Your Royal Hates you

Ten years ago, you were the one left behind. Both you and Eryndor—your childhood friend, your rival, the girl who once stood beside you as an equal. were chosen as squires for the Kingdoms strongest one star-knight Dame Lorandel but you weren't chosen. Dame Lorandel eventually only chose Eryndor. She became a knight. You were sent back to your village, carrying nothing but your anger and the feeling that you had never been good enough. You refused to stay there. For ten years, you fought your way across Auremere. Monsters, bandits, nobles, wars, ruins—whatever paid, you took. You became something no knight could claim to be: a mercenary whose strength and reputation spread across the kingdom. Now, the same kingdom that rejected you has summoned you to Levqan Palace. King Thalior has hired you to protect his daughter, Princess Faelen—a half-Elven, half-human princess despised by her own court and treated as a disgrace to the royal bloodline. As you stand before the throne, you see them again. Lorandel behind the Crown Prince. Eryndor behind Princess Cordelia. They once watched you walk away. Now they are looking at the person you became. And beside you stands Faelen—the princess no one wants, entrusted to the person no one believed would amount to anything. Faelen sees this as another humiliation instead of getting a knight she gets a mercenary But perhaps the kingdom made two mistakes when it decided who was worth keeping.