Chapter 34 #3
I should have been angry. A week ago, I might have been. Tonight I understood exactly what she meant. “I thought it was ridiculous.”
Vareena didn’t try to correct me.
“I grew up in Edenlo. I didn’t know the names of Elyndor’s kings and queens or which families mattered in Umbrael.
You told me about Aurenya like you were telling me about a piece of history, because that’s what she was to me.
” My eyes found the broken seal again. “Why would I hear that story and think she could be my mother?”
The word came out before I was ready for it. Mother. The room changed because I had said it. Not magically. Worse. It became real in a way it hadn’t while everything stayed inside my head. I looked at Vareena.
“I don’t think I can keep pretending I don’t see it.”
Her eyes filled, but she blinked the tears back.
I was grateful. If she cried, I wasn’t sure what I would do.
I sat because my legs had started shaking.
Emrin moved the chair beside mine slightly closer and took her own seat without saying anything.
Our knees nearly touched. That was all. I stared at the royal mark on the page.
Aurenya. My mother. The words still didn’t fit naturally together.
They seemed to belong to two different languages.
“What was she like?”
Vareena took a breath. “I don’t remember her personally. I was a baby when the palace fell.”
I nodded. Of course she had been.
“But my father remembers her.”
That made me look up. Vareena folded her hands on the edge of the table.
“He doesn’t talk about those years much. Most of what I know came out in pieces when I was growing up. Stories when someone mentioned the old court or when he thought the Council had become too fond of itself.”
There was something almost affectionate in the way she said it.
“He said Aurenya hated ceremony when she thought the ceremony existed only to make important people feel more important. She had a habit of disappearing from formal dinners, which apparently caused her guards no end of trouble. Once they found her in the kitchens because she’d heard one of the cooks had a son who was ill and she wanted to know whether the palace healer had seen him. ”
I didn’t move.
Vareena continued more quietly. “My father always said she remembered people. Servants, guards, stable hands. He could introduce her to some lord three times and she’d forget which estate he owned, but she’d remember the name of a groom she’d met once months earlier.”
The ache behind my ribs gave way. It wasn’t the crown.
It wasn’t even the name. It was the kitchen.
A woman slipping away from a formal dinner because someone’s child was sick.
A person. My mother had become a person in less than a minute, and the fact that Vareena’s father had memories of her while I had none hurt in a place I had no defense for.
I looked down before anyone saw my face change.
Too late. A tear landed beside my hand. I wiped it away with the heel of my palm.
“I didn’t even know her name.”
“I used to make things up about her when I was little.” My voice had dropped low enough that I wasn’t sure why I kept speaking.
“Not stories exactly. I would see a woman in the village do something and wonder if my mother would have done it the same way. Maia would braid my hair and I’d wonder whether she knew how.
Sometimes I decided she must have liked the same food I did because I didn’t have anything else. ”
My throat tightened. “I spent my whole life guessing, and people here have stories about her.”
Vareena reached across the table. She didn’t pull me into a hug. She simply turned her hand palm up beside mine. I put my hand in it and her fingers closed around me.
“I wish I could give you more.”
“I know.”
And I did. That was the terrible thing. Vareena had given me more about my mother in the last five minutes than I had been able to gather in twenty years.
I let myself cry for a little while. Quietly.
No one made a ceremony out of it. Emrin stayed beside me.
Vareena held my hand. Kieran moved to the far end of the table and began sorting through the records we’d disturbed, giving me the closest thing to privacy available in a room containing four people.
Eventually the tears stopped because bodies were cruelly practical things and apparently mine had reached its limit.
I drew a shaky breath. Aurenya had been queen.
That fact had almost become secondary to everything else.
Until it wasn’t. I looked again at the royal seal.
My mother had been Queen of Elyndor. I stared at it for several seconds before the obvious consequence finally caught up.
“Oh, gods.”
Vareena’s face told me she knew exactly where my mind had gone. I covered my eyes with both hands. “No.”
I lowered my hands. “This is absurd.”
Emrin let me have the denial without agreeing with it. “I’m sure it feels that way.”
“Feel?” I looked at her. “I have spent half my life with mud on my boots. Maia once made me wear the same winter coat for three years because it still technically closed if I didn’t breathe too deeply.
” A tiny crease appeared between Emrin’s brows, but she wisely did not point out how little this had to do with anything. “I am not a princess.”
The word sounded so stupid in my mouth that I nearly laughed. Vareena did not. Neither did anyone else. I leaned back in the chair and looked toward the ceiling.
“That’s what a queen’s daughter is.”
Vareena’s voice stayed careful. “Yes.”
I closed my eyes. For a moment all I could picture was Edenlo.
Maia’s cottage in winter. The basket near the door where everyone dumped gloves and then complained when no one could find a matching pair.
The village square before First Rite. Fenric shouting from across the road.
Auntie Nara threatening someone with a spoon.
Nothing about those memories changed because of a dead queen. I opened my eyes again.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
“You don’t have to do anything with it tonight,” Emrin said.
She didn’t say it like advice. Only fact.
I turned my hands over. Shadow gathered across one set of fingertips, Light shimmering over the other.
Usually I would have hidden one. Tonight I was too tired.
When their edges touched, silver appeared between them.
Starborn.
For weeks, I had treated the word like an accusation.
The Codex had used it first, then candidates after the Crucible, attaching old stories to my name as though one impossible display of magic gave them the right to turn me into whatever legend frightened them most. But the Codex had known about a child before she was born.
A child of Light and Shadow.
My mother’s kingdom had fallen.
I watched silver curl over my knuckles and realized I didn’t need to say the word aloud.
The denial simply wasn’t there anymore. That frightened me more than the title ever had.
Light faded first. Shadow followed, leaving my hands mine again.
I rubbed my thumb across the scar at my palm until Kieran spoke.
“We should put the originals back before someone notices they’ve been moved.” I looked at the records. There were still questions. The Umbrael mark. Who erased the records. How I ended up in Edenlo. What happened after the Codex warned my parents. Maerox.
I couldn’t touch any of them tonight. “Tomorrow,” I said.
Kieran nodded. “Tomorrow.”
He didn’t tell me we needed to keep going.
Didn’t ask me to decide what any of this meant.
He simply began returning the documents to their proper order.
Vareena copied the Elyndorian seal before we put the facilities ledger back.
Kieran made a separate notation of the Umbrael mark, precise enough that he could compare it against older court records later.
Emrin checked every page number as we restored the maps.
It was mundane work. I needed that more than I expected.
By the time we finished, my head throbbed behind my eyes.
Emrin packed her satchel and stood. She lingered beside me for a moment.
“If you want company later, come get me.”
There was no speech attached to it.
“Okay.” She squeezed my shoulder and left for Verdant Hallows.
Vareena waited near the doorway while I gathered the last of my things.
Kieran stood beside the table, one hand braced against its edge.
I looked at him. After last night, I had imagined seeing him again would be the most complicated part of today.
That felt almost laughable now. He nodded toward the door.
“You should go.”
“Yeah.” Neither of us moved immediately. I thought about his mouth. Even now. Apparently discovering I might be the surviving daughter of a dead queen had not reorganized every part of my brain. I was almost grateful for that.
“Goodnight, Nyxara.”
His gaze softened slightly. “Goodnight, Menace.”