Chapter 99: THE FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER

DARIC’S POV

The royal household list had two daughters.

Daric read the line again because two daughters had spent months refusing to exist anywhere reliable.

The Merovian copy looked ordinary under the archive lamp: old paper, a foreign witness seal, and Blackharrow embassy inventory notation along the upper margin.

A preservation clerk had added a modern certification sheet explaining where the document had been found, which older collection it belonged to, and how the damaged original had been copied under witness before transport.

Nothing about it looked dramatic.

That improved Daric’s opinion of it.

Raigoro stood across the table.

"You said two daughters."

"Yes."

"Read it."

Daric looked back at the register.

The document listed the Valence royal household during Queen Elara’s lifetime.

King Odran.

Queen Elara.

Then:

FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER OF THEIR MAJESTIES.

The line continued into damaged paper.

A dark stain had eaten through part of the original before preservation.

Whatever name had once followed was unreadable in this copy.

The next line survived.

PRINCESS SELENA VALENCE, YOUNGER DAUGHTER OF HIS MAJESTY.

Daric placed one finger beneath it.

"Selena is listed as the younger daughter."

Raigoro said nothing.

Daric continued.

"The elder child is identified as Odran and Elara’s firstborn."

"Name?"

"Not legible here."

"Date?"

Daric gave it.

The date placed the register years before Queen Elara died and before the modern Valence succession lists began presenting Selena as Odran’s only daughter and First Princess.

Raigoro took the register.

He did not touch the damaged section.

"Provenance."

Daric had already checked.

"Created by Blackharrow’s embassy staff in Valence while Elara was alive. Transferred to Merovia when the old embassy collection was reorganized. The repository inventory confirms the box number matches Blackharrow’s original transfer list."

"Could the relevant line have been added later?"

"No evidence of it."

"That is not the same as no."

"No."

Daric turned the certification page.

"The Merovian archivist compared ink aging across the household entries. The firstborn and Selena lines belong to the same period. The witness note beside the original entry also predates Elara’s death."

"Who witnessed?"

"Blackharrow’s deputy ambassador at the time."

"Alive?"

"No."

Of course not.

Raigoro read the register again.

Daric knew what the document did.

More importantly, he knew what it did not.

The register still did not prove that the Duchess was the erased daughter, establish that the firstborn had survived childhood, provide her name, or explain why modern Valence records denied the child’s existence.

But it removed something important.

For months one explanation had remained possible.

Perhaps Raigoro’s wife truly was Selena and something had happened to her during the nineteen days between her last verified public speech and the wedding.

A concealed injury, illness, or sudden loss of speech could still have happened during those nineteen days.

The behavior had always fit badly.

Alma had fit worse.

Vharos had made it worse again.

Still, there had been no historically documented alternative daughter.

Now there was.

Daric sat.

"Modern Valence records are false."

Raigoro looked at him.

"Or incomplete."

Daric considered.

"Deliberately incomplete?"

"That is likely."

"Yes."

Raigoro placed the document back on the table.

"Do not improve it."

Daric almost smiled.

Master Clair had infected all of them.

The second packet came from an older religious archive.

Daric opened it carefully.

The cover note was disappointing.

The archive had suffered water damage, leaving ceremonial pages missing and several entries preserved only through an index.

He had seen this failure before.

The index referred to a royal household observance involving:

THEIR MAJESTIES AND THE ROYAL DAUGHTERS.

The useful word was plural again, although the index supplied no names, ages, or useful description.

Daric put it beside the Merovian register.

"Independent source."

"Derivative?"

"No indication. Different archive."

"Date?"

"Same general period."

Raigoro read the phrase.

Royal daughters.

Plural.

For months, Daric’s work had mostly eliminated weak evidence. The new material was finally surviving the same scrutiny.

A third document sat inside the Merovian package.

A treaty-attendance register from a foreign court reception.

Most of the page survived.

The Valence delegation listed King Odran.

Queen Elara.

A senior minister.

Household officers.

Then one partially destroyed line.

HER HIGHNESS, THE FIRST...

The rest was missing.

Selena appeared lower on the page under a children’s attendance notation.

Daric leaned closer.

Raigoro saw the same thing.

"First what?"

"Probably princess."

"Probably?"

"Yes."

Raigoro looked irritated.

Daric opened the preservation notes.

The damaged word began with the correct surviving letters.

The title structure matched First Princess in similar registers.

That made the reading likely, although it still was not certain.

Raigoro said, "Do not use it as proof."

"I wasn’t planning to."

"Good."

Daric looked at him.

"You have become unpleasant about evidence."

"I hired you."

Fair.

More than one royal daughter now appeared across three independent historical sources.

The strongest of them went farther: the Blackharrow embassy register explicitly identified Odran and Elara’s elder child as their firstborn daughter.

The name remained missing, but Daric no longer considered that a complete failure. The surviving records already established that Odran had not invented an extra daughter shortly before the marriage. The child had existed publicly enough for foreign systems to record her before Valence cleaned its own history.

Raigoro sat opposite him.

"For the first time, there is another royal daughter."

"Yes."

"Older than Selena."

"Yes."

"Elara’s daughter."

"Yes."

"Age?"

Daric checked the old date.

"Compatible with the Duchess, assuming the firstborn was an infant or young child when this was recorded."

"Assuming."

"Yes."

Raigoro leaned back.

Daric recognized the expression.

He was not deciding yet.

"What happened to her?" Raigoro asked.

"That is what the rest may tell us."

Daric opened the third archive packet.

This one came from a foreign diplomatic collection catalogued under Queen Elara rather than King Odran.

Exactly the kind of classification that had hidden useful material for years.

The first pages concerned trade, a court reception, and Elara’s illness.

Daric read quickly.

No daughter.

He turned another page.

The next document was a household expense list covering royal tutors, children’s attendants, and clothing allocations.

One line had been copied cleanly.

Daric stopped.

Raigoro noticed.

"What?"

Daric read the entry once more.

He reread it because after months of looking for a child who had disappeared between other people’s records, seeing the name on an ordinary expense line felt strangely simple.

He looked at Raigoro.

"The next file has her name."