Chapter 38: The House That Raised Her

Chapter 38 — The House That Raised Her

The journey to Ripley territory took most of the day, the small royal escort keeping pace behind them while Naya and Ronan rode side by side through the changing landscape. Everything between them felt different since the kiss, a quiet awareness that hadn’t existed before, present in the way his eyes lingered on her a beat longer than necessary, the way she found herself watching his hands on the reins without meaning to.

Ronan checked on her comfort more than once, asking whether she needed to stop, whether the pace suited her.

"You’re doing it again," Naya said, amused.

"Doing what?"

"Suddenly concerned with my comfort." ℯℯ𝑙.

"I’ve always been concerned," Ronan said.

"You had me punished for a necklace I didn’t steal."

He didn’t argue the point. "I was wrong about you."

It wasn’t a grand apology, nothing dramatic about the delivery, but it settled somewhere real between them, and Naya let it sit there without demanding more.

The Ripley estate looked exactly as she remembered it, stone and ivy and the same heavy front doors she’d walked through a thousand times as a child. Godric wasn’t there to greet them, called away on urgent territory business according to the servant who met them at the gate. Marissa welcomed Ronan with careful formality, though her eyes betrayed her the moment they landed on Naya, sharpening with something close to alarm.

Naya had worn the old keepsake pendant beneath her collar without thinking much of it, and Marissa’s gaze fixed on it instantly.

"Where did you find that?" Marissa asked.

"It’s mine," Naya said. "I’ve had it since I was a child."

Marissa’s expression flickered, recognition unmistakable, before she smoothed it over and changed the subject entirely, ushering Ronan toward the sitting room with practiced ease.

Naya excused herself and made her way up to her old bedroom, still furnished much the way she’d left it, though dust had settled over everything untouched. Memories surfaced faster than she expected, sharp and unpleasant. Being locked inside during certain moon phases. Being punished for wandering too far from the house after dark. The way her parents had looked at her sometimes, not with the warmth of people protecting a child, but with something closer to fear.

She found an old box tucked beneath a loose floorboard, a hiding place she’d forgotten about until her fingers brushed the familiar wood. Inside sat a small carved trinket from her childhood, unremarkable at first glance.

Then she turned it over and found the same symbol etched into the abandoned village’s boundary stone, the same mark from the vault’s damaged bloodline record.

Her breath caught. This wasn’t something new. She’d carried it with her since before she could remember.

She turned the trinket over again, studying the worn edges where small fingers had once gripped it during childhood games she barely remembered playing. Whoever had given it to her, whoever had let a child carry proof of something so carefully hidden, had trusted her with it long before she understood what she held.

Ronan found her sitting on the edge of the bed a while later, the trinket still clutched in her hand.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" he asked.

"No," she said.

He stayed, settling beside her without pressing for explanation.

"I spent most of my childhood thinking I simply wasn’t important enough for them to care about," Naya said. "That whatever they were hiding, whatever rules they made me follow, it was about controlling me because they didn’t value me."

"People don’t hide things from someone who means nothing to them," Ronan said.

The words settled over her slowly, reframing years of memory she’d carried as neglect. If her parents had spent so much energy hiding something about her, it hadn’t been indifference driving it. It had been fear, or protection, or both tangled together in ways she was only beginning to understand.

She went downstairs and found Marissa alone in the sitting room, Ronan following a few steps behind.

"What is the name you buried?" Naya asked, no preamble left in her.

Marissa went still.

Naya told her everything then, the village, the elder’s warning, the old records, the symbol repeated across every piece of this mystery. Marissa’s composure cracked with every detail, fear replacing the careful neutrality she usually wore.

"You shouldn’t have gone there," Marissa said.

"Why not?"

Marissa’s hands trembled slightly as she finally answered. "Because your father spent years making sure nobody found out what happened the night you were born."

Naya’s chest tightened. "What happened?"

Before Marissa could answer, the front doors opened with a heavy sound that echoed through the entryway, and Godric strode in unannounced, his expression shifting the moment he saw Ronan standing in his own sitting room.

His eyes moved to Naya, then to the small trinket still clutched in her palm.

Something crossed his face that Naya had never once seen from him in her entire life.

Fear.

He masked it almost as quickly as it appeared, his expression settling back into practiced composure. "What have you been telling the King?"

Naya studied him, understanding settling into place with sudden clarity. He wasn’t afraid Ronan would discover whatever scheme he’d orchestrated with Elara, whatever debt had forced Naya into this marriage in the first place.

He was afraid Ronan would discover who Naya actually was.

"I want you upstairs," Godric said, turning to her sharply. "This is a family matter. It doesn’t concern him."

Ronan didn’t move. "She’s my Queen," he said, calm and unshaken. "If this concerns her, she decides whether I stay."

Naya looked between the two men, her father who had spent her entire life deciding what she was allowed to know, and her husband who had just handed that choice back to her without hesitation.

For years, Godric had made that decision for her without ever once asking what she wanted.

She turned to face him fully, her voice steady despite ever

ything churning beneath it.

"Then tell me," she said, "what happened the night I was born."