Chapter 26: The Girl Who Borrowed a Crown

The healer’s wagon smelled of rust and rosemary, the sharp herb doing nothing to mask the copper tang of blood. Maren found Celeste propped against a pile of wool blankets, a blood-soaked cloth pressed to her arm, her face the color of old bone. The girl looked smaller than she had at the coronation—stripped of mourning jewels and silk, wearing a plain wool dress that someone had thrown over her shift like a shroud. “You came to gloat,” Celeste said without looking up. “I came to ask questions.” Maren sat on the edge of the wagon bed, careful to keep her weight balanced. The wood groaned beneath her. “Your mother nearly killed you. I want to know why you still protect her.” Celeste laughed, a broken sound that turned into a cough. Blood speckled her lips. “You think I protect her? She would have let the crown-root burn through my veins until I was ash. She told me it would hurt, but she said the pain would pass. It didn’t. It was still eating me when your Warden pulled me off the dais.” “Then help me stop her.” “I can’t.” Celeste pressed the cloth harder against her arm. Fresh blood seeped through the fabric, dark and fast. “I don’t know where she keeps the real records. She never trusted me with the full truth. I was just the body she needed to sit on the throne while she ruled from behind the curtain.” Maren studied her. The girl’s hands were shaking, but her eyes held something harder than fear. Rage, maybe. Or the first flicker of survival instinct that had been beaten out of her years ago. “You know something,” Maren said. “You wouldn’t be this afraid if you didn’t.” Celeste’s jaw tightened. She looked toward the wagon’s canvas flap, where the gray light of the war road filtered through. “There’s a second ledger. Not the one you stole. That one only showed the forged bloodlines. The real one has the names of everyone who helped her stage my ascension. The Glass Court ministers who took bribes. The priests who signed the false death rite. The witnesses who swore they saw your body.” “Where is it?” “Ashenmere.” Celeste’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She hid it in the old Thornborn vault beneath the eastern tower. The one that was sealed after your mother died.” Maren’s blood went cold. “Rowena’s vault.” “Your mother’s death wasn’t an accident.” Celeste met her eyes for the first time. “Vespera had her killed. I didn’t know until after you were buried. I found a letter in my mother’s desk, written in your mother’s hand, begging for protection from the woman who was supposed to be her friend.” The words hit like a blade between the ribs. Maren had spent six years believing her mother died of the wasting sickness that had taken so many Thornborn women before her. She had mourned. She had built a shrine in her memory. And all of it had been built on a lie. “Show me the letter,” Maren said. “I burned it.” Celeste’s voice cracked. “I was so afraid of her. I thought if I destroyed the evidence, she would stop hurting me. But she didn’t. She just found new ways to use me.” Maren sat still for a long moment, letting the rage settle into something she could use. She had learned that much from Cael. Rage without direction was just fire. Rage with a target was a weapon. “The vault,” she said. “Can you open it?” “I have the key.” Celeste reached into her collar and pulled out a thin chain. At the end hung a small iron key, blackened with age, no larger than her smallest finger. “She gave it to me after your funeral. Told me to keep it safe until I was crowned. I think she meant to use it later, to destroy the evidence herself.” “Give it to me.” Celeste’s hand closed around the key. “What will you do with it?” “What I should have done the night I crawled out of that grave.” Maren held out her palm. “I’m going to prove everything. Your mother’s crimes. My mother’s murder. The corruption that runs through the Glass Court like rot through old wood.” “And me?” “You can stay here and wait for her to find you, or you can come with me and tell the truth when the time comes.” Maren did not soften her voice. “But if you lie for her again, I will leave you to face the Hollow Wild’s justice alone. And they are far less merciful than I am.” Celeste’s hand trembled. Then she pulled the chain over her head and dropped the key into Maren’s palm. The metal was warm from her skin, still carrying the heat of her fear. “The vault is beneath the eastern tower,” she said. “There’s a false stone in the floor, marked with a thorn crest. The key fits a lock beneath it. I don’t know what else is in there. She never let me see.” Maren closed her fingers around the key. It felt heavier than it should have, weighted with six years of lies and a mother’s blood. “Thank you,” she said. Celeste shook her head. “Don’t thank me yet. She’ll know I betrayed her. She always knows.” The canvas flap rustled. Maren turned, expecting Cael or one of the Hollow Wild scouts. Instead, a masked figure stood in the wagon’s entrance, crossbow raised. The bolt hit Celeste in the chest before Maren could move. The girl gasped, her hands flying to the wound. Blood bloomed across the wool dress, dark and fast. The mask shifted, aiming at Maren now. Maren threw herself sideways, rolling off the wagon bed as a second bolt embedded itself in the blankets where she had been sitting. She hit the ground hard, the key still clutched in her palm, the cold iron biting into her skin. “Warden!” she shouted. “Assassin!” The mask vanished through the canvas. By the time Cael reached the wagon, the shooter was gone, and Celeste lay still, her eyes open and empty, the thorn dart buried between her ribs. Maren looked down at the key in her hand, then at the girl who had borrowed a crown and paid for it with her life. She did not have time to mourn. The vault was still waiting. And now Vespera knew they were coming.