Part 5 — The Golden Thread

The sound shook dust from the chapel rafters.

Courtiers dropped to their knees before Celeste. By the time the fire around the altar died, men who had watched her steal my child were calling her the chosen mother of Valedorn.

Queen Lenora stepped over the broken circle and caught me before my head struck the stone.

"Elara. Stay with me."

I tried to answer. Blood filled my mouth instead.

Celeste looked down from Cassian's arms.

"Why is she dying? The child is no longer inside her."

Malrec wiped his knife. "Some bonds resist division, Your Highness."

The chief physician examined me where I lay. His fingers paused over my heart.

"Her body still carries Crownfire. If the original bond remains, killing her may kill the heir."

That sentence saved my life.

King Edmund ordered me returned to the Queen's House under guard. Protection became imprisonment before the chapel bells stopped ringing.

I slept for a day.

When I woke, Elias sat beside my bed with his wounded shoulder bound against his chest. He looked as pale as I felt.

"You should be lying down," I said.

"So should you. Neither of us has been obedient lately."

He placed a polished silver mirror in my hand.

"Open your shift at the collar."

A line of gold glowed beneath the skin above my heart. It stretched across my ribs and disappeared toward the Heir's Wing.

"The life bond," Elias said. "Celeste took the child's body and the visible pregnancy. She did not take his recognition of you."

I pressed two fingers over the line. A faint second pulse answered, faster than my own.

I tapped the rhythm we had shared during the worst nights of Crownfire: three slow beats, then two. The gold brightened beneath my fingertips.

No words came back, but the response was deliberate.

"He is still there," I said.

"Yes. And he is fighting to remain yours."

"Why can I not hear him?"

"The bracelet sealed the shared senses when it broke. The bond is alive, but suffocating."

I touched the fading line. "How long?"

"Seven days. The court intends to invest Celeste with the Regent's Seal. Once she accepts the Crownfire in law as well as flesh, this line will be cut. The rite will collect the life it failed to take in the chapel."

"Mine."

"Every year you might have lived."

A crash sounded from the Heir's Wing.

Moments later, bells summoned the Royal College of Physicians. The golden line across my chest burned.

I dressed before the guards could stop me.

Elias showed them his Observatory seal. "If the original bearer is reacting, the heir may be in danger."

That was enough to open the door.

We entered the Heir's Wing through an old servants' passage known to me from childhood. Behind Celeste's bedchamber screen, I heard her screaming.

"You promised I would not feel this!"

Malrec knelt beside the bed with a strip of blood-marked parchment.

"The Crownmarked Heir burns every vessel that carries him."

"Then move the pain back to Elara. That is why she is still alive."

Cassian held a wet cloth to Celeste's forehead. "Do whatever is necessary."

"The transfer will leave traces," Malrec warned. "If the Royal College examines both women together—"

"They will not," Cassian said. "Elara is confined by the king's order."

Celeste seized his wrist. "And when I receive the Regent's Seal?"

"No one will question you again."

He did not sound enchanted. He sounded relieved to have found a procedure that would turn his preferred lie into law.

Malrec burned the parchment.

Fire erupted inside my chest.

I gripped the screen until my nails split. Across the room, Celeste's screams softened into relieved breaths.

"Better," she said. "That is where the pain belongs."

Cassian knew exactly where it had gone. He lowered his eyes and said nothing.

Anger steadied me.

I stepped from behind the screen, crossed the chamber, and snatched the remaining parchment from Malrec's hand.

"Elara?" Cassian rose. "Who allowed you in here?"

I thrust the parchment into the brazier.

Blue flame swallowed the blood marks. The pain left my body.

Celeste folded around her stolen belly with a cry.

"Put it back!"

"You wanted the child," I said. "Carry him."

The curve beneath her gown kicked hard enough to lift the fabric.

Celeste tumbled from the bed.

A pulse raced through the golden line inside me. Through smoke and pain came a voice I had feared I would never hear again.

"Mother, do not be afraid."

My knees nearly failed.

"I remember your heartbeat."

Celeste heard only the roar that followed. She clutched Cassian's sleeve.

"She is turning him against me. Lock her away."

Cassian faced me with fury sharpened by shame.

"You endangered the heir."

"I ended a spell that made me suffer in his place."

"Celeste cannot survive this pain."

"Then she should not have stolen what caused it."

Malrec lunged toward the brazier with another strip of parchment. I kicked the iron stand before he reached it. Coals scattered over the marble, and the queen's physicians rushed in at the alarm.

They found Celeste writhing, me standing without pain, and the remains of the transfer spell burning between us.

"Examine the ashes," I told the chief physician. "Record the blood used in them before the Crown Prince orders you not to."

Cassian's silence confirmed more than an argument could have done.

For once, he had no answer.

He ordered the guards to return me to the Queen's House, but he did not let Malrec relight the spell while I watched.

Elias met me in the passage. During the confusion, he had searched Malrec's abandoned satchel.

Inside he found half of a confession written by a former Observatory clerk.

The clerk admitted that three years earlier, Celeste had paid him to replace my father's star charts with forged predictions of Cassian's death. Forbidden pages were then hidden in Gideon's rooms to guarantee a conviction.

The confession ended where the second sheet had been torn away. It did not name the assassin who attacked Elias or explain who supplied the forbidden pages.

But the surviving half named dates, archive drawers, and two palace witnesses. Elias had already sent Queen Lenora's first lady to secure the original duty ledgers before Cassian learned we possessed the confession.

For the first time, my father's innocence was more than my word against a prince's.

Queen Lenora joined us in the passage and read the page beneath a shuttered lamp.

"I can place Celeste under guard tonight," she said.

"And Cassian will call it an attack on the woman carrying Valedorn's heir," I replied. "The king will hesitate, the Council will divide, and Malrec will destroy whatever remains."

Elias folded the confession along its torn edge. "We need the missing half."

"We need them to believe they have won," I said. "People who feel safe stop hiding their hands."

The queen looked toward the chamber where her son comforted the woman who had stolen his child.

"Then we let them reach for the crown," she said, "and record every finger that closes around it."

At the bottom of the search authorization sat a familiar seal pressed in black wax.

Cassian's private signet.