Chapter 25: HOW LONG?

DIANA’S POV

Raigoro returned from the northern boundary with exactly the question Diana had hoped the fire would not give him.

He stood across from her writing table while Alma remained near the window.

"This concerns the fire."

The slate lay ready in front of her.

Raigoro glanced toward Alma.

"Do you want her to stay?"

Alma waited.

Diana wanted her there. She also knew how quickly one question could become another, and Alma had already spent years protecting answers that belonged to both of them.

Diana shook her head.

Alma did not move immediately.

Diana touched two fingers to the edge of the slate.

I WILL MANAGE.

Alma understood the gesture. She picked up the tea tray and left, though the set had been empty long enough that neither of them could pretend tea was the reason.

Raigoro waited until the door closed.

"The witnesses agree that you tried to warn the child."

Diana nodded.

"They also agree that no sound came out."

There was little use denying an event witnessed by half the great hall. Diana kept the chalk in her hand and waited for the question she knew was coming next.

Raigoro sat across from her.

"How long have you been unable to speak?"

Diana stared at the slate.

She had prepared for questions about Selena: court tutors, foreign princes, childhood companions, places she had never visited and conversations she had never heard.

This question was different. Raigoro was asking about something that actually belonged to Diana’s life.

For one moment, Diana considered writing the answer that would make every other question unnecessary.

DIANA VALENCE.

Odran was hundreds of miles away. No Valence guard stood outside her door, Alma was still with her, and Raigoro already knew his marriage contained lies. She could write her name and end his careful guesses about Selena.

What Diana could not predict was what came afterward. Raigoro had invoked the covenant for Selena Valence. He had crossed into Valence expecting Selena and married the woman Odran placed beneath her veil. Diana had no way to know whether he would see her as another person Odran had used or as the woman who had helped deceive him.

Blackharrow knew her only as Raigoro’s wife. Her rooms, her household authority, the guards outside her door, even Alma’s place here had followed from that marriage. Diana did not know what would remain if Raigoro decided the marriage itself had been obtained through fraud.

Worse was the possibility that he might send her back. Odran had threatened Alma with treason to force Diana into the covenant, and Maerissa had already helped erase Diana once. Blackharrow had treated her differently from Valence, but Raigoro had never promised to keep her here if he learned she was not Selena.

He had asked for Selena, not Diana.

The slate remained blank. Telling him the truth might finally remove Selena’s name from Diana. She still could not know what else it would remove with it.

Writing years would give him a history to search. A false date would be worse if Daric found records that contradicted it, and refusing would tell Raigoro that the answer itself mattered.

Diana wrote two words, read them once, then erased them. Raigoro watched her do it.

He asked, "Before the wedding?"

That answer cost less.

Diana nodded.

His expression did not change. He asked the next question immediately.

"Before I entered Valence?"

Another nod.

Raigoro leaned back slightly.

"Did Odran know?"

Diana stopped.

Denying that would accomplish nothing. Odran had known exactly what Diana could and could not do when he sent her into the wedding chamber under Selena’s name.

She nodded.

Raigoro was quiet before continuing.

"When I married you, Valence gave me no explanation for your silence."

Diana remembered how carefully everyone had avoided the subject.

"You had already been unable to speak before I entered Valence, and Odran knew it."

She nodded.

"That was another fact he deliberately withheld."

Raigoro did not raise his voice. Diana had already learned that he rarely needed to.

"How long?"

The chalk remained in her hand.

Six.

The number belonged to the chamber beneath Valence, her mother’s blood, the black dragon inside a cage of light, and Alma crying beside Diana’s bed after she woke.

If she gave Raigoro an age, Daric would have a date to search. Physicians might have kept records. Queen Elara’s household might have left correspondence. Someone might remember when the First Princess stopped appearing in public.

Diana lowered her eyes to the slate.

She could not write it.

Raigoro waited.

The half-erased chalk on the slate blurred. Diana wiped it away again.

When she raised her eyes, Raigoro was watching her.

Her own name rose in her mind so sharply that Diana almost looked up as though Raigoro had spoken it.

He was still waiting for an answer. Diana lowered her eyes to the slate again.

Diana expected him to ask again. Several seconds passed before he spoke.

"Leave the question."

Diana looked at him.

"I know the condition existed before the wedding. I know Odran knew about it."

His voice remained controlled.

"I can verify those facts before I ask you for anything else."

Diana held the slate against her lap.

He was still going to investigate, but he had stopped asking when she could not answer.

Diana had expected persistence. She had no prepared response for restraint.

Raigoro stood.

At the door, he stopped.

"I am angry with what your father did."

Diana watched him.

"I have not decided what part of it belongs to you."

Then he left.

Alma entered almost immediately.

She looked at Diana’s face and shut the door behind her.

"What did you tell him?"

Diana turned the slate toward her.

BEFORE THE WEDDING.

ODRAN KNEW.

Alma read them.

"And how long?"

Diana shook her head.

Alma sat down beside her.

Raigoro knew her silence existed before their marriage and that Odran had concealed it. He still did not know when it began.

For now, Diana had kept the number six to herself.