Chapter 4 - TWO DAUGHTERS OF THE CROWN
Celeste Varrick had worn emerald silk to the bride-selection ceremony. Now she wore dark leather beneath a velvet cloak, and the four men at her back carried crossbows already drawn.
"Step away from the chest," she ordered.
Prince Rowan moved in front of Queen Marienne. Captain Ivo raised his sword. Elia, crouched near the archive shelves, held the birth certificate against her chest with hands that refused to stop shaking.
"You knew," Rowan said to Celeste. "You knew about the twins."
"I knew my father had spent twenty-two years preventing a civil war," she replied. "And now you've broken the only arrangement keeping this kingdom together."
"By revealing two children?" Elia asked.
Celeste turned toward her as if surprised that the maid still dared to speak. "By giving the wrong people a reason to claim the throne."
The queen's expression hardened. "Those children were mine."
"One was," Celeste said. "One was an inconvenience with a terrible birthmark and a worse prophecy."
Marienne went white. "What birthmark?"
Celeste realized she had said too much. Her gaze darted toward the nearest guard.
Rowan saw it too. "Tell her," he said. "You came down here to frighten us. Don't be shy now."
The first bolt struck the bookshelf beside his head. Ivo pushed the prince behind the chest as parchment burst into the air. The second bolt shattered the lantern. Darkness swallowed half the room.
Elia acted without planning. She took a handful of old ledgers and hurled them into the nearest man's face. When he staggered, she kicked his knee, seized his dropped lantern, and threw it against the wet stone floor. Oil spread across the entrance. The flame flickered in a bright barrier, forcing two men backward.
"This way!" she shouted.
She had seen the maintenance grating behind the shelves. Palace architects always built a second path for servants who would someday have to repair the grandeur their employers admired. She pulled it loose and sent the queen crawling through first.
Rowan hesitated, looking toward Ivo.
"Go," the captain ordered. "My duty is to keep the crown alive, not die looking impressive."
He backed toward them, sword raised. Celeste screamed for her men to pursue.
The passage was narrow, choked with cobwebs, and steeply inclined. Elia led them by touch, following the cold draft toward the river. Behind them came the scrape of boots and the distant crackle of fire. She knew that if the archive burned, the letters might disappear, but the certificate tucked beneath her dress would survive as long as she did.
After several hundred feet, they emerged behind a deserted greenhouse. The sky was pale with the first promise of morning. Rowan stood in the mist, breathing hard, while Marienne pressed her face into her hands.
"Twins," the queen said again, as though repeating the word might make it more understandable.
Elia wanted to comfort her but could not find a safe way. The woman had just learned that her grief was larger than she had known, and perhaps one of the babies was still missing.
"Celeste said a birthmark," Elia offered.
Marienne looked up. "The doctors said Aurelia was born with a mark near her shoulder. A red mark shaped like a leaf. They called it harmless."
Elia touched the back of her left shoulder through the fabric of her uniform. She had a reddish patch there, roughly the shape of a leaf. Mara had once explained that every person carried something on the skin that belonged only to them.
"I have one," she said.
Rowan looked away to give her privacy as Elia lowered the collar enough to show the mark to the queen. Marienne did not reach for it. She stared, then shut her eyes.
"That was Aurelia's mark," she said. "I saw it when I held her. But I never saw the second child."
"A resemblance is not proof," Elia reminded her.
"No," Marienne agreed. "But it's one more reason not to give up."
They needed a place where the chancellor's guards could not simply follow. Rowan suggested the royal hunting lodge, but Elia rejected it at once. Every royal property was known to the chancellor. Instead, she led them to a row of modest houses along the river where palace laundresses lived. A widow named Anwen opened her door before sunrise and did not ask why the queen wore a dirty cloak.
"Your Majesty," Anwen said, then looked beyond her to Elia. "So the day finally came."
Elia stopped. "You know me?"
"I knew Mara. I helped her when you were small."
Anwen brought them bread and strong tea. After learning what had happened, she took the old certificate from Elia and laid it on her table beneath the kitchen lamp.
"Mara brought one infant to the river village," Anwen said. "Just one. She arrived in the rain with a baby wrapped in a blue blanket. Said she'd been hired as a wet nurse and was leaving the city before the court changed its mind. She had money enough for a year's food, but she was frightened every time a carriage came along the road."
"Did she ever mention the second child?" Rowan asked.
"She said there were doors she'd closed because the people behind them would hurt the baby. That's all."
Anwen looked toward Elia, and her eyes filled. "Mara loved you. Whatever she had done to get you there, she loved you every day."
For a moment Elia could not speak. So many people were prepared to argue about whether she belonged to the crown. Only Anwen had remembered to tell her that the woman who raised her mattered.
"Mara died when I was six," Elia said. "They told me it was fever."
Anwen's face changed. "Her illness began the day two men came to the cottage. She was well before they arrived. That night she burned the papers in the stove and sent you to sleep in my house. Three days later, she could barely stand."
"Who were the men?"
"One wore a chancellor's silver pin. The other kept his face covered."
Rowan turned toward the window, jaw tight. "We need to reach the university physicians before anyone destroys the records."
"We also need Sabine," Elia said. "And Tomas. They were moved for a reason."
Anwen considered this. "There is a woman in the old dye works who runs messages for the prison wagons. Her name is Nessa. She knows which roads are safe because she helped build half of them."
Rowan looked skeptical. "A dye worker runs prison intelligence?"
"A woman who sells dyed cloth to guards' wives knows more about transfers than a prince who reads reports," Anwen replied.
They found Nessa under a roof hung with strips of blue cloth. She spoke with the blunt impatience of someone who had no desire to impress a prince. After hearing their names, she pulled a ledger from beneath a bench and traced a wagon route with a stained finger.
"Two prisoners left the western cells three nights ago," she said. "An elderly woman and a stable hand. They were taken north, then the wagon returned empty. The guards bought bread at the Ash Bridge tollhouse. One mentioned the old salt mine."
"Why a salt mine?" Rowan asked.
"No one hears screams underground," Nessa said. "And no one asks why a condemned tunnel is locked."
Marienne insisted on coming. Elia wanted to refuse, but the queen had already lost too many years listening to others decide what was best for her.
They traveled north in Anwen's vegetable wagon. The wheels rattled over the stones. Elia sat beside Marienne beneath a tarp, sharing an uncomfortable silence that gradually became something less frightening.
"Mara taught me to mend shoes," Elia said eventually. "She said a person who can repair something never needs to be ashamed of owning an old thing."
"I wish I had known her," Marienne said.
"Maybe you did. Maybe she did something you would never forgive."
"If she kept you alive," the queen replied, "forgiveness will be the easiest part."
At dusk they reached the abandoned mine. Smoke rose from an upper vent. Guards patrolled the entrance, and a carriage bearing the Varrick crest waited under the trees. Rowan drew a map in the dirt. There was a drainage tunnel below the eastern slope, too narrow for armored soldiers but wide enough for Elia.
"I can go," she said.
"You're not trained," Rowan objected.
"Neither are you at being invisible."
He couldn't dispute that. They agreed that Elia and Nessa would enter through the drainage tunnel while Rowan and Ivo, who had escaped the archive, diverted the guards. Marienne would remain with Anwen and a trusted escort.
Inside, the mine smelled of salt and standing water. Elia crawled through a passage until she reached a barred chamber. A woman with silver hair sat behind the bars. Beside her lay Tomas, his face swollen but his eyes open.
"Elia?" he whispered.
The woman lifted her head.
"You have Mara's eyes," she said.
"Sabine?"
The old nurse reached toward the bars. "I have prayed for twenty-two years that I would see you before I died."
Elia swallowed. "Then tell me who Selene is."
May you like
Sabine's face twisted in grief.
"Selene was the baby they kept," she whispered. "And she has been living in the palace under another name."
