Chapter 6 - THE KING'S FORGOTTEN SISTER
Elia wanted the name immediately. Sabine refused to give it in the dark with no witnesses.
"I've carried this knowledge alone long enough to understand what it costs," she said. "Your mother deserves to hear it beside you. So does Rowan."
They returned to the cottage, where the queen had fallen asleep in a chair, still holding the corner of the recovered birth certificate. Rowan woke her gently. When Sabine said she had hidden another fact, Marienne sat upright with the exhausted composure of a woman who had learned that one terrible revelation often invited another.
"Mara Fen was born Mara Aldren," Sabine began. "The late king's younger sister. She rejected her position after a dispute over the crown's eastern lands. She was removed from the royal genealogy and ordered never to use her name again."
The queen looked stunned. "Aldren told me his sister died as a child."
"He was ordered to say so."
"Who ordered him?"
Sabine stared at the fire. "The king's father, your predecessor, King Orlan."
Marienne rose so quickly the chair struck the floor. "Orlan died before my daughters were born."
"He prepared the plan before he died," Sabine said. "He believed the kingdom would fracture if twins were born into a contested succession. His advisers agreed that one child would remain public and the other would be raised somewhere unknown until the danger passed."
"Why take both?" Rowan demanded.
"Because after the birth, the plan changed. Someone decided the queen had too much influence and that no royal daughter should grow up under her protection. Garrick carried out the revised order. But the first instructions bore Orlan's seal."
Elia tried to fit the pieces together. An old king's fear, a chancellor's ambition, a nursery nurse trapped between them, and a woman who had given up her name to save one baby.
"Why would Mara take me?" she asked.
"Because she had opposed the first plan," Sabine replied. "She warned her brother that children were not coins to be moved between accounts. When the nurses were ordered to prepare the infants for transport, Mara came back through a kitchen passage and took one cradle. She could only carry one."
Silence followed. It was the kind of silence in which each person imagined the child left behind.
"Celeste," Elia said.
The queen nodded once. "We have to bring her home, even if she hates us."
"She has guards," Rowan said. "She helped set fire to the archive."
"And she was raised by the man who made her disappearance possible," Marienne answered. "Both things can be true."
By dawn, the cottage had become an improvised command post. Nessa's messengers traveled the roads with letters from the queen. Rowan drafted a statement rejecting the false regency. Sabine recorded her account in the presence of Ivo and Anwen, who signed as witnesses. Elia transcribed it, copying each line carefully enough that even a hostile magistrate would have difficulty claiming it had been altered later.
She discovered that truth required an exhausting amount of ordinary labor: writing names, finding dates, comparing signatures, protecting originals, and resisting the temptation to turn uncertainty into certainty because the stronger version sounded better.
While the printers prepared the first pages, Elia and Celeste's names appeared beside one another on the queen's declaration. Rowan hesitated over the word princess, worried that the court would accuse them of assuming what had not yet been established.
"Use daughters believed to have been born to the queen," Elia suggested. "Put the evidence beside it. Let the inquiry finish before the titles begin."
Marienne agreed, although Elia could see how painful it was to limit a sentence that had waited twenty-two years to be spoken. Sabine signed the declaration beneath the queen, followed by two independent witnesses. It was not a perfect protection against lies. Nothing was. But it meant the claim would belong to more than a powerful person's word.
A messenger returned from the university with news that the royal physician's old notebooks had been transferred to the Cathedral Archive after his death. The university could inspect the certificate, but the hospital records needed to establish the twins' identities were across the city, inside a building now guarded by Garrick's soldiers.
Rowan suggested waiting for loyal officers to arrive. Elia argued for a smaller party.
"You have armor, a title, and a face everybody recognizes," she said. "I have a gray dress."
"And the entire palace is searching for that gray dress," he pointed out.
"Then I'll wear blue."
She went with Nessa and Anwen to the cathedral disguised as textile suppliers delivering dyed hangings for the winter festival. The gatekeeper barely examined their cart. The city had changed since Elia last walked its streets. Posters bearing Garrick's seal called the queen's reported illness a matter of national concern. Merchants whispered about new taxes. Palace soldiers watched every bridge.
At the cathedral, Brother Halden, the oldest archivist, met them beside a wall of shelves. He had known Mara before her exile. When Elia showed him the scrap of cloth bearing the broken-wing bird, his face softened with recognition.
"She embroidered that bird herself," he said. "She used a broken wing because she said loyalty to a kingdom shouldn't require pretending it had never hurt you."
"Did she ever tell you why she left?" Elia asked.
"She told me that one day a child might come looking for the truth. I prayed she was wrong."
Halden retrieved the physician's notebooks from a sealed cabinet. The birth entry had been amended three times. The first named twin daughters of Queen Marienne and King Aldren. The second crossed out Selene and described Aurelia's illness. The third, entered after the announced death, claimed that both babies had suffered a contagious fever.
"Different ink," Nessa observed.
"Different hands," Halden replied. "And only the first notation is accompanied by the physician's wax impression."
Elia examined a small sketch in the margin. It showed two newborn footprints, each marked with an identifying symbol: a leaf for Aurelia and a star for Selene. The physician had drawn the mark on Aurelia's shoulder and a small crescent birthmark behind Selene's right ear.
"Can these marks prove anything?" she asked.
"They can help support identity alongside other records," Halden said. "But a mark is not a person's whole history. We must be careful."
Elia appreciated the restraint. She had met too many people eager to claim certainty when certainty benefited them.
As they copied the records, bells rang in the cathedral tower. A guard burst in and announced that all archives were to be sealed under emergency council authority. Halden quietly put the original notebook into a concealed compartment behind a statue.
"Take the copies," he told Elia. "If they seize the originals, I'll swear publicly where the missing pages were kept."
They left through the choir passage. Halfway across the courtyard, Celeste Varrick stepped out beneath the cloister arch, accompanied by only one guard.
Elia stopped. Nessa touched the knife hidden inside her sleeve.
"Don't," Celeste said. "If I wanted you arrested, the city watch would already be here."
She wore an ordinary dark cloak. Without jewels or the court's laughing audience, she looked younger and more tired.
"I know what you found," Celeste said to Elia. "I know what Sabine told you."
"Then you know why we're here."
Celeste glanced at Anwen and Nessa. "I want to speak with you alone."
"No," Elia replied. "You tried to have us shot beneath the throne room. You don't get privacy just because you've changed your mind."
Celeste flinched, then nodded. "Fair."
She pulled back her hair and showed a small crescent-shaped mark behind her right ear. It matched the physician's drawing.
"My father told me the queen abandoned me," she said. "He told me I had been born weak and that Marienne chose the healthier child. He showed me letters supposedly written by her."
"They were forged," Elia said.
"I know that now." Celeste's voice cracked. "I found the drafts in his study. He was teaching me to hate a woman who never knew I existed."
The guard beside her shifted. Elia noticed his hand move toward the hilt of his sword.
"Why come to me?" she asked.
"Because Garrick has ordered a public judgment tomorrow. He plans to present me as the only surviving daughter of the crown, then accuse you and Rowan of treason."
"Will you stand beside him?"
Celeste looked toward the cathedral doors. "I haven't decided what I can survive."
Her guard suddenly pulled his sword. He didn't aim for Elia. He aimed for Celeste.
Nessa slammed a basket into his arm. The blade struck stone. Anwen shouted for help while Celeste staggered backward, horrified. Elia grabbed the fallen sword and kicked it toward the fountain. The guard fled into the crowd before anyone could stop him.
Celeste stood shaking. "He's been assigned to me since I was thirteen."
Elia looked at the young woman who might be her twin. "Then your father has started treating you the way he treats everyone else. As something he can replace."
Celeste stared at her for a long moment. Then she reached inside her cloak and withdrew a sealed letter.
"I took this from his desk," she said. "I was afraid to read it."
May you like
Elia broke the wax. The letter was addressed to an officer on the northern border. It contained a payment schedule and a short instruction written in Garrick's hand:
When the regency is confirmed, remove both claimants. The daughters must not survive the winter.
