Valric freed some loose papers, revealing a sealed envelope underneath. Tingles ran down her arms, her stomach gripped and suddenly the air was tight in her lungs.
With a hesitant hand, she reached for the letter, addressed only to: R.R—her.
The paper was thick and rich. Somehow warm underhand as if her uncle had only just put it down. The seal bore Uncle Halvar's sigil. Two crossed golden keys over a blue horizontal line symbolising the River Byrn and his motto, so small, barely legible: 'Quod Scriptum Manet.'
What is written remains.
Nerves crawled up her throat and a sickening feeling of anxiety throbbing in her chest. She felt the gazes upon her as she broke the pretty symbol in half and peeled open the folded parchment. The paper felt heavier somehow. Fingers trembling and she turned from the desk, moving into the centre of the room.
His voice, clipped with his raspy chesty cough came back to her as she read the words.
Dear River-Rose,
If you are reading this, you found the key and code.
I knew you would. You were always a bright character, seeing patterns in chaos and order alike.
I had meant, once, to leave you nothing but kinder memories: swapping Master Oswin's neat columns for nonsense figures and watching him go grey with outrage; slipping into the market crowd to lose Sir Caerwyn and returning ten minutes later with sweet buns and a smile as if you hadn't been hunted like a fox.
But this is not a fond letter.
This is the last lesson I can give you plainly.
I have made you visible. I placed you too near the prince, believing proximity would protect you, believing favour could be shaped into safety. I was wrong.
So hear me, River-Rose—distance yourself from Prince Edrien. Be courteous. Be kind. But do not be alone with him. Do not let your name be spoken in the same breath as his where gossip can carry it. Since he came into manhood, he has begun to look at you in a way I have seen before.
In his father.
King Alestan has never been an easy man, even when he was young and still answerable to someone kinder. He learned early to mistake desire for right. When he wants, he takes; and when taking leaves consequences, he calls for order.
What nearly broke the realm twice was not war alone—it was blood. The north remembers, even when the south pretends it does not. My king—my good king—tried to bind his son to duty. He forced him to marry his fifth crime. Try to create peace out of hostility.
When Alestan inherited the crown, he did what a frightened ruler does when the line of succession becomes… untidy. He began to remove the loose threads. Quietly. Respectably. Under cover of chaos, so no one could say it was his hand.
What better cover than war?
The first was a common girl. Her name was Nella. She died as women of her station often do—unmourned by those with power, swallowed by whispers of a "killer" and the shrug of a city that does not care when the dead are poor.
The second was close to you.
A young man of sixteen, died in a "barbarian attack" at Ashgrove, en-route to cut off the Celandre landed forces. Nikkai Valewyn, your brother—or, half-brother.
Rhosyn came up for air and it failed to settle her. She felt as if she'd been kicked in the stomach. Choking on a gasp, as the paper shook in her hands.
A king with bastards was believable. But her own brother.
"Rhosyn?" concern laced Leoric's words.
She could hear him moving, closing the space.
Darkness tunnelled her vision, and the room spun. She couldn't hear his footsteps approaching. Didn't feel herself as she turned in a panic. Everything coiled inside her and her stomach protested.
Rhosyn shoved the letter into Leoric's chest as she pushed him away, moving.
She didn't know where she was heading. Just needed space—air. Anything that wasn't a churning mess inside her.
A hand held out a decorated pot and she clutched it out of need. Hugging it, she breathed into its mouth. A low thrumming sound repeating at her and a calmness settling into her body by the action.
Shivers ran along her arms and her legs felt wobbly underneath her. But her mind wouldn't stop screaming. It was mostly nonsense. Alarm and a foreboding shifting within her. Rhosyn couldn't concentrate on the other two bodies in the room. The way one approached apprehensive and agitated. The other a bubble of ease.
"What's the matter?" Leoric asked, insistently from somewhere behind her.
A wave of nausea flooded through her again, a sense to heave, though nothing was inside her empty stomach to expel.
Thankfully, Valric answered for her. "She's going to be fine—seen it before." His voice was close to her and she realised he was the one who handed her the ornate pottery.
"You know what she's suffering with?"
"I'm pretty sure," Valric hummed with smug delight. "Either she's having a panic attack, or... she's with child."
A shiver ran throughout her body and she went cold, gripping the pot with new found fear. She couldn't be pregnant. Surely no one got pregnant that fast... Could they?
Warmth pressed gently into her back and she realised it was a hand—Leoric's.
"You should sit," he soothed.
It was a panic attack. Had to be a panic attack. She'd just found out that her brother—now half-brother—was a king's bastard. She was allowed to be alarmed by the news.
The room settled after she allowed Leoric to guide her onto the nearby sofa. Her grip on the pot loosened and she felt oddly fatigued now that her dread left her. Leoric set the pot down, close by—in case she needed it again she supposed—and crouched in front of her. He looked worried, a hand brushing against her cheek, his touch hot against her skin.
"Maybe you should rest," he suggested and Rhosyn's body sang at the proposal.
"But I haven't finished reading the letter," she interjected, reaching for the parchment secured in his other hand.
"Are you sure?" His brows pleaded with her and he already knew she wasn't going to relent.
Rhosyn smoothed out the paper. Eyes running along lines until she found Nikkai's name.
Coincidences are hardly ever so clean.
The third you have heard in whispers, because whispers love a tragedy. House Karsyn. As you know I had my own hand in it, as I'm sure others had theirs in the other incidents. All to kill one bastard, Alestan ordered the murder of an entire House—with roots to their own kings.
But I did one thing, and I will not pretend it was bravery—it was the smallest mercy I could manage without dying myself. I waited until I knew one of their sons, Leoric, was absent—on a training mission of some sort. I couldn't live knowing I purged an entire family. I could live with knowing they could recover one day—I pray.
What I hadn't expected was for his brother to be with him—Valric, the bastard.
She paused, glancing from brother to brother. Feeling the pounding in her chest. Valric had quietly returned to the desk to ponder more cipher letters. Where Leoric studied her closely. As if he could read every word by reading her. She caught the recognition in his eyes. The one that told her he knew generally where her mind was.
He took a step forward and before she let him distract her any further, she turned back to her uncle's voice.
Alestan never learnt of my failure, simply waving off the survival of one child as a null matter. He had his blood.
You will now be thinking: How many? And you would be right to ask it. There is a fourth thread in this tapestry, and it is deliberately knotted so no one may tug it free. The court says the mother and child died in childbirth. Again, too many coincidences.
I, on the other hand, think that Lord Edwyn Hartrow is more cunning than people give him credit for.
So hedge your bets, River-Rose. In the years to come you will be offered stories, alliances, and promises. Weigh them. Count them. Do not be dazzled by charm, nor frightened into obedience.
And now, the part that matters most—the part that concerns you.
Alestan will not release your lands to you freely. He will hold your title under "receivership" and call it protection. It is not protection. It is possession.
To secure Ravelocke, you will need a husband.
Not a pretty husband. Not a sweet one. Not one the king can command with a glance.
A man with power of his own. A man with reason to oppose Alestan. A man who cannot be bought with a soft promise or frightened by a hard one.
Move early. Move carefully. If you are swift, by the time you are sixteen you can have a proposal in hand and a wall built around you before the court decides you are convenient to break.
I am sorry to ask this of you so young. I am sorrier still, that the realm asks it at all.
But you are a Valewyn, River-Rose. You were not born to be eaten.
And always remember:
Numbers never lie—where people with words bend the truth.
— H. Valewyn
Her uncle's voice faded as the words died on the page. Somehow, the old man managed to live on, in the mystery of the safe contents. But with them laid out. His words lay dormant on parchment, not even the joy of unraveling another coded letter interested her.
She was spent. And she grieved the chance of one more lesson from the man she looked up to. The one who taught her how to survive.
A questioning touch pulled her from her spiral, and there was Leoric, sitting next to her watching her carefully. Valric had wandered over, probably noticing his brother's movement.
Uncle Halvar's letter felt too heavy in her hand. An anchor frightening to pull her under. Rhosyn cast it aside, Valric's hand curiously relieving her from the burden and she waved at him to keep it—for now. She needed time. Though she wasted so much of it.
Her uncle had written that warning seven years ago.
"Rhosyn," Leoric whispered, his voice a grounding tug. His touch tender and kind as she was pulled into his chest, his arms a safe thing.
She didn't realise how tired she was, until her eyes refused to open. Leoric's heartbeat, a beautiful sound, paired with the rhythm of his calm breathing. He was a lullaby and a dream. Her ward from the cold.
He was the peculiar feeling that radiated from her, and yet she didn't have a name for it. The warmth that pierced the lonely. The arms that felt like home.
She was a pebble on a beach that he'd plucked... She was weightless, falling into the darkness inside her mind. Echoes of words rushing over her skin. But she couldn't make them out, and her dreams pulled her under.