Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO STOLE A DEAD CHILD

The palace did not sleep that night.

Neither did Elara.

King Aldric gave her rooms beside his own.

She refused them.

“I don't want silk.”

Aldric looked wounded.

“What do you want?”

“The truth.”

So he took her somewhere nobody had entered in twenty-three years.

A nursery.

Dust covered the furniture.

A wooden cradle stood beside the window.

Above it was a faded painting of Queen Marianne holding an infant.

Elara stopped.

The baby had the same gray-green eyes she saw every morning in the mirror.

Aldric stood behind her.

“Your mother never recovered.”

Elara's jaw tightened.

“Mara was my mother.”

Aldric nodded.

“I understand.”

“No, you don't.”

She turned toward him.

“She fed me.”

“She protected me.”

“She taught me to read.”

“She worked until her hands bled so I could eat.”

Aldric lowered his head.

“I owe her more than I can ever repay.”

“She died believing someone was coming for me.”

Aldric looked up.

“What?”

Elara told him about the stranger with the black ring.

The midnight visit.

Mara's terror.

The wooden box.

And Mara's final words.

Find the King before they find you.

Aldric immediately summoned Commander Rowan.

“Find Severin.”

“Alive.”

Rowan bowed.

Then Lady Beatrice entered.

She carried a letter.

“I should have given this to you twenty-three years ago.”

Aldric stared at her.

“What is it?”

“A confession.”

The letter belonged to a former palace midwife.

She had died six years earlier.

Beatrice had been too frightened to reveal it.

Aldric opened it.

His hands began shaking halfway through.

The night Aurelia was born, the midwife had been ordered to leave the nursery.

When she returned, the living infant was gone.

A dead newborn had been placed in the cradle.

Queen Marianne had been sedated.

The King had been told his daughter died from sudden respiratory failure.

But one servant had witnessed the exchange.

Mara Ellison.

Elara stopped breathing.

“My mother.”

Beatrice nodded.

“Mara stole you back from the men who stole you first.”

Elara sat down.

The room seemed to tilt around her.

Aldric continued reading.

One name appeared repeatedly.

Severin Vale.

Then another.

Duke Garrick Voss.

Celestine's biological father.

Aldric stared at the page.

Celestine had not been an abandoned noble child as Severin claimed.

She had been planted inside the royal family.

Raised beside Aldric.

Prepared to inherit.

The conspiracy had lasted more than two decades.

Then Rowan rushed into the room.

“We found Severin's carriage.”

“Where?”

“Near the northern bridge.”

“And Severin?”

“Gone.”

Rowan hesitated.

“But we found something inside.”

He handed Aldric a bloodstained piece of cloth.

Elara recognized it.

It belonged to Mara's dress.

Her face changed.

“Where did he get this?”

Nobody answered.

Elara looked at the blood.

Then at the King.

“My mother didn't die from illness.”

Aldric understood immediately.

Severin had found Mara.

And Mara's death had silenced the last living witness.

Almost.

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