Chapter 71: HE COVERED ME

RAIGORO’S POV

His wife requested a private audience in Raigoro’s study in the Inner Keep before breakfast.

Alma came with her, while the Duchess’s two Household Guards remained outside the study.

She wrote that she wanted privacy, then sat opposite Raigoro without immediately reaching for the slate again.

He closed the file in front of him.

"Alma stays?"

She nodded.

Of course.

Alma remained beside the door.

Raigoro waited.

The pace belonged to his wife.

She had chosen to come here.

Eventually, she wrote:

I REMEMBER WHAT THE SCAR IS FROM.

Raigoro read the sentence once.

Then again.

Yesterday she had established that Vharos’s scar matched something she remembered.

This morning she had come to tell Raigoro what the memory contained.

"What happened?"

Her chalk moved.

STONE FELL.

She paused before adding:

VHAROS COVERED ME.

Raigoro looked at the sentence.

"When?"

His wife hesitated.

Then wrote:

I WAS A CHILD.

Raigoro did not speak immediately.

The bond had given him recognition, grief, and relief when Vharos saw her, followed by enough protectiveness that an old, weakened dragon had tried to stand.

Now Raigoro knew one reason why.

"He protected you."

His wife looked down.

YES.

"While he was chained?"

Her hand stopped.

Then:

YES.

A chained dragon had covered her from falling stone.

Raigoro let the answer settle.

"Who else was there?"

His wife went still.

Alma’s attention sharpened near the door.

Raigoro waited.

The Duchess closed her eyes briefly.

Then wrote: I DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH.

Her chalk returned to the slate.

I REMEMBER MEN.

Raigoro waited.

She stared at the words.

Erased them.

He let her.

Another line replaced them.

NOT CLEARLY.

"That is enough for now."

Her expression suggested she did not entirely believe him.

Reasonable.

Raigoro had spent the beginning of their marriage trying to pull answers out of every contradiction around her. The investigation and its questions still mattered, but this disclosure did not need to become an interrogation.

His wife lowered the slate.

He said, "Thank you."

She looked almost more suspicious of that.

Then she stood.

At the door she stopped and wrote:

YOU WILL INVESTIGATE THIS.

The sentence was a statement.

"Yes."

Her fingers tightened around the slate.

Raigoro continued, "I will not pretend otherwise."

She nodded.

That answer she seemed willing to accept.

Then she left with Alma.

Three days later, Daric arrived with a narrow folder from one of the Elara-era inquiries already in progress.

Raigoro looked at it.

"Something useful?"

"One thing."

That qualified as progress.

Daric sat and opened the file.

"The request predates what she told you."

Raigoro looked at him.

"Good."

"Merchant records from Queen Elara’s final year."

Raigoro waited.

"Unusually large deliveries of stone bracing and forged iron entered the Valence palace under restricted household authorization."

"How unusual?"

"Enough that the merchant accounting separated them from ordinary palace maintenance."

Daric turned the page.

"No purpose survives in the commercial copies. No dragon appears by name."

"But the deliveries are real."

"Yes."

Raigoro read the totals: stone bracing, heavy forged iron, and multiple deliveries under restricted household authorization.

"Enough iron for what?"

"I can’t tell you."

"Underground construction?"

"Possible."

"Restraint?"

"Also possible."

"So we have another fact and no answer."

"Yes."

His wife’s memory now contained a chained dragon, falling stone, and fire. The merchant records proved only that large amounts of bracing and iron had entered the palace during Queen Elara’s final year.

The facts fit beside one another without becoming a conclusion.

"The Merovian collection?"

"Authentication still pending."

"Nothing moved?"

"The repository has confirmed more of the transferred boxes belong to the correct general period. They still refuse to certify individual contents until the preservation review is complete."

"Reasonable."

"Irritating."

"Yes."

Daric closed the folder.

"What do you want next?"

"Find out who authorized the restricted deliveries if any surviving commercial copy records the office, seal, intermediary, or payment route."

Daric nodded.

"And keep Merovia active."

"Already active."

Raigoro looked at him.

Daric added, "I thought I would save you the opportunity to say it."

A poor decision.

Daric did not close the investigation file when he finished with the merchant records.

"There is another update."

Raigoro waited.

"Human sources."

That route had produced little so far.

Daric opened a thinner section of the folder.

"One former member of Queen Elara’s household died twelve years ago. Another left Valence after her death and has not been located. A third person was never household staff, but served with a foreign diplomatic delegation during the same period."

"And remembers?"

"Queen Elara appearing at formal functions with a child."

Raigoro looked at him.

"A daughter?"

"He believes so."

"Name?"

"No."

"Age?"

"He gave three different estimates during the interview."

Raigoro put the witness summary down.

Daric continued before he had to ask.

"He remembers dark hair. He remembers the child staying close to Queen Elara. He cannot distinguish whether the memory comes from one event or several, and he later relied on official Valence announcements for what he believed about the royal family."

"So he cannot establish who the child was."

"No."

"Could he identify my wife?"

"Not responsibly. He has not seen her, and I would not put her in front of an elderly witness whose memory is already contaminated by later records simply to see whether recognition occurs."

Raigoro nodded.

Daric closed that section.

"Another witness remembered Queen Elara with a child during a religious procession. The surviving copy of the procession list was produced years later. It names Selena."

"Derivative."

"Yes."

Another road existed.

It still did not reach the answer.

Raigoro tapped the first witness summary.

"Did he volunteer the child before your people mentioned the royal family?"

"Yes. That is why I kept the statement."

"Then it is worth something."

"Something," Daric agreed. "It supports that Queen Elara was seen publicly with a child during the period we are examining. It does not tell us whether the child was Selena, another daughter, a relative, or whether the witness has merged several occasions."

Raigoro left the statement in the file.

It established that the witness remembered Queen Elara with a child before anyone prompted him toward that memory. Raigoro would use it for that and nothing beyond it.

Raigoro looked toward the door his wife had used that morning.

The witnesses could not reliably tell him who she was.

She had still told him something none of them could have given him.

She had been a child when she knew Vharos.

Daric gathered the papers.

Before he left, he asked, "She told you what Vharos did?"

"Yes."

"Voluntarily?"

"Yes."

Daric closed the folder.

There was nothing to verify about the fact that she had chosen to tell Raigoro herself.

He left.

Raigoro returned to the merchant totals. The records had added another verified fact to the investigation.

His wife had done something different that morning: she had come to his study and given him part of her past without being asked.