Part 4 — The Chapel of Borrowed Life

Elias's blood had dried before he woke.

The physicians removed the blade, but fever held him senseless. His leather case was gone. Whoever attacked him believed they had taken the only impressions of the bracelet's runes.

Queen Lenora ordered the palace gates sealed.

"The ceremony is canceled," she said.

"No." I took the mirror-script copy from my cloak and placed it in her hands. "If we stop now, Celeste will change her method. Let her believe the evidence died with Elias."

"You are asking me to carry you into a trap."

"I am asking you to stand close enough to witness who closes it."

The queen studied the red-gold bracelet locked around my wrist.

"And if you cannot get out?"

I looked toward the unconscious man on the bed. Elias had paid in blood to give me this choice. My father had paid three years of his life.

"Then make certain Celeste cannot bury what happens to me."

Snow covered the capital the next morning.

The Chapel of the First Crown rose from the northern court like a spear of black glass. Every Ashbourne sovereign had been crowned beneath its vaulted ceiling. Every royal child had been presented before its altar.

Celeste arrived in crimson velvet, smiling as though we were beloved sisters.

"Do not be frightened," she said, linking her arm through mine. "After today, your child will have the protection of every king who came before Cassian."

Her hand trembled with excitement.

Cassian waited at the chapel doors. He wore his silver oath pendant over ceremonial armor. When he offered me a hand from the carriage, the pendant brushed my fingers.

The bracelet tightened.

The child's voice broke through in a frightened gasp.

"Blood. Father's blood is inside the silver."

So Celeste had cut herself for the knife and hidden Cassian's blood in the pendant. She already possessed all three keys.

I tightened my fingers around the pendant before letting it fall. A thin seam divided the silver backing. Cassian wore a hollow reliquary against his heart and had never asked what his wife placed inside it.

"Your oath pendant is damaged," I told him.

Celeste answered before he could look down. "It was sealed by the royal jeweler this morning."

Too quickly.

Queen Lenora heard it too. Her attention moved from Celeste to the pendant, and one of her white-wolf guards edged closer to the chapel doors.

Celeste tightened her grip on my arm.

"We should not keep the ancestors waiting."

Inside, the king, queen, and Privy Council stood behind a ring of eighteen stone pillars. Gold cloth covered the floor around the altar.

I let my glove fall.

As I bent to retrieve it, I lifted one corner of the cloth.

Crimson runes covered the stone.

Celeste's fingers closed around my arm. "Is something wrong?"

"The child moved."

"How fortunate."

She guided me toward the altar.

I counted the distance to Queen Lenora. Twelve paces. Two guards stood near her, both wearing the white wolf badge of her household. The queen met my eyes and touched the sealed rune copy hidden in her sleeve.

At least one truth would survive this room.

A man in a priest's black robes stepped from behind the altar. I had never seen him at court, but the scars burned into his palms belonged to no servant of the Crown.

"Brother Malrec will conduct the old rite," Celeste announced.

The king frowned. "Where is the royal chaplain?"

"Taken ill, Your Majesty," Malrec said.

I moved one step away from the center of the cloth.

Celeste caught my wrist.

"You knew about the bracelet," she whispered.

My pulse stopped.

Her smile widened.

"Did you think a severed thread would fool the Favor Engine? It told me exactly when your astronomer touched my gift."

She drew the silver knife and cut my palm.

I twisted as the blade fell. Instead of letting my blood strike the center rune, I slapped my hand against the rear of the altar, where the first king's oath had been carved into stone.

Blood filled the ancient words.

To crown and country, before desire.

The inscription flashed once beneath my hand.

The answering heat did not travel toward Celeste. It sank through the altar and into the foundations.

My father had taught me that the oldest royal spells were not commands. They were contracts. A later rite could bend them, conceal them, even steal their visible result, but it could not erase the first promise without answering to it.

I dragged my bleeding fingers across the final word before Malrec caught me.

The stone drank every drop.

Malrec seized my wounded wrist and dragged it over the central mark. Celeste cut her own palm. With her other hand, she tore Cassian's pendant from his neck and smashed it against the altar.

Stored blood spilled from the silver.

Three lines of red met.

The chapel doors slammed shut.

Fire climbed the eighteen pillars, cutting the altar away from the court. Queen Lenora ran forward, but a wall of red flame threw her back.

"Stop this!" she shouted.

Malrec began speaking in a language that made my bones ache.

The bracelet crushed my wrist. Pain split through my abdomen as if invisible hands had reached inside me.

"Mother!" the child screamed. "Something is pulling me."

I fell to my knees and held him with both arms, though there was nothing my hands could grasp.

Celeste stood across from me inside the circle. Golden mist flowed out of my body and wound around hers.

"You were right about one thing," I gasped. "This is not a blessing."

"No," she said. "It is a correction."

Her flat abdomen began to round.

Cassian stared through the fire. "Celeste, what have you done?"

"What everyone wanted." She caressed the new curve beneath her gown. "I am carrying your heir."

"You are stealing mine," I said.

Queen Lenora struck the fiery barrier with a ceremonial sword.

The blade rang against the flames. One of her guards attacked the nearest pillar while the other shouted for axes. The red fire climbed their weapons and forced them back, blistering their hands.

King Edmund turned on the chapel officials.

"Who admitted this man?"

No one answered. Malrec had replaced the royal chaplain, changed the guard roster, and entered the holiest room in Valedorn beneath Celeste's authority. Even before the rite ended, her crime had begun acquiring witnesses.

"Cassian, break the pendant's chain! Your blood opened the rite. Withdraw it."

He stepped into the circle. For one hopeful instant, I thought he had come to stop Malrec.

Then Celeste swayed.

Cassian caught her.

"It hurts," she whispered.

He looked at me on the floor, at the blood beneath my hand, and then at the child growing visibly beneath his wife's crimson gown.

"The heir belongs within the lawful marriage," he said.

The queen went still.

"That child recognized Elara."

"The Crownfire is choosing again. We must accept its judgment."

"This is not judgment," I said. "It is theft, and you are watching it happen."

His face tightened, but he put himself between Celeste and me.

"She is my wife," he said.

"And I am carrying your last child."

"Not anymore."

The cruelty was not in the words. It was in how easily he accepted the magic's appearance as permission to forget everything he knew.

Celeste pressed her cheek to his shoulder. Over it, she watched me with shining eyes.

"Tell them," she urged. "Tell the Council who the mother is."

Cassian faced the ring of nobles beyond the fire.

"When this rite is finished, the Crown Princess will be recognized as bearer and legal mother of the heir."

Several councilors exchanged uneasy looks. None challenged him while the dragon's fire burned.

The choice completed the rite.

The bracelet shattered.

My abdomen flattened beneath my torn gown. The heat, the weight, the small presence that had lived beneath my heart—all vanished at once.

"Rowan?" I whispered, using the name I had carried silently for him.

No answer came.

Celeste stood within Cassian's arms, one hand spread over her rounded belly.

From inside her body, a dragon roared.