Chapter 6 The Beginning of the End #2
“King Valen seems to delight in the unconventional,” I replied, my voice steadier than I felt. “Or perhaps he simply wishes to hide any of tonight’s bloodstains.”
My father’s composure didn’t so much as flinch at my crassness. “Does his reputation worry you?” His question was almost academic, as if inquiring about an obscure point of governance rather than the man I was to wed.
I laughed, the sound brittle in the vast chamber. “Would it matter if it did? The treaties are signed. The alliance is made. My concerns are as irrelevant now as they have always been.”
He studied me, a faint frown deepening the lines around his eyes. “You believe I sold you.”
“Is that not precisely what you’ve done?” I asked, reckless now in these final hours as my father’s subject. Soon I would belong to another kingdom, another king. What punishment could he inflict that would matter now?
“No,” he answered simply, and something in his tone gave me pause. “I secured you a crown and a kingdom. Power in your own right, not merely reflected glory as some minor lord’s bride.”
His words struck me silent. In all my imaginings of this arrangement, I had never considered that he might have made it with my interests in mind. As much as I wanted to believe that to be true, and perhaps he even believed it himself, I knew it for the lie that it was.
He wanted to be rid of me. Just as much, if not more, than the rest of his family.
Then, as if weighing some great decision, he approached and placed the box on the table beside me, his fingers lingering on the carved lid as though reluctant to release it.
It was roughly the size of a large book, carved from a dark wood I didn’t recognize. Intricate patterns swirled across its surface—not the geometric precision favored in Vareth, but wild, organic shapes that seemed almost to move in the candlelight.
“There is something I kept,” he said, quieter than before, as if the words might break if spoken too loud. “It should have been yours. Long ago.”
I leaned closer, studying the twisting vines and flowers unlike any that grew in Vareth’s gardens. Interspersed between them were symbols—ancient script in a language I couldn’t decipher.
“Open it,” he instructed, stepping back.
I hesitated, then carefully lifted the lid. Nestled on a bed of midnight-blue velvet lay a crown unlike any I had seen in Vareth’s treasury. Delicate silver formed an intricate circlet, studded with moonstones that seemed to glow. It was stunning. Otherworldly.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, not daring to touch it.
“It was your mother’s,” my father said, the words striking me in the chest. “She would have worn this on the day she became my queen.”
The world tilted. “Your queen?” I echoed, stunned. “But she was never… You were already wed to Ira when—“
“Yes,” he interrupted, his voice suddenly rough with emotion I had never heard him from him. “Your mother came to Vareth after Ira. Ira was a political match, and I would have dissolved the marriage had your mother accepted my request for her hand.”
I stared at him, blood roaring in my ears. All my life, I had believed myself the product of a fleeting royal indiscretion. A passion that had flared and died. And while it sounded as though it hadn’t been fleeting on my father’s part, the court whispers were partly true.
My mother, the temptress. A foreign seductress who had captured the fancy of the newly-wedded king before vanishing as mysteriously as she had arrived.
Some whispers, darker than others, suggested she hadn’t disappeared at all. That she had posed too great a threat to the new queen’s position, and had been quietly eliminated on royal orders.
I had grown up believing my father had, at the very least, banished her. At worst, ordered her death.
“You’re saying you wanted her as your wife?” I managed, my voice hardly more than a whisper. “What happened?”
My father’s face seemed to age before my eyes, decades pressing down upon his features. He turned away, stepping to the window, where the last light of day cast his profile in stark relief.
“She left,” he said softly. The words hung between us, fragile as breath. “I begged her to stay. Offered her everything within my power—a crown, a kingdom, my heart. But she refused.”
I stood frozen, unable to process the revelation.
“Why?” I asked, my fingers hovering over the silver circlet as if it might burn me. “Why did she leave?”
“She said she couldn’t remain,” he continued, his voice distant with memory. “That forces beyond our understanding would tear us apart if she stayed. I thought it madness. The ravings of a frightened woman. I was a king. What force could possibly threaten us?”
He laughed then—a hollow, mirthless sound. “Then I learned she was carrying our child.”
His gaze turned back to me, hardening before my very eyes.
I saw it then. The blame. He blamed me for taking her away. For making her leave.
“You were left on the palace steps,” he said, his voice icing over. “An infant, wrapped in silver cloth.”
The air stilled in my lungs.
“There was a note,” my father said, facing me fully. “Written in her hand. She named you. Said to protect you. So I did what I could.”
I felt the floor beneath me shift, the certainty I’d built my entire existence upon crumbling away. “So you... took me in out of obligation?”
“I took you in because you were hers. And I owed her that much.”
Hers. My mother’s. Not his.
My hands trembled as I tried to absorb everything he’d just told me.
“But why—“ My voice broke. “Why treat me as you have? As if my mother meant nothing to you?” I paused, my breath coming faster. “You didn’t give me even the dignity of your family name.”
I had always been just Mireille. The court was forced to call me Princess, but the royal name had never been bestowed upon me.
He sighed, as if this question was especially tedious.
“Understand Mireille, I was newly wed. I had my heir on the way. I could not give you any claim to my kingdom, no matter how much your mother meant to me.” He shook his head, moving back toward me.
“And I could not look at you without seeing her.”
With deliberate care, he lifted the crown from its velvet nest and held it before me. The moonstones caught the candlelight, sending prismatic reflections dancing across the walls like trapped stars.
“This should have always been yours. It will be your legacy, when you leave for Nocthar.” His voice softened, just barely. “I did what I could to honor your mother’s request to protect you. But the kingdom, Vareth itself, comes first.”
I stared at the crown, unmoving. “So you sacrifice me to the Blood King and offer me my mother’s crown as consolation?”
Something flickered in his eyes—regret, perhaps, or merely irritation at my persistence.
“Take it,” he said, extending the crown. “If nothing else, let it remind you of her.”
Slowly, I reached out, half-expecting it to dissolve at my touch. But the metal felt solid. Warm somehow, as though it retained some memory of a body it once belonged to. Its weight surprised me—not just its heft, but the meaning it carried. The history. The lost possibilities it represented.
“Did you love her?” I asked, my voice scarcely more than a whisper, my eyes fixed on the circlet in my hands.
My father was silent for so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. When he finally did, his voice was careful. Measured. As though he were still working out the truth himself.
“I looked for her. I used every ounce of my power, and others’, to find her.
” He paused. “But I’m not certain I am capable of love, Mireille.
I have ruled this kingdom for over three decades.
I have sired seven children. I have made alliances and broken them, won wars and averted others.
But love?” He exhaled, the sound containing multitudes of regret.
“If what I felt for your mother was love, then I have never experienced it again.”
The admission hung between us, more intimate than any conversation we had ever shared. I clutched the crown to my chest, feeling as though something precious and sharp-edged had just been placed in my care. A truth that cut even as it illuminated.
“I will wear it,” I said finally, lifting my gaze.
Something like approval flickered in his eyes. “Good. It suits you better than that crimson monstrosity, at any rate.”
The momentary warmth in his voice faded as he stepped back, resuming the mantle of kingship. “The ceremony begins in an hour. Do not be late.”
Without waiting for my reply, he turned and strode toward the door, his royal bearing fully restored. At the threshold, he paused.
“Your mother would be proud of the woman you’ve become, Mireille.”
Before I could form a response, he was gone, leaving me alone with the crown and a lifetime of reconsidered truths.
I sank onto a nearby chair, crimson skirts pooling like blood around me, the silver crown cold and heavy in my lap. My fingers traced the intricate designs, following patterns that looked almost like words in a language I should know, but couldn’t quite recall.
A hesitant knock pulled me from my reverie. The door opened to reveal Isolde and the retinue of servants, returned to complete my preparation for the ceremony. They filtered in cautiously, as though expecting to find the aftermath of some terrible confrontation.
“Are you all right?” Isolde asked gently, coming to my side while the others resumed their duties at a respectful distance.
I looked down at the crown, then placed it carefully back in the carved box.
“I’m not certain,” I answered honestly. “But I will be.”
Her eyes widened at the sight of the crown, questions evident in her expression, but she asked none of them. Instead, she squeezed my hand and turned to the task at hand.
“The veil, if you please,” she instructed a hovering handmaiden. “And Her Highness will need the jeweled combs secured properly. Nothing must be out of place for the ceremony.”
I stood, allowing them to arrange the blood-red veil over my dark hair, feeling the weight of my mother’s crown as they anchored it in place.
In the mirror, I looked like something half-born of myth.
A creature of shadow and flame. Pale skin beneath crimson silk.
Silver-flecked eyes gleaming through the translucent veil like the eyes of some otherworldly being.
A Queen of Nocthar.
The questions for my father would wait. The truths—and lies—of my parentage would remain to be unraveled. For now, I had a king to wed and a new kingdom to claim.
Whatever darkness awaited me in Nocthar, I would face it with my mother’s crown upon my head, armor forged of strength and inheritance.
The final preparations continued around me, but I hardly noticed. My mind had already moved forward to the moment I would stand before the Blood King and bind my fate to his.
Not as a sacrifice.
But as a queen with secrets, with power, of her own.