Chapter 70- The woman I Love #2
How many innocent people have died because of you without you ever knowing their names?"
His brow tightened. "How many families buried someone because they believed you?"
I continued. "How many children waited for a parent who never came home because someone trusted your judgment?"
The questions were gentle.
Almost curious.
They carried no accusation.
That somehow made them heavier.
"I am no better than you," I said after a long pause. "And you are certainly no worse than me."
The admission surprised him.
I saw it in his eyes.
People always expected rulers to separate themselves from the blood beneath their crowns. As though power somehow kept their hands clean. It never had. "If you truly are innocent..." My smile softened, though no warmth reached it. "Then I am sincerely sorry for the fate I have chosen for you."
"Ophelia."
My name sounded wrong in his mouth.
Not intimate.
Not respectful.
Desperate.
A plea disguised as familiarity.
A man reaching for humanity after spending so long denying it to others.
I laughed quietly.
"But innocent is one thing you are not." His expression hardened. " Yet you have convinced yourself you are."
"You're mistaken."
"Am i."
His breathing became uneven.
"You have no proof."
"I have enough."
"You do not."
The words came faster now.
Sharper.
The careful composure he had worn since entering my office had begun to fracture around the edges.
His voice rose because control over everything else had already begun slipping away.
His body no longer answered him. His legs refused to move.
His hands barely obeyed. The only thing left under his command was his voice, and even that had begun abandoning him.
"You cannot do this because of suspicion."
"I can."
Slowly, I lifted one hand to the imperial seal resting against my chest.
The piece of gold was laughably small. Hardly larger than the palm of my hand.
People had killed for far less. "You see this?"
I asked softly, brushing my thumb across the engraved raven.
"Such an insignificant little piece of metal."
Nathaniel's eyes followed the movement.
"It grants me authority to have almost everything inside this empire." My smile widened just enough to become unsettling. "Land. Wealth. Armies. Laws."
I paused.
"And lives."
The room became very quiet.
"Today," I whispered, "what I desire... is yours."
"You cannot simply decide someone is guilty."
I tilted my head. The words almost made me smile. "That is a curious thing for you to say."
His brow furrowed.
"You serve my husband," I say. "You have carried out his judgments. You have watched men kneel before the throne and beg for mercy."
His eyes shifted. "How many?" I asked quietly.
He did not answer. "How many stood where you are now?"
My voice remained almost unbearably gentle.
"Unable to run. Unable to change their fate. Begging someone more powerful to believe they deserved another chance."
I leaned forward slightly.
"And how many times did you convince yourself you were merely following orders?"
Nathaniel's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
I settled back into the couch once more, folding my hands neatly together in my lap.
The movement felt strangely peaceful. "Still..."
I said after a thoughtful silence. "Perhaps you truly are innocent."
His eyes lifted toward mine.
Hope.
Only for an instant.
Hope always arrived before reason.
"And if you are..." I continued quietly, "Then tonight will simply become another tragedy committed beneath this crown." I looked briefly toward the crown beside me. "Another innocent life taken by someone who believed they had enough certainty." My gaze returned to him.
"I will have poisoned an innocent man." The words settled heavily between us. "And I suppose I will carry that sin for the rest of my life."
Another silence.
Long enough for him to almost believe I regretted it.
Then I asked softly,
"But tell me, Nathaniel...What burden would you have carried after killing me?" He said nothing. "Would you have mourned me?"
Silence.
"Would guilt have stolen your sleep?" His jaw tightened. "Would you have replayed my final moments every night until you could no longer close your eyes?"
The only sound in the room was the crackling fire.
"Or..." I said gently, "Would I have become another report?" I watched him carefully. "Another task completed." Another pause. "Another problem solved.And my daughters..." Something changed in his face. Not guilt. Recognition. He knew exactly where this conversation had always been leading.
"Two little girls."
I smiled sadly.
"They have never harmed anyone." I thought of Elowen reaching toward the crystal chandeliers with delighted laughter. Of Lysandra resting her tiny head against Achilles' chest while pretending not to smile at Elias.
"They have never hated anyone." My throat tightened despite myself. "They have never learned cruelty." I looked at him without blinking. "They have never learned deceit." The room seemed impossibly still. "Would you have grieved for them?"
Nathaniel swallowed.
"With all your years serving this crown..." I asked quietly, "Would you have cried for two innocent lives taken far too early? Would you have wept while their tiny hearts stopped beating before they ever had the chance to truly live?"
My smile disappeared completely.
"Or..."
The word barely rose above a whisper.
"Would they have simply become another necessary casualty?"
The hardest part had never been discovering the truth.
It had been surviving it.
For months, I prayed that I had made a mistake.
Not because the evidence against Nathaniel was weak, uncertain, or dependent upon frightened witnesses willing to say whatever they believed their queen wanted to hear.
It was not. That was precisely the problem.
Every time I pulled the case apart, every time I removed a statement, challenged a date, discarded a conclusion, or forced myself to begin again from nothing, the evidence quietly rebuilt itself into the same dreadful shape.
His name.
His presence in places no one had thought important enough to question.
"I never planned on killing your daughters."
The denial came too quickly.
The words had already escaped him, settling into the office before either of us could pretend they had not been spoken.
I had accused him of many things tonight, but not yet of threatening my daughters directly.
I had not told him what part of his crime I had uncovered or how closely I had followed the path between my poisoning and the lives growing inside me.
Yet he had defended himself against it.
Nathaniel realized his mistake almost as quickly as I did.
His eyes shifted.
Only once.
Toward the broken table rather than toward me, as though shattered wood might offer him a better answer than the one his fear had already provided.
It was enough.
I smiled faintly.
"Interesting."
His gaze returned to mine. "You misunderstood."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
His breathing remained carefully measured, but his voice had begun to strain beneath the weight of maintaining calm. Each word required more effort now, as though he had to inspect it before allowing it to leave his mouth.
"You are frightened," he said. "Someone has poisoned your mind against me."
"Who?"
A pause.
"I...I do not know."
"Then invent someone."
His jaw tightened.
"You have always been remarkably good at explanations."
"I have done nothing."
Silence settled between us.
I looked at him for a long time.
At the man lying among broken wood and spilled wine, still trying to hold himself with the dignity of someone standing upright.
At the familiar face I had seen in corridors, meetings, supply rooms, and quiet discussions when the palace seemed too large and too complicated for anyone else to understand why small details mattered.
Then I laughed.
Quietly.
Almost sadly.
"I wanted those words to be true."
Nathaniel's expression changed.
Not fear this time.
Confusion.
"I wanted them to be true so desperately that I spent six months trying to prove them."
The office grew still.
The fire continued moving behind him, though even its faint crackling seemed too loud inside the silence.
"When I first realized it could be you, I refused to believe it."
My fingers brushed absently over the edge of my sleeve, smoothing fabric that was already flat.
"You understood my systems better than almost anyone. You questioned them. Improved them. Protected them. You were one of the few people inside this palace who thought the way I did."
A faint smile touched my mouth.
It did not remain.
"I admired that." Nathaniel said nothing. "So when every road began leading back to you, I assumed I had overlooked another."
My gaze lowered.
Only for a moment.
"I told myself there had to be someone else hidden beneath your movements. Someone using your routines. Someone who knew where you would be and understood that your presence would disguise theirs."
I looked back at him.
"I searched for that person every day."
My voice remained gentle, though the memory had begun pressing painfully against my chest.
"I stopped reading the ledgers the way I always had."
His brow tightened.
"I stopped counting coins. Stopped looking for missing supplies. Stopped expecting someone to have altered a record, forged a signature, or stolen something from storage."
Those had been the answers I understood.
Numbers changed.
Inventory disappeared.
Names were added or removed.
Paper betrayed people eventually because paper remembered what humans preferred to forget. Nathaniel had understood that too. That was why he had never touched it.
"Instead," I said, "I rebuilt the palace." He stared at me. "One day at a time. One hallway at a time. One servant at a time."
His breathing slowed.
Not from relief.
From recognition.
"I reconstructed every delivery made during the months surrounding my poisoning."
The office disappeared briefly behind the memory.