What She Remembers

Morning came gray and quiet.

The dead rogues had been carried away. The broken door had been replaced. Noah slept in the next room under three guards and a very large wolf Lucas had positioned at the foot of his bed.

Elena sat at the window in Adrian's study, with a cup of tea she couldn't drink.

"My mother," she said, without turning. "What do you know?"

"Not enough." Adrian stood behind her. "But you said the name once, years ago. Isolde. That you were an orphan and she died when you were small."

"I never told you that."

"You told me in your sleep."

She turned. He was leaning against the desk with his hands in his pockets, tired and honest.

"We'd been married three weeks," he said. "You had a nightmare. You cried a name. Isolde. I held you until it stopped. In the morning you didn't remember, and I never asked."

Her throat tightened.

"I hardly remember anything before the hospital," she said. "A smell of snow. A woman's voice singing. And then you."

"Tell me about the hospital."

So she did.

She told him about waking in a white room in a human city, with a tube in her arm and a doctor's face she didn't know. About learning that she was pregnant, with no money, no name, no past. About the cold nights, the small jobs, the careful way she'd learned to count every coin. About Noah's first breath, and how she'd sobbed from joy and terror at once.

Adrian didn't speak. He only listened, but his hands slowly came out of his pockets and gripped the desk, tight enough that the wood groaned.

When she finished, the room was silent.

"I'd have given anything," he said, "to be there."

"I know."

"I should have been."

"You couldn't have known."

"That doesn't help."

She crossed the floor and stopped in front of him. Close. Closer than she'd meant to.

"There's something I haven't told you," she said.

"Elena..."

"Let me say it."

He went still.

She took a breath. Her voice shook, but she didn't stop.

"He's yours."

Silence.

"Noah," she whispered. "He's your son. He's been yours since the night he was conceived. I didn't know how to say it. I was afraid you'd take him, or that you'd hate me, or that it wouldn't matter because I was already a traitor in your eyes."

Adrian's face broke.

It wasn't dramatic. His expression simply crumpled, all that cold, controlled power falling away at once, and what remained was a man whose eyes were suddenly wet.

"Thank you," he said. His voice was ragged. "For telling me. For trusting me."

"I'm not sure I do yet."

"I know. But you said it anyway."

He lifted his hand, slowly, and pressed it against her cheek. She leaned into it before she could stop herself.

"I'll earn it," he said. "I swear on my crown. I'll earn every day."

Her eyes closed. For a moment she let herself believe it.

Then she remembered the other thing.

"There's more," she said, pulling back. "I need to tell you what I saw. The night I was banished. The real memory, as clearly as I can."

"Tell me."

She closed her eyes.

"It was a room. A long, white room with stone walls. I was standing in the middle. You were across from me. You wore a black coat, and your face was... empty. You didn't look at me. You read from a paper. You said I was no longer your wife. That I would leave the territory before dawn, or be killed."

"And?"

"And I begged. I said I was carrying your child." Her voice broke. "You didn't even blink."

Adrian's face was gray.

"Describe the room again," he said.

"White walls. High ceiling. No windows."

"The floor."

She frowned. "The floor?"

"What was the floor like?"

"Silver," she said slowly. "Polished silver, like a mirror. I could see myself in it. I remember thinking my own face looked like a stranger's."

Adrian said nothing for a very long time.

"Adrian?"

When he finally spoke, his voice had gone dangerously quiet.

"Elena, there is only one floor like that in my entire Tower."

"Where?"

"Beneath the sixty-first level. A sealed chamber my father built before I was born." His eyes lifted to hers. "I have never once been inside it. And I've kept it locked for ten years."

The air in the room went cold.

"Then how," Elena whispered, "did I see you in a room you've never entered?"