Chapter 30 Riley #2
Or maybe I was just dehydrated from all the crying. Hard to tell at this point.
There were toys in a chest in one of the bedrooms: wooden animals that had been hand-carved, a doll with real hair missing one arm, picture books with illustrations of wolves and forests and castles. My toys, things I played with as a child, before everything was taken from me.
The doll was missing an arm. I wondered if I’d been the one to break it, or if that happened after. I wondered if I’d cried when it happened. I wondered a lot of things I would never know the answers to.
Memories started to surface at the edges of my mind: a flash of sunlight on water, laughter that might have been mine, being lifted high into the air by strong arms, a woman’s voice singing a lullaby I almost remembered.
Summer here. I spent summers here. With my parents. Before the fire, before the running, before I forgot everything that mattered.
“You okay?” Thessa asked, finding me sitting on the floor surrounded by toys.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think so. Maybe.” I held up the one-armed doll. “I might have been a destructive child.”
Thessa’s lips twitched. “That tracks.”
“That’s enough for now.”
It was the third day when I found the secret.
Because apparently my life was a fantasy novel now. Secret wolf heritage, magical kingdoms, fated mates, and now a hidden room unlocked by a mysterious family heirloom. All I needed was a prophecy and a chosen one speech and I’d have the full set.
I was in the library, my favorite room in the cabin, filled floor-to-ceiling with books in languages I could and couldn’t read.
I was running my fingers along the dusty spines, looking for anything that might tell me more about my family’s history.
There had to be journals, diaries, records of who the Mirabelles were, what they believed, why they died.
My hand caught on a crevice. A gap in the bookshelf that shouldn’t be there.
I crouched down to examine it. The gap was small, oddly shaped, recessed into the wood. Not for any key I’d ever seen.
I studied it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it could be.
Then I looked at my wrist.
The watch. The Mirabelle watch, with its distinctive shape and the crest engraved on the back. The watch I’d worn for as long as I could remember, the one piece of my past I’d never let go of.
No. It couldn’t be.
That would be ridiculous. That would be the kind of thing that only happened in books. My watch was not a literal key to a secret vault. That was insane.
“Thessa!” I called. “THESSA!”
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Thessa burst in, looking alarmed. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Look at this.” I pointed to the crevice. “Does that shape look familiar to you?”
Thessa crouched beside me, squinting at the gap. Then recognition dawned on her face.
“That’s the same shape as your watch.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Do you think it’s a secret door?”
“Only one way to find out.”
My hands were trembling as I unfastened the watch from my wrist. This watch had been my comfort, my talisman, the only thing connecting me to a past I couldn’t remember. And now it might be a literal key.
I pressed the watch into the crevice.
It fit perfectly, and a click echoed through the room as the bookshelf swung inward.
Thessa and I stared at the dark opening that had appeared in the wall. Cold air drifted out, carrying the scent of dust and age and secrets long buried.
“Holy shit,” Thessa breathed.
“Holy shit,” I agreed.
We found candles, lit them, and stepped through the opening into a small, dark room beyond.
It was a vault.
Because of course it was. Secret room behind the bookshelf, unlocked by the family heirloom watch. I was one dramatic prophecy away from being the protagonist of my own fantasy romance.
The walls were lined with shelves holding antique texts, jewelry boxes, rolled scrolls, and objects I couldn’t identify. A table in the center held more papers, documents, letters, what looked like a family tree drawn on aged parchment. Everything was covered in dust, untouched for decades.
“Your family kept their most valuable things here,” Thessa murmured, her eyes wide as she took in the treasures. “Hidden. Protected.”
“But why?” I picked up one of the scrolls, unrolled it carefully. It was a deed to property I didn’t recognize. “Why hide all of this?”
“Maybe they were protecting themselves. Or protecting secrets.”
We went through everything.
It took hours. The vault was packed with generations of Mirabelle history: birth records, marriage certificates, land deeds, personal letters.
I read about great-grandparents I never knew, feuds with families I’d never heard of, alliances and betrayals that spanned centuries.
The Mirabelles had been important once, influential, trusted advisors to the crown.
Also, apparently, hoarders. There was a receipt for a furniture purchase from three hundred years ago. Who keeps that?
And then I found the papers.
They were at the bottom of a locked chest that Thessa managed to pry open with a dagger. A bundle of documents, tied with a faded ribbon, clearly hidden more carefully than anything else in the vault. Someone had wanted these protected. Someone had known they were dangerous.
I untied the ribbon. Unfolded the first document.
And horror washed through me.
“Thessa. Look at this.”
It was a letter. Dated twenty-one years ago, when I was seven. Written in my father’s handwriting, based on the notes I’d found in his study.
I have discovered terrible truths. Soren Blackwater and the Ashcroft family have been conspiring against the crown for decades.
They plan to eliminate the Goldridge line and seize control of Duskmere.
I have documented everything: names, dates, communications I intercepted. The evidence is irrefutable.
But I fear they know I’ve discovered them. Kattarina and I must flee. If anything happens to us, this must reach the king.
I was shaking so badly I could barely hold the paper.
“Soren,” Thessa whispered, her face pale. “He’s on the council. He’s been on the council for years.”
“And the Ashcroft family?”
“Noble house. Old blood. They have members in every major institution.” Thessa’s voice was barely audible. “Goddess. They’ve been planning this for decades.” She paused, her expression shifting to horror. “You know an Ashcroft.”
“Who?”
“Vix Ashcroft.”
Of course.
Of fucking course.
Vix. The woman who’d been tormenting me since I arrived. The woman who staged the confrontation with Caelan. The woman who tried to destroy my relationship, who made sure I overheard that conversation in the office.
I’d thought she was just a jealous ex with boundary issues. Turns out she was a jealous ex with boundary issues AND a decades-long conspiracy to commit treason and murder.
“She’s part of this,” I breathed. “She’s been part of this the whole time.”
Everything made sense now. The way Vix targeted me specifically. The way Soren looked at me in the council room, with recognition and fear in his eyes. They knew who I was. They knew I was the daughter of the people who discovered their conspiracy.
“My parents found out.” My voice cracked. “They found out, and they ran, and they were murdered for it.”
“And the evidence...” Thessa gestured at the papers. “It’s been here the whole time, hidden and waiting.”
We kept reading. More documents. More proof.
Financial records showing payments funneled to mercenary groups and rogues.
Correspondence between Soren and someone called “A,” Ashcroft presumably.
Plans for destabilizing the realm, for eliminating rivals, for a coup that had apparently been in the works for longer than I’d been alive.
Murder attempts against heirs documented and analyzed.
Contact lists for rogues and mercenaries willing to do the dirty work.
The recent attacks on Caelan’s father. The coup attempt. It wasn’t random. It was the culmination of a conspiracy that started before I was born. And now Soren knew I was here, knew I might find exactly what we’d just found.
“We have to tell your parents,” I said, my heart pounding. “We have to show them this. Now.”
“Agreed.” Thessa was already gathering the papers, shoving them back into the chest. “This changes everything. This is...”
We stepped out of the vault.
And we weren’t alone.
Men stood in the library. Six of them, dressed in dark clothes, their faces blank. They’d entered silently, surrounded the exit, trapped us with the evidence clutched in our arms.
One of them stepped forward, older, gray-haired, with authority in every line of his body.
“Seize them,” he said.
Of course. Because my life couldn’t just give me one win. I find the evidence that could bring down the conspiracy that killed my parents, and I can’t even make it out of the room. Fucking typical.