Chapter 6: THE ROAD OF ASH

DIANA’S POV

Diana left the Southern palace before sunrise without looking back.

Alma climbed into the carriage beside her, and the royal courtyard disappeared behind dark curtains as Northern soldiers closed the door.

Before departure, Diana had exchanged Selena’s altered wedding gown for a dark traveling dress. A palace maid had transferred Selena’s crest to the plain wool cloak Alma fastened around her shoulders.

Selena had sent another cloak in her favorite gold.

Diana left it beneath the seat.

She had worn the wedding gown for Alma’s life. The gold cloak had no hostage attached to it.

The carriage crossed the western bridge under armed escort.

Through a gap in the curtain, Diana watched Blackharrow’s household guards riding closest to the carriage while scouts moved ahead and along the tree line. Two healers traveled beside a covered medical wagon, and quartermasters supervised packhorses carrying food, tools, spare weapons, and winter equipment.

The soldiers wore standardized armor, rode well-kept horses, and traveled with wagons built for mountain roads rather than borrowed for a hurried journey. Nothing about the convoy resembled the ragged Northern war band Southern stories had taught Diana to expect.

Raigoro rode at the head of the convoy, while Daric followed with the Southern records locked inside a traveling case.

Diana watched until the palace towers disappeared.

Alma was beside her now and beyond Odran’s guards, but the covenant could still place them both back within his reach.

If Raigoro proved the marriage fraudulent, Diana still had no idea whether he would protect Alma or return them both to Valence.

Alma touched her hand.

"You are allowed to grieve."

Diana took the slate Raigoro had ordered placed inside the carriage.

THERE IS NOTHING THERE THAT WANTS ME BACK.

Alma read the sentence without trying to argue with it.

By noon, the paved Southern road had narrowed between wet fields and dark forest. Rain hardened into sleet, and Raigoro rode beside the carriage for several miles before calling a halt.

When the door opened, Alma moved to the opposite seat.

Raigoro entered carrying a leather folder of embassy reports.

Men did not bring evidence to ask harmless questions.

Road dust marked his gloves, fresh linen covered the cut in his palm, and his sword struck the seat as he settled across from Diana.

She kept the veil lowered.

Distance, dim light, and old portraits still worked in her favor.

"You may remove that."

Diana remained still.

"I have already married the woman beneath it."

So he was starting with the veil.

Diana turned toward the window.

"If your silence is meant as protest against this marriage, I will not require you to end it."

That brought her attention back to him.

"I chose the covenant. You did not. I know the difference."

He rested one hand on the folder.

"But I will still require the truth, whether you speak it or write it."

Diana kept the chalk against the slate.

She could tell him that her silence was not protest.

Then he would ask why Selena Valence, known across the South for public appearances and easy conversation, had lost her voice.

The truth led directly to Diana.

Raigoro opened the folder.

"Who taught you the western court language?"

The truthful names belonged to Diana’s childhood, so she wrote only one word.

TUTORS.

"Their names?"

She chose three from an old household list.

Raigoro read them.

"Master Devran died when you were nine."

The chalk stopped.

The answer had already been inside his folder.

He was measuring her lies.

Diana erased the name.

"What did Prince Emmon give you for your seventeenth birthday?"

She remembered servants carrying gifts toward Selena’s celebration while Diana watched from the musicians’ gallery, but she had never been allowed close enough to know which prince sent which box.

I DO NOT REMEMBER.

"He gave Selena a hunting falcon. It bit her."

Diana looked up.

Raigoro was watching her writing hand.

Selena.

There was the trap.

Raigoro had given her the correct answer himself and watched to see what she did with it. Diana erased her own.

"You choose every sentence carefully," he said.

Every question demanded an answer from Selena.

Every truthful answer threatened to reveal Diana.

She wrote, I WAS TAUGHT THAT CARELESS ANSWERS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.

Raigoro read the sentence twice.

"By your father?"

Yes.

Odran had taught her that lesson better than any tutor.

Diana wiped the slate clean.

Raigoro closed the folder and asked nothing more.

Questions Diana could evade. Records were harder.

He no longer needed her help to investigate Selena.

The convoy continued north.

Villages grew smaller, and stone walls replaced the open fences around the fields. Nearly every adult Diana saw beside the road carried a knife, bow, or spear.

Children watched the Northern banners pass, but no one cheered when they saw the Southern crest painted on Diana’s carriage.

To them, she was Selena, favored daughter of the king who had held a banquet while Northern soldiers waited for promised support.

The name hiding Diana from Raigoro also carried Odran’s debt.

Late in the afternoon, the convoy entered the old treaty corridor, a strip of Southern frontier land Blackharrow was permitted to garrison under the covenant.

The Third Watchtower stood several hours south of Blackharrow’s border.

Diana recognized the roofless ruin from Daric’s description at the banquet.

Northern soldiers dismounted as they passed through the gate, their voices lowering without anyone ordering them to be quiet.

When Diana stepped from the carriage, Daric noticed.

"The princess should remain inside."

Raigoro handed his reins to a guard.

"She should see what her kingdom purchased."

The words struck because he called Valence hers.

That kingdom had removed her from its records.

Selena’s crest still expected Diana to answer for it.

Raigoro walked through the ruined gate, and Diana followed.

More than fifty names covered the surviving wall, with small objects left beneath them: a carved bird, a brass button, a strip of blue cloth, a child’s drawing protected beneath glass.

Diana stopped at the drawing.

Three figures held hands in front of a square house.

Someone had expected the soldier named above it to return.

Raigoro continued toward the stairs leading below the tower, and Diana followed him into the supply chamber.

Southern labels remained fixed to the empty shelves.

VALENCE GRAIN.

VALENCE MEDICINE.

VALENCE WARD MATERIALS.

Raigoro placed three letters on the desk.

Diana recognized Odran’s seal.

"Your king received six requests for treaty support. He answered three."

She read the replies: grain after the harvest, medicine and ward materials when the roads improved, soldiers after another council review.

Daric stood in the doorway.

"We bought what we could elsewhere. Blackharrow did not run out of gold."

He pointed toward the floor above them.

"The tower ran out of time."

Raigoro opened another damaged ledger.

"Valence had also agreed to provide engineers and emergency access through Southern roads. Neither arrived when the watch requested them."

Diana looked at the empty shelves.

She had seen grain leave for the royal ports. She had watched imported flowers enter Selena’s banquet.

She had never seen the names carved upstairs.

Daric’s attention dropped to the crest pinned to her cloak.

"We buried thirty-one men here. Nineteen more died before reaching Blackharrow."

His expression hardened.

"Your court found time for silk."

Diana took Odran’s final letter and wrote across the back.

I DID NOT KNOW.

Daric read it.

"You wore the crest."

Diana looked down at the metal.

She could tell him where it had come from. She could explain that guards had stood beside Alma while a maid pinned it over Diana’s heart.

Every useful explanation led toward her real name.

So Diana removed the crest instead.

The pin tore the wool as she pulled it free, and she placed it on the empty medicine shelf.

She could not give the dead what Valence had denied them.

She could stop wearing its pride in front of their names.

Daric looked from the crest to her.

Raigoro took the letter from Diana’s hand.

"Did Selena know?"

The borrowed name trapped every answer.

If Diana wrote no, he would ask how she knew.

If she wrote yes, she would condemn Selena for decisions Diana had never witnessed.

She took the slate.

ASK THE KING WHO IGNORED THEM.

Raigoro read it.

"I asked what Selena knew. You answered with what Odran did."

He had seen the evasion.

Diana erased the sentence.

In the empty supply chamber, Diana finally understood why Daric had entered the banquet in a bloodstained cloak.

The forced marriage remained cruel, but the North’s anger had not come from poverty, jealousy, or stories about Southern wealth.

It had graves behind it.

A soldier called for Daric from above.

They found him near the collapsed gate, kneeling beside tracks in the wet ash. The marks resembled animal prints, but the spacing was too regular, and a narrow groove beside them suggested that something heavy had been dragged through the mud.

A scout returned from the trees carrying raw meat tied to a cord.

Black resin coated one side.

"Ash hound lure," Daric said.

Raigoro examined it.

"This was tied north of the tower."

Alma looked toward the trees.

"Someone wanted the creatures to come here?"

"Not necessarily here."

Raigoro pointed south, where the drag marks met the road the convoy had taken.

A sharp whistle sounded from the ridge.

Northern soldiers raised their bows at once, and Raigoro ran for the trees.

Whoever had been watching was already gone.

Only a fresh boot print remained in the wet soil.

Its toe pointed toward the road.

Raigoro looked back at the convoy.

"Someone prepared this route before we came through."

Diana stared at the lure in Daric’s hand.

She had spent the journey wondering how much Raigoro knew.

Now someone else had known where they would travel.