Read Chapter 13: Aftermath of Truth

The ring lay cold against Anya’s wrist, a second skin she could not forget even as the memory of the crypts began to blur at the edges. She pressed her palm flat against the stone wall of the corridor, steadying herself, and tried to remember the way the door had opened for her—the way her mother’s sigil had glowed like a heartbeat before yielding.

“You’re going to faint,” Kael said.

“I’m not going to faint.”

“You’re pale as the moon and you’ve got one hand braced against the wall like you’re about to lose your lunch.”

Anya turned her head just enough to fix him with a look. “Do I look like the sort of woman who loses her lunch?”

“No,” he said. “You look like the sort of woman who loses consciousness.”

She wanted to argue. She had the words lined up, sharp and ready, but the effort of forming them felt like dragging stones through sand. The black veins had crept past her wrist now, fine as spider silk, threading up toward her forearm beneath the sleeve of her gown. Kael had seen them. He hadn’t said a word about them, but she knew he had seen them, because he kept looking at her arm with the careful, worried attention of a man watching a fuse burn.

“The diary,” she said instead, quieter. “We barely read it. We left it there.”

“We left it there because Voss’s men were about to put steel through our backs,” Kael said. “We can go back.”

“Can we?”

He didn’t answer. That was answer enough.

They had come up through a side passage she hadn’t known existed, a narrow, winding thing her mother had built into the walls, and it had spat them out behind the kitchens. The soldiers were still searching the crypts below, shouting orders that echoed up through the stone, but no one had thought to check the corridors behind the scullery. No one except the two of them, and they were both bleeding tired.

Anya pushed off the wall and started walking.

The healer’s quarters sat at the end of a long gallery lined with portraits of dead kings. Anya had always hated this corridor. Every face on the wall wore the same expression—mild, distant, faintly disapproving—and the candlelight made them all look like they were watching her with secrets tucked behind their teeth.

“Why are we here?” Kael asked, keeping pace.

“The healer has been treating me since I was a child. If anyone knows whether my mother’s death was truly accidental, it would be her.”

“Accidental,” Kael repeated. “Falling down a flight of stairs is accidental. An overturned lantern is accidental. A queen dying of a sudden wasting illness that appeared a week before she was found cold in her bed—that isn’t accidental. That’s something else entirely.”

Anya stopped with her hand hovering over the door. “You didn’t tell me you thought it wasn’t an accident.”

“You never asked.”

She wanted to be angry with him. She wanted to tell him that he should have spoken up sooner, that he owed her the truth the moment he suspected something was wrong, that every day she woke up without her history and had to trust him to fill the gaps—and that it wasn’t fair for him to hold back pieces of her own mother’s death.

But the black veins were crawling up her arm, and the ring was cold against her skin, and she had just seen her mother’s private door open at her touch like a lock recognizing its key. There were too many things she didn’t understand. She didn’t have room for anger too.

“Let’s go in,” she said.

The healer was not there.

The room was empty—a small, tidy chamber with a narrow bed, a washbasin, and shelves lined with glass jars of dried herbs and powders. A fire crackled low in the hearth, and on the table beside the bed sat a mortar and pestle with something green still crushed at the bottom.

“She’ll be at the evening rounds,” Anya said. “She always is. Visiting the sick wards before supper.”

“So we wait?”

“No. We find who we can.”

The court historian was where he always was at this hour: hunched over a desk in the records room, squinting at a manuscript so old the ink had faded to a pale brown. He looked up when they entered, his spectacles sliding down his nose, and the expression that crossed his face was not surprise.

It was wariness.

“Your Highness,” he said slowly. “You’re not expected. Your evening routine—“

“My evening routine is a thing I do every day because I don’t remember anything else,” Anya said. “Today is different.”

The historian’s gaze flicked to Kael, then to Anya’s sleeve. She had folded her arms, tucking the blackened hand against her side, and she forced herself not to look down at it.

“I need you to tell me about a ring,” she said. “An onyx ring, inscribed with runes on the inside of the band. It belonged to my mother. I found it in the crypts, in a chest sealed beneath the Deep Well.”

The historian went very still.

“The crypts are forbidden,” he said. “For everyone. Especially—“

“My mother had a hidden door down there. It opened for me. That means it was built to respond to her bloodline. So whatever is buried beneath the Deep Well isn’t just forbidden. It’s mine.”

The historian’s hands had stopped moving over the manuscript. He stared at her for a long moment, and then he very carefully removed his spectacles and set them down on the desk.

“Your mother,” he said, “was a remarkable woman.”

“I know that.”

“But she was also troubled. You know this.”

Anya felt her jaw tighten. “Troubled.”

“The court physicians said—“

“My mother died of a wasting illness. They said it was a fever that turned inward. They said it was sudden. They said it was inevitable.” She stepped closer to the desk, and she let her voice drop low. “But I’ve just read her diary, historian. And in that diary, she wrote that to undo the forgetting, one must remember what was stolen. That doesn’t sound like a fever to me.”

The historian’s eyes went wide.

“You read—“

“Her private ledger. Hidden in a room no one knew existed. A room only I could open.” Anya set her palms flat on the edge of the desk and leaned in. “So I’m going to ask you again, and I want you to answer me plainly. What do you know about the ring?”

The historian opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“The ring,” he said finally, “was part of a pair.”

Anya felt the cold at her wrist pulse, like a second heartbeat.

“Go on.”

“Your mother wore them both. Ceremonial occasions, mostly. But she insisted on wearing the one on her left hand at all times. Even when she slept. Even when she bathed. The ladies of the court thought it was a marital vow—something between her and your father.” He swallowed. “It wasn’t.”

“What was it?”

“A seal,” the historian said. “A key. The rings matched the door. Your mother built them together, you see—the rings and the door. She was the one who commissioned the Deep Well construction in the first place. Everyone assumed it was simply a new crypt for the royal line. But she had her own purposes.” He paused, and then, quieter: “She was afraid of something.”

“What was she afraid of?”

The historian shook his head. “I don’t know. She never told me. But she asked me, once, to write down everything I knew—everything I remembered about her, about the court, about the last few years of her reign. She said it was a matter of record. She said—she said that one day, someone would need it.”

“Who?”

The historian looked past her, at the door, at the shadows creeping with the fading light.

“Someone who had forgotten.”

The silence stretched between them, thin and taut as thread. Anya wanted to press him further, wanted to demand names and dates and causes, but before she could speak, the door behind them opened.

The healer stood in the doorway.

She was a tall, composed woman with iron-gray hair pulled back in a severe knot and hands that never seemed to shake. She looked at Anya, then at the historian, and her expression smoothed into a practiced, pleasant smile that did not quite reach her eyes.

“Your Highness,” she said. “I was looking for you. You missed your evening tonic.”

“I was busy.”

“So I see.” The healer stepped into the room, and the historian looked away, suddenly intent on his manuscript. “I’m glad I found you, actually. I’ve been wanting to speak with you privately for some time.”

“About what?”

The healer’s smile widened. “Your health. I’ve noticed some changes in your bloodwork over the past few weeks. Nothing alarming, but I’d like to take a closer look. Perhaps in my chambers. Alone.”

Kael shifted beside Anya, a subtle movement, his hand drifting toward his sword.

“She’s had a long day,” he said. “Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.”

“Princess,” the healer said, and her voice was very soft now, almost gentle. “I’m concerned. Please. Let me help you.”

Anya looked at the historian, who was very pointedly not looking at her. Then she looked at the healer, whose smile had not wavered, whose hands were clasped in front of her, whose eyes held something beneath the warmth—something flat and watchful.

The cold ring pressed against her wrist.

“Very well,” Anya said. “Lead the way.”

The healer’s chambers smelled of rosemary and something sharper underneath—a metallic tang that Anya couldn’t quite place. The door closed behind them with a soft click, and the healer motioned toward a low chair by the fire.

“Sit, please.”

Anya didn’t sit. “You wanted to see me alone. Here I am.”

“Yes.” The healer moved to a cabinet against the far wall, drawing out a small leather pouch. “As I said, I’ve noticed changes in your blood. The curse takes a toll, but I believe there’s something else at work now. Something that might be strengthened.”

“Strengthened?”

“You’re fragile, Princess. Every night, your memory resets, and every morning, you wake up a little weaker. A little less yourself. I think I can help you hold on to more of who you are.” She opened the pouch and tipped its contents into her palm: a small vial of dark liquid, and a needle made of bone. “But I need to test your blood first. It will hurt, but only briefly.”

Anya stared at the needle.

“What is that?”

“A tool. Older than this palace. Older than your grandmother’s grandmother. It will draw a small amount of your blood and mingle it with a tincture that will reveal the depth of the curse.” The healer smiled. “Nothing to fear.”

Kael stepped forward. “Princess, I don’t—“

“You said alone,” the healer cut in, her voice sharp as a blade. “I asked to see her alone.”

“That’s not a request I intend to grant,” Kael said. “Not when you’re holding a needle made of bone and you’re telling my princess to bare her arm for you.”

The healer’s smile thinned.

“Your guard is loyal,” she said to Anya. “But loyalty is not the same as wisdom. Would you like to know what happened to your mother, Princess? Would you like to know why she really died?”

Anya felt the cold pulse again, stronger this time, spreading up her forearm.

“Tell me.”

“Let me test your blood,” the healer said. “And I will tell you everything.”

The fire crackled. The needle gleamed in the light.

Anya looked at Kael. He shook his head slowly, once, a warning she understood perfectly.

But she stepped forward anyway, and she rolled up her sleeve.