Chapter 10: The Truth
The silence in the Rose Suite after Caspian left was a living thing, thick and tasting of honeyed medicine and unresolved thunder. Ria kept her eyes closed, listening to the sharp, controlled rhythm of her own breathing, a technique carved into her by years of needing to be quiet. The wolf’s wet nose nudged her dangling hand. A point of reality.
Queen Elara did not let go of her daughter’s hand. Her grip was almost desperate. “You should rest,” she murmured, the words fragile.
“I’ve done nothing but rest.” Ria opened her eyes, staring at the painted vines on the ceiling. “It doesn’t help.”
She turned her head. The King had not returned from the antechamber, but his presence was a pressure against the wall. Lyon was a darker shadow beyond the door. They were waiting. For what, she wasn’t sure. For her to break, or to bloom.
“They want a story,” Ria said, her voice flat. “You all do. Caspian’s brother wants to know where he is. You want to know what was done. It’s just… inventory.”
“Victoria, please.” The Queen’s composure was a thin veneer. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s Ria.” The correction was swift, a knife-slash. “He called me that. In the cell. It’s the only name that fits what I am.” She finally looked at her mother. The woman’s face was a map of sorrow and hope, a geography she couldn’t navigate. “You want the inventory? Fine. But you don’t get to cry. You don’t get to look away. You asked for the broken thing. You don’t get to be shocked it’s broken.”
She pulled her hand free and pushed herself higher on the pillows. The movement sent a dull ache through her abdomen. She focused on it. An anchor.
“It was a stone room. Smaller than this. Straw on the floor. A bucket in the corner. The light came from a slit high up. You could tell the season by the angle of it.” Her tone was disturbingly matter-of-fact, a clerk reporting on grain stores. “The guards changed. Some were indifferent. Some liked to spit. One, for a few years, he would sometimes slip an extra crust of bread under the door. He had a daughter my age, I think. He stopped. Probably got rotated out. Or killed.”
The Queen’s hand had flown to her mouth. Her eyes were wide, glistening, but she didn’t look away.
“The… visits.” Ria’s gaze fixed on a point above the fireplace. “They started when I was… twelve? Thirteen? It’s hard to mark time. It was usually the same one. Tall. Broad. Hair the colour of dirty straw. He didn’t speak much. He just… did what he wanted. Used my body. It was… systematic. Like maintenance on a machine. That was Theron. The usurper emperor.”
A sharp, fractured sound escaped the Queen. A sob choked into a fist.
“I told you not to cry,” Ria said, her grey eyes flicking to her, cold and clear. “He wasn’t the only one. Sometimes he brought others. Officers. Favours for loyalty. I was a perk of his station. A secret prize.” She swallowed, the muscles in her neck taut. “There were pregnancies. Seven that I know of. My body… it couldn’t hold them. The healer they’d drag in afterwards would say it was the malnutrition, the stress. I think it was just my body refusing. The last one… was just before the coup. He was angry. Said I’d wasted his heir. That’s when he used the knife.”
Her hand drifted unconsciously to her ribs, then away. “The coup started with explosions. Shouting. The guard on my door left. I could smell smoke. I broke the bucket, used a shard to saw at the hinge pin on the manacle chain. It took hours. My hands were raw. I got out. The halls were full of smoke and dead men. I took a cloak from one. I ran. I found Caspian in an alley. He was covered in his mother’s blood. He looked like I felt. We ran.”
She fell silent. The only sounds were the crackling fire and the Queen’s ragged, stifled breathing.
“I don’t remember you,” Ria said, finally. “I don’t remember gardens or chairs or my name. I have… sensations. A feeling of warmth on my cheek. The smell of lemons and sunshine. A voice humming. That’s all. That’s what’s left of Victoria.” She looked directly at the Queen, her expression bleak. “The rest is Ria. And Ria is a list of things that were taken from her. A list of hurts. A list of scars. That’s what you got back.”
Queen Elara slowly lowered her hand from her mouth. It was trembling. She didn’t reach for Ria again. Instead, she stood, her movements stiff, and walked to the window. She stared out, her back rigid. When she spoke, her voice was scraped raw, but utterly steady.
“Then we will help you build something new. Not to replace what was taken. Something built beside it. You are my daughter. That is not a feeling. It is a fact. It survives the inventory.”
Ria said nothing. The words were nice. They meant nothing. Facts were stone rooms and buckles. Everything else was air.
The door to the antechamber opened. The King filled the doorway, his face granite. Lyon loomed behind him, his eyes red-rimmed.
King Aldrich’s gaze was on his wife’s back, then it shifted to Ria. The fury in them was a contained inferno. He had heard everything. “Is it complete? The inventory?”
“For now,” Ria said.
He gave a single, sharp nod. “Good.” He turned his head slightly. “Lyon. You have your task. Find out everything. Names. Dates. Units. Where they are now.”
Lyon’s answering nod was a promise of violence. “Yes, sire.”
The King’s pale eyes, so like Ria’s, locked onto hers. “You wish to be part of this family? A family does not offer just a pretty cage. It offers its tools. Its rage. Its will. We cannot erase the list. But we can add to it. We will write answers in the blood of the men who made it.”
It was the first thing that had made sense to her all day. It wasn’t warmth. It wasn’t love. It was a direction for the poison inside her. A purpose.
“Okay,” she said, simple as a sharpened stone.
Downstairs, in a room that smelled of old parchment and cold stone, Caspian was facing a different kind of inventory.
It was a stark council chamber. No tapestries here, just maps pinned to boards, and a heavy oak table scarred by dagger points and tankard rings. King Aldrich sat at its head, having descended from the suite like a descending glacier. Kaelen leaned against a map cabinet, arms crossed. Two senior military commanders, grizzled and watchful, flanked the King.
Caspian stood before them, the ash from his own capital still ingrained in his nails.
“Your brother,” the King began, no title, no courtesy, “has formally declared you a traitor and a regicide. He claims you murdered your father in a bid for the throne and fled when his loyal forces intervened. The edict is being carried by imperial heralds to every border station.”
Caspian’s gut tightened. Of course. Theron was tidying the narrative. “He always was a thorough liar.”
“The question,” Kaelen drawled, “is whether you are a useful liar or a useless truth. My sister seems to believe you share a common enemy. That’s a thin thread to hang a kingdom’s policy on.”
“What do you want?” Caspian’s voice was tired. “Proof? I have none. My witness is a traumatized woman whose testimony you’d never trust internationally. My evidence is the memory of my mother’s blood on my hands. My army is a single borrowed cloak.”
One of the commanders, a man with a beard like iron filings, grunted. “The girl’s account of her treatment aligns with certain… patterns we’ve suspected from the Second Prince. The brutality. The entitlement.”
“It doesn’t align with policy,” the King stated coldly. “It gives me a personal vendetta. It does not give me a casus belli my allies will accept. A hidden hostage is an atrocity. A dead usurper’s brother claiming asylum is a political headache.”
Caspian understood. He was a card, but his value was ambiguous. “So what’s my worth? Barter? Send my head back in a box to buy a year of peace?”
Kaelen pushed off the cabinet. “Peace is off the table. Theron Vex doesn’t want peace. He wants conquest. You are a living challenge to his legitimacy. He will come for you. And by extension, he will come for the asset he lost here.” He paused. “Ria.”
Hearing her name in Kaelen’s analytical tone felt like a violation.
“Your worth,” King Aldrich said, his fingers steepled, “is in what you know. His patterns. His weaknesses. The loyalties inside his new regime that might… fracture. You will tell my strategists everything. Every petty officer he favors, every councilor he distrusts, every logistical flaw in your imperial border keeps. You will drain your memory for us. Then, and only then, we will decide if you are worth the target you paint on my daughter’s back.”
It was an ultimatum. A demand for total, humiliating capitulation. Treason against his own empire, spelled out in meticulous detail.
Caspian looked at the maps on the walls. The borders were bold, clear lines. In reality, they were rivers and mountains and men who bled. He thought of Ria upstairs, a list of scars in a silk bed. He thought of his mother’s empty eyes.
He had no country left. Only a cause.
“Fine,” he said, the word tasting of ash. “Get your scribes.”
As night deepened, a tray of broth was brought to the Rose Suite. Ria managed a few sips. The wolf ate the accompanying slab of plain meat from her hand. Queen Elara had not left, sitting silently in her chair, a monument to grief and steadfastness.
A soft scratch came at the balcony doors. Not the main door to the antechamber—the glass-paned doors leading to a small, high terrace.
The wolf’s head came up. A low growl vibrated in its chest.
Ria went still. The Queen startled, turning.
Before either could call out, the door handle twisted. The lock, decorative and frail, gave way with a faint snick.
A figure slipped through, closing the door silently behind them. He was draped in shadow, but the faint firelight caught the planes of a clean-shaven head and the glacial blue of his eyes.
Theron Vex stood inside the room, his imperial black leathers making him a piece of the night given form. He smiled, a thin, pleasant curve of his lips as his gaze landed on Ria.
“There you are,” he said, his voice a familiar, conversational horror. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”
Ria’s face went pale at the sight of him. “Theron.” She refused to use his title; he didn’t deserve it.
The name was a rusted bolt sliding home in the lock of her spine. Every muscle seized. The warm room turned arctic. She couldn’t breathe. The wolf launched itself from the floor in a silent, grey streak.
Theron didn’t flinch. His hand moved, a blur, and the heavy pommel of his dagger caught the wolf across the skull with a sickening crack. The animal yelped, collapsing sideways onto the rug where it twitched once and lay still.
“No!” The sound tore from Ria’s throat, raw and thin. She put her hand on the Alpha, not wanting him to meet the same fate as the other wolf.
Queen Elara was on her feet, her chair screeching back. “Guards!” Her shout was a blade of pure command. “To the Rose Suite! Now!”
Theron ignored her, his pale eyes fixed on Ria. He took a slow step forward, his boots silent on the carpet. The smell of him cut through the lavender and beeswax—cold steel, saddle leather, and a hint of cloves. It was the smell of the stone room.
“You look better,” he said, his voice a mockery of concern. “Food agrees with you. I always said you just needed proper care.”
Ria couldn’t move. The inventory was no longer a list; it was a cage made of flesh, tightening around her lungs. She saw the specific vein that throbbed in his temple when he was focused. She saw the tiny, faded scar on his knuckle from where she’d bitten him, once.
“You don’t touch her.” The Queen moved, placing her body between the bed and the usurper. She had no weapon, only her will, etched into every line of her stance. “You will not speak to her.”
For the first time, Theron’s gaze flicked to Elara. It was dismissive, an assessment of negligible threat. “I’m not here for you. I’m collecting what’s mine. A piece of misplaced property.” He looked past her, back to Ria. “You know how this ends. You always did. Wasting my heir, that was… disappointing. But the body is still usable. We’ll try again. Properly.”
His words unlocked her. The terror melted, burned away by a fuel so old it was geological. Ria’s hand closed around the cool porcelain of the broth bowl beside her.
She didn’t throw it. She flung it, with every gram of weak strength she had, not at his body, but at the floor directly in front of his boots. The bowl exploded, sending shards and hot liquid spraying upwards.
Theron recoiled instinctively, a single, sharp step back to avoid the scalding splash.
It was enough.
“I am not yours.” The words were ground glass. She was shaking, but her voice wasn’t. “I am a list of what you took. And my family writes their answers in blood.” She was quoting her father without realizing it, the new weapon fitting her grip. “You’re in their house now.”
Boots pounded in the antechamber. The main door shook on its hinges as someone heavy hit it from the outside—Lyon, roaring her name.
Theron’s pleasant mask vanished. His eyes went flat and dead, the true face beneath. He glanced at the shuddering door, then back at her. The calculation was instantaneous.
“Next time, then.” He said it like confirming a dinner reservation.
He didn’t run for the balcony. He moved towards the fireplace, his hand slapping against a carved rosette on the mantel. A section of the stone wall beside the hearth sighed inward, revealing a dark, narrow passage. The panic room. The escape route. He knew the layout of her suite better than she did.
He vanished into the black. The stone door whispered shut just as the main door splintered and exploded inwards.