Chapter Forty-Eight · The Daughter Who Lived

For three days, Hemaliel received them with careful grace.

In the mornings, Haris rode with the High Lord beyond the garden walls, while Lyra was summoned each afternoon to calm the High Lady with the comb. In the evenings, servants brought tea and sweet cakes, and the High Lord even called for the region’s most famous traveling troupe to perform.

For the first time in days, Sion laughed without fear shadowing the sound.

Lyra was glad to hear it.

Still, every kindness seemed to gather around Sion first.

The final dinner before their departure was laid beneath warm candlelight.

At the center of the table stood a vase of jasmine, freshly arranged by the High Lord’s own hand. Beside it rested a necklace he had kept for far too many years.

He was already waiting when Lyra, Haris, and Sion entered and took their seats. His gaze lingered on Sion for only a moment.

“My girl,” he said gently, “I have taken quite a liking to you. You are quick, and brighter than you know. But those clothes have seen better days. Would you like something new?”

Sion’s eyes lit at once.

“I would. I’ve been wearing this one for almost a year.”

Lyra and Haris smiled, though neither of them felt entirely at ease. Too much still waited beyond Hemaliel. The palace remained under Syveris’s shadow, and too much remained unanswered.

At a gesture from the High Lord, a servant approached and led Sion away.

When she returned, the room seemed to pause.

She wore a deep blue gown that changed her all at once. Even with the awkwardness of someone unaccustomed to stays, she no longer looked like a forgotten orphan. She looked as if she had always belonged beneath carved ceilings and candlelight.

The High Lord rose.

With a care that made Lyra’s breath catch, he stepped forward and fastened the necklace around Sion’s throat. Then he returned to his seat and looked at her in silence.

Lyra felt the stillness that followed.

It was not the look of a host admiring a guest.

It was the look of a man seeing someone he had once loved and lost.

The High Lord had just signaled for the servants to pour the tea when the side door opened.

The High Lady entered, her hair neatly braided, her black gown arranged with care.

For the first time in days, she looked almost like herself.

The High Lord looked up.

“Just in time, my lady.”

The High Lady stopped in the doorway.

All the color left her face.

She took one step back. Her fingers trembled against the frame of the door.

The hall went utterly silent.

For a moment, it was as if she saw no one else. Not the High Lord. Not Haris. Not Lyra.

Only Sion.

Her lips moved before any sound came out.

“You…” she whispered. “You are dead.”

Sion stared at her.

“What?”

The High Lady shook her head, a small, frantic motion.

“You are dead. Why are you here?”

Sion rose from her chair, confused.

“My lady, I—”

“Stay away from me.”

The words came sharp enough to cut.

Sion froze.

The High Lady lifted one shaking hand, palm out.

“Stay away. Haunting my dreams was not enough for you?”

The servants drew back. Somewhere, a cup clicked softly against a plate.

“Go away,” the High Lady said. Her voice climbed. “Go away. Go away.”

Lyra stood.

Haris’s gaze flicked to her, but she did not look back.

This was it.

She stepped around the table and moved to Sion’s side. Then she lowered herself to one knee before Sion, as if kneeling before someone else entirely.

“My lady,” Lyra said softly, “did she wrong you?”

The High Lady’s eyes snapped to her.

“Lies.”

Lyra kept her head bowed.

“Then what of your death? What of the child?”

The High Lady went still.

Lyra lifted her eyes.

“We have proof.”

She had none.

Not yet.

But the words struck where guilt had already cracked the High Lady open.

“No.” The High Lady stumbled back. Her heel caught in the hem of her gown, and she fell hard against the stone. “No. I did nothing.”

The High Lord rose.

“My lady.”

“It was the midwife,” the High Lady cried.

The room froze.

“The midwife?” the High Lord said.

Sion stood very still, looking from one face to another, lost in a story everyone suddenly seemed to know but her.

She took a hesitant step toward the High Lady.

The High Lady recoiled and clutched both hands to her head.

“Do not come near me.”

Lyra did not move from her place beside Sion.

“The midwife said you smothered the child.”

“I did not.”

“She said you poisoned the High Lord’s wife.”

“No.” The High Lady’s voice cracked. “No, that is not true.”

Lyra pressed harder.

“Then how did she die?”

The High Lady’s breath came in short, broken pulls.

“She bled,” she said. “She would not stop bleeding.”

The High Lord’s face had gone still.

Lyra’s voice lowered.

“And you let her.”

“I did not kill the child,” the High Lady said wildly. “I did not poison her. I did not touch her.”

A sob tore through her.

“I only told the midwife not to stop the bleeding.”

The High Lord flinched as if the words had struck him.

“What?”

The High Lady stared at him.

For one terrible heartbeat, she seemed to understand what she had said.

Then she screamed.

She shoved herself up from the floor and fled the hall, her cries tearing through the bright, careful silence of Hemaliel.

The High Lord did not follow.

For a moment, he seemed unable to move at all.

When his voice came, it was almost empty.

“Find the midwife.”

No one moved.

His eyes lifted.

“Now.”

After that, dinner could not truly continue.

The food remained on the table, hardly touched. Tea cooled in the cups. The servants moved quietly, afraid to let even a dish strike too loudly against the stone.

The High Lord ate almost nothing. He sat with one hand braced against his brow, his face turned slightly away from the candlelight.

He had heard enough to know something terrible had been buried inside his own Citadel.

Now he had to know how deep.

Haris said little. He had watched everything from the beginning, and by now he had learned not to dismiss Lyra’s strange turns. She always had a reason. Whenever she chose to speak, another secret came loose.

Only Sion looked lost.

She sat very still in the unfamiliar gown, one hand resting near the necklace that glimmered at her throat.

And yet, beneath all that strangeness, something in her recognized the feeling.

It did not take long for the midwife to be brought in.

She fell to her knees before the High Lord, small and shaking, her head bowed so low her forehead nearly touched the floor.

The High Lord did not rise.

“Look at her,” he said.

The midwife trembled.

“Look at her,” he repeated, and this time his voice left no room for mercy. “Tell me whom you see.”

Slowly, the midwife lifted her head.

Her eyes found Sion.

For a moment, she only squinted.

Then all the blood drained from her face.

“My… my lady…”

The words tangled on her tongue.

Sion went still.

The High Lord’s mouth tightened.

The candles along the table flickered.

From beneath his hand, thin green vines uncoiled across the wood and shot toward the midwife. They wrapped around her wrists, her arms, her waist, and dragged her upright on her knees.

“Why did you not save her that night?”

The midwife began to weep.

“My lord, I was told not to. The young mistress ordered me to leave her be. She gave me a gold bracelet.”

“A bracelet.”

The word came out almost softly.

The vines tightened.

“For a bracelet, you let a woman bleed to death?”

The midwife sobbed harder.

“I was foolish. I was greedy. Mercy, my lord. Mercy.”

The vines pulled her forward until she was forced to kneel before Sion.

The midwife looked up at her, face wet with tears.

“My lady, forgive me. I was a fool.”

Sion stared down at her, helpless and bewildered.

The vines dragged the woman back before the High Lord.

“And my child?” he asked.

The midwife shook her head at once.

“No. No, my lord. I did not kill the child.”

The room went utterly still.

The High Lord leaned forward.

“Then what did you do?”

“The young mistress told me to give the baby to a servant. I did as she ordered. After that, I knew nothing.”

The vines tightened again, and pain twisted through the midwife’s face.

“Was there any mark?” the High Lord asked. “Anything by which the child could be known?”

The midwife swallowed.

“Yes.”

“What mark?”

“A birthmark, my lord. Red, shaped like a leaf.”

Sion’s hand rose slowly.

“Where?” the High Lord asked.

The midwife’s eyes flicked to Sion’s shoulder.

“On the right shoulder blade.”

Sion touched her right shoulder.

Her voice came out very small.

“I have one too.”

The chamber fell silent.

The High Lord rose.

His eyes stayed on Sion.

Slowly, his hand lowered. The vines loosened with it, slipping away from the midwife until she collapsed against the floor, sobbing.

Sion stepped out from the table.

The High Lord moved toward her as if afraid one sudden motion might make her vanish. When he reached her, he lifted one hand and touched her cheek.

Then he drew her into his arms and closed his eyes.

“I felt it,” he whispered. “From the first moment I saw you.”

Sion stood very still.

She did not know what to do with her hands. She did not know what to do with the arms around her, or with the title that had suddenly opened beneath her feet.

A moment ago, she had only been Sion.

An orphan. A girl with one old dress, a hungry smile, and no place that had ever truly belonged to her.

Now the High Lord of Hemaliel held her as if she had been lost from his life, not absent from it.

Lyra looked at Haris.

Haris looked back.

The pieces had settled.

Then Lyra’s gaze moved to the midwife on the floor.

Greed had bought sixteen years of silence.

It would not buy another night.