I Bore His Heirs, Then I Vanished novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Gate at Dawn

Aldric's POV

I reached Morven in the shallows as she turned around.

Her left arm was black from wrist to elbow. She did not seem to know it.

"What did you say?" she asked.

Delphine sat against the stone with her braid undone, smiling up at her.

"Ask your healer." She lifted her chin at the woman standing in the crowd. "Ask her how a cook who had never been ill a day in her life took a fever in one night, the winter you turned ten."

The pack healer stood very still at the front of the Duskmoor bank.

"I had no choice," she said. Her voice shook. "I was young. I was told it was a fever."

"You were told what to write," said Delphine. "Nightmoss in the broth. My father mixed it himself."

The sound that came out of Morven was small.

I put my hand on her back, and for once she let me.

"Why?" she said.

"She had found the pin." Delphine sounded almost fond. "She had been sewing it into your coat and she read the back. She asked my father what it meant. She said you had a right to know."

"She was my mother."

"She was the cook, dear. She was in the way."

I heard something break in the crowd behind me, a sob, and then a man's furious shout.

I had not known I was going to move.

I had my hand around Delphine's arm and her feet off the ground before anyone could stop me.

"You killed her," I said. "You let her die in front of a child."

"My father did. I was eighteen." She tilted her head. "I only kept the secret. Isn't that what you did, Aldric? For seven years, you kept a very large secret."

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