I Was The Perfect Queen But He Forgot My Name Chapter 66
Rowan’s POV
The living will never outcompete the dead.
Rowan insisted on trying anyway.
Everything he had ever had, he had taken by force. If he didn’t fight, he would have nothing.
The years he spent in Martin’s home as a child were among the few memories he could still treasure.
After retiring, Martin had planned to settle in the countryside near Cedar Ridge, buy a little land, keep pets, and study herbs. He once took Rowan fishing. They failed to catch a single fish, but on the way home, they found a tiny turtle.
The old man had said happily that he would dig a pond in the yard and they would raise it together.
The yard was built. The pond was dug.
But on the day they were to leave the capital, Evelyn came to take Rowan away.
When he looked back, he saw Martin standing in the doorway, wiping at his tears.
At the time, Rowan hadn’t understood why the old man was crying.
Seeing his biological mother, all he knew was to follow her carefully, terrified of being abandoned again.
Evelyn only grew irritated.
“Can’t you go do something on your own? Why are you always following me?”
Julian had never annoyed her like that.
Soon after, Rowan was sent to the secret training compound.
Within months, the childishness vanished from him and the scars began to multiply. The director put a mask on him that concealed his scent and face, so no one would notice how much he looked like the prince.
The only time Evelyn visited happened to be during a forced exercise against an out-of-control adult wolf.
Rowan spotted his mother early.
Wanting to make her proud, he charged first, gouged out the wolf’s eye, and led the other children in subduing it.
He looked toward the corner expectantly.
What he saw was Evelyn vomiting—and the disgust in her eyes.
The malice of one’s own blood cuts deepest.
That was when he learned that cruel children are not loved.
Next time Mother came, he would behave better.
But she never came again.
Year after year passed. It was only after Rowan was assigned to Julian’s side that he saw her again.
Evelyn smiled at Julian with endless gentleness.
So it wasn’t that she didn’t know how to love a child.
She simply did not love him.
By then, Rowan felt very little about it.
He built his own hidden power within the training grounds, unwilling to die one day as a nameless shadow.
There was always a pretty girl beside Julian.
Her name was Genevieve.
In public, she could fluently recite every rule a future royal mate was meant to follow. In private, she threw those etiquette manuals into the fireplace and argued with her tutor.
“I have eyes. I can look at the world myself. I’ll observe, think, and learn. I don’t need a handbook deciding what kind of person I’m supposed to become.”
The tutor told her not to say such things outside.
She pouted.
Rowan found her fascinating.
Julian grew up with her.
The Rowan hidden in the shadows watched her grow up, too.
Julian liked her.
Rowan told himself he liked no one.
Then Julian died.
Rowan fell into the Lorne River as well, though he managed to drag himself ashore. After he lost consciousness, Iris brought him home. Even without her, his wolf would have forced him awake.
Iris took off his mask, saw the royal uniform and the handsome face beneath, and decided he was her chance to change her fate.
When Rowan woke, unsure if the assassins were still nearby, he feigned amnesia.
Iris stopped her father from treating him. He was not surprised.
His original plan had been to eliminate every witness before he left.
But on the day the guard arrived, everyone mistook him for Julian.
That same day, he found his brother’s body further downstream.
Even in death, Julian still held the other crystal badge tightly in his hand.
Rowan buried him and threw the badge into the river.
“He’s dead. She’s not yours anymore.”
Since everyone had gotten it wrong, he simply became Julian.
He needed to establish himself quickly, and the first thing to cut was Cedar Ridge. It held Julian’s most loyal supporters—and Genevieve, who knew Julian best.
So he used Iris and demanded the engagement be canceled.
King Arthur refused. Rowan chose a rainy day and knelt on the castle steps where the whole kingdom could see his resolve.
He did not care if the silver wounds worsened.
When Genevieve came toward him under an umbrella, he caught the clean cedar scent of her.
No one had ever held an umbrella over Rowan before.
She stood so close it felt as if the entire world had shrunk to that small space beneath the umbrella.
He forced himself back out into the rain.
The engagement was canceled, yet he felt none of the relief he had expected.
At Lorne Gorge, she finally cried.
Rowan knew she rarely cried.
Julian had protected her too well. But when it was Rowan standing beside her, it took no time at all for him to make her shed that many tears.
A strange pain spread through his chest.
But a schemer’s instincts kept him performing. If his identity was exposed, he might die at once.
Later, Genevieve auctioned off the old things, held a charity event, and publicly declared herself free again.
Rowan was startled—but at the same time, he felt this was exactly who she was.
She had never been someone any rule could truly cage.
She chose the harp not because the Royal Academy prized it, but simply because it was beautiful.
As a child, she had burned etiquette books. Beneath that poised exterior, there had always been pride, willfulness, and defiance.
Rowan knew her as well as Julian did.
But Julian loved her.
Rowan loved no one.
Didn’t he?
If not, then why did he remember every expression on her face?
At the Red Plum charity gala, Genevieve played the harp and pinned the flower she won into her own hair.
In that instant, Rowan understood that from boyhood into adulthood, she had always been the only thing in his line of sight.
How could he not love Genevieve?
He had simply admitted it too late.
He began to regret.
All his power plays suddenly lost their meaning. She became the only outcome he wanted.
He staged the head injury, pretended to recover his memory, and tried to inch closer to her.
The wound on his forehead never healed because every time it began to close, he tore it open again.
Genevieve was softhearted with weakness but unmoved by force.
The tactic did work, on occasion.
She had once softened enough to urge him to give up.
Rowan told her that no one else was his Genevieve.
He had secretly savored that for a long time.
At King Arthur’s birthday banquet, Adrian suddenly proposed marriage.
The King probably would not have agreed, but he had been drinking, and Rowan did not dare gamble.
So Rowan damaged his own internal organs and coughed up blood, successfully interrupting the proposal.
Martin was brought in and recognized him immediately.
After the old man left, Rowan sensed someone behind the screen. He had intended to eliminate the problem.
Then he came around the corner and saw Genevieve.
She had guessed.
In that moment, Rowan felt fear, panic—and a hidden sliver of joy.
At last, he could tell her properly:
“My name is Rowan Fraser.”
He deliberately let Martin reveal his history.
To tell his own story of suffering would have sounded pitiable.
To have it exposed by someone else—that was far more likely to win her softness.
He gambled that Genevieve would keep his secret.
Win or lose, it would be his fate.
She was softhearted, yes, but she did not forgive him.
She could always separate pity from right and wrong.
That was all right. He could fight slowly.
He learned embroidery, drove away her suitors, and drank the wine he knew was drugged.
She was too smart. She saw through the calculation at a glance.
She got angry.
Rowan had almost been unable to keep himself from smiling.
But Martin had long since told him his body had no more than a few years left.
Suddenly, Rowan no longer dared hope she might love him.
If he died, she would be hurt.
He only hoped she would not hate him.
He also hoped she would remember him longer than she remembered Julian.
She said that the living could not compete with the dead.
Rowan insisted on trying anyway.
After the rebellion ended, he became the new Alpha King.
The man publicly crowned was still called Julian. Only a handful of people knew that the one on the throne was Rowan.
At last, Evelyn had preserved her honor. Rowan, however, never again gave her any real power. She remained in the castle, left with the memory of one lost son and another who would never forgive her.
Genevieve wanted to leave the capital.
Rowan could not bear it.
But if he forced her to stay, she would never be happy. Cedar Ridge no longer trusted royal power, and without her family, she would never feel secure.
And he was dying.
While cursing him nonstop, Martin also told him that the rebellion had burned away several more years of his life.
He wanted to leave with Genevieve and spend his last years guarding her.
But he was King now. He could no longer go.
Nor did he want to be just some suitor in her life who would die too soon.
Schemers are ambitious by nature.
His ambition was to make her remember him forever.
At their final meeting, he embraced her for the first time—and let her go for the first time as well.
“Go. Don’t look back.”
As a child leaving Martin’s house, Rowan had looked back and seen the old man crying. He remembered that for years.
As an adult, he looked back and saw Genevieve pin the red plum into her hair.
He carried that memory with him to the end of his life.