Chapter 103: ARE YOU DIANA VALENCE?

DIANA’S POV

Raigoro asked to speak with Diana after dinner.

He had asked rather than summoned her, which somehow made the message worse.

There was no subject, no Command seal, no request for household reports, and no mention of Vharos.

Diana knew anyway.

Daric had spent the previous day inside the Command Archive with the foreign packets that arrived after Broken Ward.

Alma knew too. She stood beside Diana’s dressing table without pretending otherwise.

"What do you want me to do?"

Diana looked at her.

Years ago, Alma would already have been planning which servant stair remained open, which guard could be trusted, which cloak hid Diana’s hair, and which door did not creak. Blackharrow had made those precautions unnecessary often enough that they sometimes felt foolish now.

The instincts remained.

Diana took her slate.

COME WITH ME.

Alma nodded.

They crossed the Inner Keep together, with Diana’s Household Guards following at their usual distance.

Raigoro waited inside his private study.

Daric was absent. So were the Command clerks, priests, and legal officers Diana might have expected if this were about to become a formal accusation.

There was only the fire, two chairs, Raigoro, and a narrow file on the table.

Diana looked at the file and found it difficult to look anywhere else.

Raigoro glanced toward Alma before returning to Diana.

"Do you want her to stay?"

Diana stopped.

Alma looked at her.

Raigoro gave no instruction that Diana had to answer alone. He attached no threat to Alma’s presence and made no attempt to send her away himself.

For a rare moment, the decision belonged entirely to Diana.

She realized she did not want Alma standing between them for this.

Alma belonged to the truth as much as anyone, but Diana could not ask her to remain in the room if Diana chose to lie again.

Her fingers moved.

WAIT OUTSIDE.

Alma read the slate.

"Are you sure?"

Diana nodded.

Alma hesitated before obeying.

The door closed behind her.

Diana sat across from Raigoro.

He did not open the file immediately.

"The records that arrived after Broken Ward concern Queen Elara’s household."

Diana held the slate across her knees. Her hands had gone cold.

Raigoro continued.

"They were created before the modern Valence succession records."

Diana knew what that meant.

They were older than Odran’s cleaned pages. Older than the court’s pretense that only one daughter had ever existed.

Raigoro opened the file but did not slide it toward her.

Good.

Diana did not want to see it.

"Odran and Queen Elara had an elder daughter."

She pressed her thumb against the edge of the slate.

"Older than Selena."

Diana stared at the table.

"Firstborn."

Raigoro said the name.

"Princess Diana Valence."

The chalk struck the slate before Diana realized her hand had moved.

Raigoro heard it.

He continued.

"The records identify Diana as First Princess. She appears publicly as a child."

Portraits.

Court dinners.

Her mother taking Diana’s hand before they entered a room together.

Diana had almost forgotten what it felt like to be expected somewhere.

"Then Queen Elara died."

Diana looked up.

Raigoro was choosing every word carefully. Diana recognized the care because he usually had little patience for unnecessary words.

"The references to Diana decrease afterward."

Diana had lived that reduction herself.

One tutor dismissed and then another. Her place removed from formal dinners. Her portrait taken from the western gallery. Servants learning not to say Princess before her name. People looking away in corridors because recognizing Diana could become inconvenient.

Raigoro continued.

"No surviving independent record establishes her death. There is no marriage record, no renunciation, and no formal exile."

Diana lowered her eyes to the slate.

"And a physician’s record from her childhood documents an established impairment of speech."

She closed her eyes.

In the end, paper had exposed her.

Someone outside Valence had written down that she could not speak before Odran finished teaching the world to forget her.

When Diana opened her eyes again, Raigoro was watching her.

He was no longer guessing.

Whatever uncertainty remained, he knew enough to ask the question Diana had spent months avoiding.

Every instinct Valence had taught her began searching for delay, for some answer that could protect Alma and Blackharrow, preserve her work and the marriage, and leave as many doors open as possible.

She knew how to do this.

The first time, Maerissa had stood beside the wedding dress while Odran threatened Alma. Diana had worn another woman’s name because refusal carried consequences she could not survive.

Tonight, nobody stood behind Raigoro. There were no guards in the room and no threat had been spoken.

That made the choice harder in a different way.

This time, whatever answer Diana gave would be hers.

Raigoro closed the file.

"I am going to ask you one question."

Diana waited.

"Before I do, there are things you need to know."

She looked at him.

"If Odran forced another daughter into the covenant, that does not give him the right to take her back."

Diana stared.

"If you believe telling me the truth means I will return you to Valence, I will not."

For a moment, the chalk rested quietly between her fingers.

"The marriage may have legal questions."

Diana had known there would be.

"The covenant may have legal questions. Valence’s fraud will have consequences."

Raigoro leaned forward slightly.

"But you will not be handed back to Odran as property while those questions are decided."

Diana looked at him.

She wanted to believe him badly enough that suspicion arrived almost immediately.

Hope had always been easiest to use against someone who needed it. ℴ

Raigoro needed the truth. He had spent months searching for it.

A frightened part of Diana wondered whether this was simply the safer way to obtain it now that he understood pressure made her close around an answer. Promise protection first. Remove Alma as leverage. Make the truth possible to give.

The thought was unfair.

Raigoro had given her little reason to think it of him.

Odran had given her years of reasons to believe promises made before obedience could change their meaning afterward.

Raigoro reached for another document and placed it on the table.

This one was a Command memorandum rather than part of the identity file.

Diana read the first lines.

The memorandum placed her under Blackharrow protection, barred her transfer to Valence or surrender to Odran and Maerissa, and required any legal dispute to be resolved through law.

Her vision blurred.

She blinked until the words became clear again.

"Alma will not be arrested tonight because of what you tell me," Raigoro said.

Diana looked up.

"Or tomorrow."

She did not move.

"I have not promised that no law applies to anyone. I cannot promise that before I know what happened."

That sounded like Raigoro.

"I can promise I will not use Alma to force your answer."

Diana looked down.

That had been Odran’s weapon.

Raigoro did not know that.

Perhaps he had guessed.

Either way, he had removed it.

There was no immediate threat left for Diana to hide behind. Only consequences, and she was not certain those frightened her any less.

Raigoro sat back.

He did not reach for her slate or ask her to look at him. The guards remained outside, too far away to hear which name she might write.

Then he asked.

"Are you Diana Valence?"

Diana stared at him.

She could write yes.

Three letters.

YES.

Three letters could restore her name inside this one room.

Raigoro would know the name of the woman he had kissed, the woman who sat beside Vharos, who found the miners, and who built the Winter Court.

Diana rather than Selena.

Her hand moved toward the slate.

Alma was safe for tonight. Blackharrow was not automatically lost.

Diana thought of the Winter Court, her office, Vharos, and Raigoro.

Writing YES could change every one of them even if Raigoro kept his promise and never sent her back.

His promise covered Valence.

It did not promise that the marriage survived.

It could not.

Raigoro had demanded Selena.

Odran had given him Diana.

The law might decide the covenant had been violated. The marriage might be challenged. Blackharrow might keep Diana safe and still remove the title that had given her rooms, keys, responsibilities, and a place here.

She could lose the title of Grand Duchess, her office, her Household Guards, and the Winter Court.

Those losses frightened her because they were the first things she had ever been allowed to build and keep.

But losing the title was not the fear she kept returning to.

Raigoro might keep every promise he made tonight and still stop wanting her.

He could protect Diana from Odran and regret the accidental kiss. He could decide that the frostberry preserve, her work, her questions about Vharos, and the night they had stood close enough for another kiss all belonged to the deception that had brought her into Blackharrow.

He might look at Diana and see the lie first.

That frightened her more than losing the title carved on any door.

COME BACK.

He had come back.

And Diana had wanted him to know her.

That was the cruel part.

She had wanted him to know far more than the truth about Valence. She wanted him to know what she preferred, what annoyed her, which records she noticed, which dragon she worried about, and what kind of waiting place she wanted to build.

Raigoro had begun learning those things without knowing the name attached to them.

Now Diana was afraid the name could change everything he already knew.

Valence had taught her one lesson too thoroughly.

Diana was the name removed from portraits, dinners, records, and eventually the palace’s memory. Selena was the name people made room for, the name that entered halls and carried titles without anyone questioning whether she had the right to exist.

Diana knew Blackharrow was not Valence.

She knew Raigoro was not Odran.

She knew both things and still could not make the old lesson disappear.

Raigoro waited.

There was no impatience in his voice and no pressure in the room.

He had given Diana the safest chance she had ever had to tell the truth.

She understood that.

Whatever she did next would belong to her.

Diana lowered the chalk to the slate.

She wrote the first letter.

Then the second.

By the time her hand moved toward the third, she wanted to stop.

She finished the word anyway.

SELENA.

Diana stared at it.

It looked cleaner than any lie had the right to look.

Her hand trembled as she turned the slate.

Raigoro read the name.

He did not ask again.

Anger would have given Diana something to answer, but Raigoro gave her none.

The evidence remained closed on the table.

Diana Valence inside it.

Selena on her slate.

Raigoro neither claimed to believe her nor accused her of lying. He did not threaten her.

He only said quietly, "That is the answer you are giving me."

Diana held the slate tighter.

He did not believe her.

She knew that much.

The evidence had already given him Diana.

She had given him Selena anyway.