My Blood Awakened, His Reign Ended novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What They Took

Isobel takes her mother's keepsake box back in front of the court ladies, and Lucian puts it under Court seal. In its false bottom is a note in her mother's hand.

"No," I said.

Lucian did not even blink.

"I wasn't asking, Isobel."

He nodded at the guard, who unlocked my cell and hauled me up by the arms.

In the next cell, iron rang.

Ronan had put his full weight against the bars.

"Touch her again and I'll have the door off its hinges," he said.

Lucian glanced into the dark at him.

"You're a hostage. Sit down."

He took my left wrist and laid it over the bowl.

The guard held my arm still while the knife went in.

I did not make a sound.

I stared at the top of Lucian's head, at the black hair I had once smoothed back from his forehead after a council meeting, and he stared at the bowl.

Not once did he lift his eyes to my face.

The old scar under my ribs burned.

Somewhere inside me, something small and hard cracked and let go.

Ninety-five, I thought, and it startled me that I was counting.

Lucian took the bowl, and the guards shut my cell, and his boots went away up the stairs.

"Four left," Ronan said quietly through the bars.

I wrapped my wrist in the hem of my sleeve and said nothing, because if I opened my mouth I would have told him it was not the blood that hurt.

At noon the next day, they let me out.

I went straight to the bridal chamber.

Three of the Court's ladies sat around a tea table by the window, and Lenora lay on the bed in a pale blue robe, propped on pillows, with the shredded white of my wedding dress swept into a basket in the corner.

The cedar box stood on the dresser.

My mother's box.

The ladies stopped talking.

I crossed the room, picked it up in both hands, and held it against my chest.

"Isobel," Lenora said. She tried to sit up. "Please. Is it your mother's? I didn't know it was anything special, the maids just put it here. Take it, take anything. I never wanted any of this."

She meant it, I think.

That was the strange part.

I could not find anywhere in her face to put my anger.

"Thank you for the shawl," I said, and set it on the foot of her bed. "I'm done with it."

I opened the box because I needed to see that nothing was missing.

My mother's combs lay on the velvet where they always had.

So did the bundle of her letters.

My thumb slid along the lining, and found the catch that I had pressed as a child, when I was hiding sweets.

The false bottom gave.

Under it lay a single sheet folded in thirds, sealed with red wax.

It was in my mother's hand, five words across the front.

Isobel. Read this the night before the moon.

I closed the lid and slid the paper up my sleeve in the same motion.

The door banged open.

"Put that down," Lucian said.

He crossed the room, and I felt his bloodline lean on me again, lighter this time.

"The Elders have placed the Ashmere estate under Court seal until the pact. Nothing leaves this room."

"It's my mother's."

"It's a Court matter."

Lenora was crying quietly into her pillow. "Lucian, let her have it, please."

"You're tired, darling."

He did not even look at her. He held out his hand for the box.

I looked at the two hundred years I had given this house.

Then I handed it over.

"Seal it, then," I said. "Seal whatever you like."

A woman in an archivist's grey gown stepped in behind him with a wax stick and a ribbon.

She was small and straight-backed, with round spectacles and inky fingers, and I had known her for most of my life.

Hester Quill took the box from Lucian's hands.

"The Archive will hold it, Your Highness," she said. "It will be safe, and it will be in order."

She glanced at me over her spectacles.

It lasted no longer than it takes to blink, and it said, I know what's in your sleeve.

Lucian let her take it.

He left without another word, and the ladies stared into their tea until the door shut.

I walked out onto the corridor with my arm folded across my chest.

My mother had written that letter more than two hundred years ago, and she had known exactly where to hide it.

I needed a door that locked.

The paper was warm against my skin, and the wax seal was already cracking along its edge.

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