sat alone at the center of it all.
A queen among relics.
She turned a pale flower stem between her fingers. Brittle. Dead. The petals had fallen weeks ago, but she could not bring herself to throw it away.
White lilies could not survive in the desert.
White Lily had laughed the first time she tried growing them there anyway.
“You’re impossible,” Golden Cheese had told her, watching the other Cookie kneel in the palace gardens with dirt smeared across her gloves.
“And yet you adore me.”
Golden Cheese had rolled her eyes at the time, but White Lily only smiled brighter, sunlight caught in her veil. Even now, Golden Cheese could remember exactly how warm her hand had felt when she reached out to pull her from the sand.
The memory hurt enough to split her apart.
The flower stem snapped between her fingers.
For a moment, the throne room felt too large. Too empty.
Golden Cheese leaned back against the throne and shut her eyes. She told herself she was only tired. Queens did not grieve forever. Queens endured.
But grief was a living thing.
It settled into the cracks of her gilded kingdom and made a home there.
At night, she would wake expecting another presence beside her — soft robes against silk sheets, the scent of lilies and old parchment. Sometimes she would even turn her head before remembering.
Gone.
Always gone.
No body to bury. No grave to kneel before.
Only whispers.
White Lily disappeared.
White Lily changed.
White Lily abandoned them.
The rumors spread across the kingdoms like disease, each one crueler than the last. Golden Cheese hated every single one of them, but the silence hurt worse.
Because silence meant there was no answer.
She had searched, once.
Crossed ruined lands and forgotten temples. Sent emissaries farther than any of her subjects thought reasonable. She ignored the exhaustion in her own body, ignored the way Pure Vanilla looked at her with quiet pity whenever she returned empty-handed.
Eventually, even her closest advisors stopped asking where she was going.
They knew.
The queen was chasing a ghost.
Golden Cheese opened her eyes again and stared at the ceiling painted in gold leaf. White Lily had once called it excessive.
“You made the stars jealous,” she had said.
Golden Cheese almost smiled at the memory.
Almost.
The palace doors creaked open.
“Your Majesty?”
Burnt Cheese Cookie stood at the entrance, hesitant. “The banquet is prepared.”
Of course it was. Another feast. Another celebration of restored wealth and recovered glory.
As though prosperity could replace what she had lost.
“I am not hungry.”
Burnt Cheese paused. “You have not eaten since yesterday.”
“That sounds like a personal problem for everyone else.”
He sighed softly, already accustomed to her temper. “The kingdom worries about you.”
The kingdom.
Always the kingdom.
Golden Cheese straightened in her throne, every inch the radiant ruler they expected. “Tell them their queen is alive. That should be enough.”
Burnt Cheese looked like he wanted to argue. Instead, he bowed and quietly withdrew.
The doors shut again.
Silence returned.
Golden Cheese exhaled slowly and looked down at the broken flower stem in her hand.
White Lily used to braid flowers into her hair when she thought no one was watching. Tiny white blossoms woven carefully between gold ornaments. She would smile whenever Golden Cheese noticed.
“You’re staring.”
“You put weeds in your hair.”
“They’re flowers.”
“They’ll die by sunset.”
“That’s what makes them precious.”
Golden Cheese had never understood that.
Not then.
Gold lasted forever. Jewels endured. Kingdoms survived sandstorms and centuries alike. Fragile things disappeared too easily.
But White Lily had loved fragile things.
Small blooms. Handwritten notes. Sunsets that vanished in minutes. The sound of rain in distant lands.
Golden Cheese lowered her gaze.
Maybe that was why losing her felt unbearable.
Because White Lily had never belonged to forever.
A bitter laugh escaped her throat before she could stop it.
What a foolish thing for a queen to love.
The wind outside howled against the palace towers. Somewhere in the distance, music drifted faintly from the banquet hall below. Her subjects celebrating while their ruler sat among ghosts.
Golden Cheese rose from her throne at last.
The palace corridors stretched endlessly before her, glowing amber beneath torchlight. As she walked, servants immediately bowed and stepped aside, careful not to meet her eyes for too long.
She knew what they saw.
A ruler still magnificent enough to blind kingdoms.
A Cookie carved from gold.
But gold could crack.
No one ever spoke about that part.
Golden Cheese stopped outside the old garden courtyard.
Most of the plants had long since withered under the desert heat despite the servants’ efforts. Only a few stubborn vines remained curled around marble pillars.
In the center stood a single white lily.
Alive.
Golden Cheese froze.
For one horrible, aching moment, hope surged through her so violently she could barely breathe.
Then reality settled in.
Someone must have replanted it.
A gift from a servant, perhaps. Or pity.
She approached slowly anyway.
The flower trembled gently in the warm night wind.
Golden Cheese reached toward it with shaking fingers but stopped before touching the petals.
Too delicate.
She remembered another pair of hands covering hers years ago.
“Careful,” White Lily had whispered, smiling. “You’ll bruise it.”
“I am not that heavy-handed.”
“You once cracked a gemstone because it annoyed you.”
“It was an ugly gemstone.”
White Lily had laughed so hard she nearly fell into the fountain.
The memory hit her with brutal force.
Golden Cheese bowed her head sharply, one hand gripping the marble railing beside her until cracks spread beneath her fingers.
The grief never became smaller.
People lied about that.
Time did not heal it. Time merely taught you how to carry it without collapsing in front of everyone else.
Her throat tightened painfully.
“I looked for you,” she whispered into the empty garden.
The wind answered.
“I would have forgiven anything.”
Silence.
Golden Cheese shut her eyes.
For the first time in a very long while, she allowed herself to imagine White Lily as she once was — smiling beneath sunlight, hands stained with soil, flowers tucked behind her veil.
Not rumors.
Not tragedy.
Just her.
The thought hurt.
But it also felt warm.
Carefully, Golden Cheese knelt beside the lily blooming stubbornly against the desert night. She touched one pale petal with unrivaled care.
Fragile things disappeared easily.
That did not make them worthless.
Above her, the stars glittered over the golden kingdom, distant and cold and eternal.
But below her? One small white flower continuing to bloom throughout it all.